29. The Green-Haired Jezebel
THE GREEN-HAIRED JEZEBEL
PRESENT
Lucas doesn’t stop me from grabbing a taxi back to the hotel, and I spend most of the afternoon in my room tracking how well our press-management strategy is going.
Surprisingly, because one always expects a gap between expectation and reality, almost everything is landing.
There are pictures of Brody, winning and losing at golf.
He’s a clever mimic, and some of the posing is almost identical to what was photographed at the luau, which will make the searches for him easier to obfuscate.
The pictures with Vi and Khloe e-biking are also being shared—those are more in their publicists’ traditional wheelhouse, and for every commenter who questions why they’re wearing five digits’ worth of designer clothes, even that commentary leans positive.
The only slight wrinkle are pictures of Lucas and me at the sanctuary. They capture the moments right after I ran outside the building. Because I’m in both the Brody-luau pictures and these, because my pictures with Tatum are easily unearthed, I’m suddenly the green-haired Jezebel.
And because only the good die young or stay quiet, someone digs up Arjun Gupta, who’s working at one of his grandfather’s companies:
According to Arjun Gupta, former ICPC training partner and current senior project lead at Apex Algorithmic Insights, “She was always a bit of a maneater. We all knew she made Team A because of her relationship with Lucas Murray.”
It takes the focus off of Brody and Vi, which was the purpose.
And Lucas’s image doesn’t seem to be suffering, since most of the comments are variations of She’s not even that pretty, and WTF is she doing with her hair?
and How’d she get those dudes? and my personal favorite What’s she even done since college?
No one actually blames Lucas; they’re too busy being offended on his behalf.
Gwendy and Daisy are, of course, blowing up my phone with text messages of love and support. I respond enough to (hopefully) convince them not to fly out and comfort me.
Brody texts, thanking me and checking in.
Vera too.
Closing my laptop, I huff out a sigh: 5:30 p.m., but it feels like death o’clock. My headache’s so awful I’m borderline nauseous.
Project Elrond’s will gather again in the morning. I sink into the couch and hope no one will notice if I skip dinner.
I wake with a start when Lucas wipes a damp cloth over my forehead.
“How’d you get in here?”
Lucas presses a glass of orange juice into my hand and gives me what I presume are two ibuprofen. The clock tells me I’ve slept for less than an hour.
“I texted, called, and knocked. When I didn’t get an answer, I was worried you’d run off again.” He looks away, and I wince as he picks me up, moves me gently into my bedroom. “I told the hotel staff that, as your fiancé, I was worried because you haven’t been feeling well.”
“They believed you?”
Even in the dark, I see the glimmer of a smile, a flash of white teeth.
“A concierge came with me, just in case. But when I approached you the first time, you called my name, grabbed my hand when I came closer. After that, he was happy to fetch painkillers and give us privacy.”
I feel a slight flush against my cheeks because I can absolutely believe that, after years of pining for Lucas, I called for him, knowing he was near.
“May I?”
I open my eyes to see that he’s asking whether he can sit on the bed beside me, and I nod, in too much pain to deny myself the small pleasure of his nearness.
Lucas reaches for me, his strong hands kneading my shoulders and working their way up my neck to the base of my head. I turn to give him better access and can’t stop the moan of pleasure that escapes my lips.
“Are these still common?”
They’d started that first summer, after Yellowstone Club. Painful headaches that seemed to never go away. “Less so,” I admit.
He continues kneading until the pain fades a little. I’m close enough to smell his soap and the faintest tinge of sweat from earlier in the day. I breathe it all in, trying to imprint the memory.
“Thank you.”
Lucas’s hands are slower now, still gently massaging. “Remember what used to work well?”
I blush, because of course I remember.
I read online (where else?) that some people believed sex alleviated the pain from cluster headaches.
The hypotheses varied: It provided a distraction, it released endorphins.
My roommate had moved off campus, granting me an unexpected single, and Lucas and I had discovered that, especially if I took painkillers first, by the time I was blissed out from sex, the ibuprofen had kicked in enough for me to nap my way through the worst of it.
Because Lucas remembers that I’m more light-sensitive during these episodes, he’s closed the curtains; there’s a mere sliver of fading sunset seeping through.
“Are you suggesting we’re still close enough to replace painkillers with orgasms?”
“Maybe.”
I suck in a breath because it’s not like Lucas to be cruel, to not think about the potential consequences of his words. “That’s not funny, Lucas.”
“I’m not joking, Lorelai.”
“You want to be fuck buddies.” It’s difficult to keep the disbelief out of my voice, hard to imagine how Lucas went from college virgin to casual propositions.
“Yes.” Lucas runs a hand along my shoulder, still massaging, and I try not to think about how my heart plummets, that my disappointment tastes like bile.
He moves my hair to the side before continuing.
“If by fuck buddies”—a pause, because Lucas apparently still doesn’t curse—“you mean monogamous partners building a life and future together.”
I turn toward him, dislodging his hand when I try to sit up. I have a residual headache, I’m tangled under my sheets, but I can’t help but wonder if I’m also experiencing auditory hallucinations.
Because Lucas sounded serious.
“You want a future with me?”
Lucas tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, trailing a finger down to my jade pendant.
“I’ve always wanted a future with you. I’ve been pretty honest about that from the beginning.
” His hand slips under one strap of my sundress, smoothing the skin underneath.
“I would have preferred we resolve our somewhat complicated past, talk things through, but I’m not opposed to focusing on the future.
” He dips his head to kiss me at the juncture of my neck and shoulder as my hands reach for him, clutching helplessly at his shirt.
Of all the questions swirling in my mind, I can only formulate one single, all-encompassing word. “Why?”
He’s still for a moment, and I can practically see his brain working, coming up with and likely dismissing a hundred different potential responses. “Since you don’t believe in romance, I won’t declare any undying love. Instead, I’d argue we’re objectively . . . compatible.”
“No, we’re not.”
Lucas’s smile is rare and brilliant, as if I’ve genuinely amused him. His lips meet mine, somehow both tender and coaxing, firm and certain. I’m so swept away by the kiss it’s hard to remember what we’re trying to discuss.
“Are you trying to kiss me into silence?”
“I learned from the best.”
His lips meet mine again, nipping them open, kissing me so deeply I feel him imprinted on my soul.
My hands wind around to his back before settling into his hair, keeping him anchored to me, despite any earlier protestations.
He smells like Old Spice and salty sea air.
He tastes like wintergreen gum and also something uniquely, unquestionably Lucas.
One of his hands cups my head to tilt me while the other holds my hip down, allowing his erection to press into me, making my body feel like a live wire beneath his.
I’ve been reduced to nothing beyond a collection of nerve endings, an object that exists solely for Lucas’s touch.
He kisses me until I cannot think of anything else, cannot remember anything else. My doubts, my worries. Maybe my own name.
“I could stop and delineate the reasons you’re wrong. Or we can deal with your headache.”
My brain clings to that word, the one I should be repeating: stop. But my brain and mouth have become disconnected, the neurons misfiring. “Headache first.”
He trails his fingers along my neck, his hand slipping the strap of my dress off one shoulder.
Lucas kisses me as he always does—in a way that is too slow and definitely too frustratingly, tantalizingly thorough, as if he needs to document and revel in every tiny, minute detail.
I twist beneath him, my hands going from his hair to run along his (now) much broader shoulders, the hard planes of his chest, trying to discern by touch all the ways he’s changed.
He detaches long enough to join me under the covers, and I almost whimper at the momentary separation.
As Lucas’s hands begin roaming my body, slowly and reverently, I am desperate to be skin to skin.
He slides the other strap of my sundress from my shoulders and pushes my dress down, exposing the simple cotton bra I’m wearing.
A gurgle of laughter escapes me, because after years of secretly hoarding lingerie, of telling Daisy and Gwendy that women should wear lingerie for themselves, to feel sexy and empowered, of course this day, today, I’m wearing beige Target not-branded underclothes.
The type elderly great-grandmothers wear while baking cookies.
Lucas, however, doesn’t seem to notice or mind.
“I’ve missed you. And I’ve missed this.”
His lips follow the trail set by his hands, kissing from my shoulder down to my bra, pushing the cup down enough to expose a breast. His lips close around my nipple, licking and laving until I’m arching off the bed, embarrassingly wet and mortifyingly ready for what’s to come.
He chuckles and I can feel his breath on my chest. And I don’t know—can’t explain—why even this man’s laugh is an aphrodisiac, but it is. Lucas switches to my other breast, teasing and tormenting me until I’m moaning, almost thrashing underneath him.