5. Lila
Chapter five
Lila
“No. Mark Grant is a terrible choice,” my roommate, Elise, says as she sorts through clothes in her closet. It’s two days until we graduate from the master’s in engineering program at Denver College, and Elise—like the killjoy she is—is systematically rejecting every single one of my potential “date” options for the party hosted by one of our classmates tomorrow night.
“Elise! I need to go with someone. Everyone knows the only reason you take a date to a party like this is so they take you home that night. I need someone to take me home tonight.”
“You know you sound like the horniest girl on the block right now, don’t you?” she asks as she examines a red tank top that I’ve seen her wear exactly one time in the last four years. Unsurprisingly, she adds it to her “maybe” pile. Elise has a distinct inability to make decisions.
“I may be aware of that, yes,” I reply. “And, if we are being honest, my libido may be part of my need for a date for the party tomorrow. However, as you know , the real motivation is the fact that my five-year plan has fallen completely off-track this year between the Andrew snafu and the other thing with the worst man alive.”
“What casual names for a miserable ten months with not one but two guys completely fucking with your head.”
“Eww. JT, that ass, did not fuck with my head. Plus, he and I are back to our usual hatred since Phoenix. No sexual tension whatsoever. Just good old-fashioned disdain. He remains a giant, hairy ball sack.”
She peers around the jean skirt she is examining so I can see the skeptical look plastered on her face. “What?” I ask. “We teamed up and saved Bryn and Jameson’s relationship. That’s it. Jameson still owes me for that, by the way.”
“Didn’t you end up with an amazing job opportunity out of that whole ordeal?”
“Yes. But he had nothing to do with it. Don’t take this future boon away from me, El.”
“Normal people don’t say boon, Lila. You’ve got to stop throwing historical-romance words into your everyday conversations.”
I wave my hand, dismissing her opinion on the subject. “Back to my problem. I don’t want to just date around. I don’t want to move to a new town and have to start from scratch finding a boyfriend. The plan is to get married and live happily ever after. I can’t do that if I’m single. As you know, you have the highest chance of finding your spouse in college. If not, the next years—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve given me your old-fashioned dating sermon before, Lila,” Elise cuts in. “And while it seems logical in theory, I think you’re missing the important part.” Elise stands to grab a stack of dresses out of her closet before sitting back down between her piles. “You can’t force yourself to fall in love, and you certainly can’t force someone to fall in love with you.”
“I understand that. But that’s why I’ve got my list of potential dates prioritized based on three factors: if they’re planning to stay in Colorado after graduation, their previous interest in long-term relationships, and our general relationship as of now.”
“And Mark is at the top of your list?”
“Yup! He’s staying in Denver after graduation, he’s talked about dating some girl during undergrad for three years, and we got along well when we were in a group last semester.” I lift a finger as I say each of the three points in Mark’s favor.
“You’ve literally never mentioned him before today. Are you even attracted to him?”
“Just because I’ve never considered him before doesn’t mean I might not start to find him attractive if I get to know him better,” I reason.
“But could it ever be bang-you-on-the-counter-of-his-hotel-room-in-Vegas levels of attraction?” Elise asks.
At the mention of my night together with JT in Vegas, my brain pulls up the montage of memories from that fateful night. Of JT’s hands gripping my hips to find the perfect angle as I sit on his bathroom counter. Of the two of us twisted up in the sheets of his bed. Of his thick cock hard and heavy as I suck it into my mouth. Of us repeatedly declaring our unending dislike for one another, even as every cell in my body screamed at me to find a way to be closer to him.
It was the best night of my life with the one person who makes me want to pull my hair out every time we’re in the same room. Though, when JT pulled my hair, it was…very different. Very different.
“You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?” Elise asks, pulling me out of my head.
“Ugh. Yes. How can I not? And that’s not fair. No, Mark doesn’t currently give off counter-fucking vibes, but he also doesn’t give off complete-asshole vibes, which is likely a better foundation for a loving relationship.”
“I just don’t think you should give up on JT. For as much romance as you read, it really feels like you’re letting yourself fall into a miscommunication trope. You guys made out in Phoenix!”
“You realize how delusional you sound right now, don’t you?” I ask. “What about me waiting for him to show up to an early breakfast the next morning so we could talk about it like adults sounds like miscommunication?”
“You left him a note, Lila. A handwritten note. And you put it on his pillow as you slipped out of his room after he fell asleep.”
“He was in the middle of a tournament! Of course I left so he could sleep. And, yeah. My phone was dead by that point. I left him a note asking him to meet me for breakfast the next morning at six, or to at least shoot me a text so I knew he wasn’t going to make it. He did neither.”
“Which suggests he didn’t get the note. That guy is a notorious people-pleaser. He’s not going to ghost his best friend’s little sister after hooking up with her.”
“He does if they agree to go back to hating each other afterward. Plus, he’s never been that guy with me. It’s like he enjoys pissing me off.”
“Oh, kinda like you enjoy pissing him off? Or do you not recall your evil plan to, and I quote, ‘make that asshole hard all through Thanksgiving dinner’ by wearing your fuck-me boots?”
“Fine. I do like pissing him off. It’s fun. And he deserves it. He’s the worst. And it was the only way I could get him to stop treating me like a 14-year-old.”
“Well, based on what you told me about what happened in Vegas and then again in the hallway in Phoenix, I can confidently say that the man does not think of you as a little kid.”
“And!” I say, continuing my rant about our time in Vegas from earlier, not really caring if Elise is keeping up at this point—she’s heard it all before. “Sunday morning when we had breakfast with Bryn and Jameson—which he did show up for—I asked him what happened yesterday morning and he said, ‘You’ve been around long enough to know what happened, Lila. I’m not proud of it, but it—’”
“‘—is how it is.’” Elise finishes the last part of the quote with me. Okay, I may have talked about this one too many times.
“Ugh.” I flop back onto Elise’s bed with a dramatic sigh, thinking through my options. She’s right. Mark isn’t the best choice. I have been in four classes with him throughout my master’s in engineering program and have felt nothing but baseline friendliness toward him. Exactly zero sparks or hints of attraction felt. I guess I could just wait until I get to Wild Bluffs to find a guy to date.
I sit up quickly, causing Elise to drop the pair of leggings she is folding. “Okay, change of plans. No dates for tomorrow night.”
“No. What will I ever do? All I wanted was a date,” Elise deadpans.
“Sarcasm noted,” I say. “But now I’m on board too. It doesn’t make sense for me to have a date for tomorrow. We’re graduating this weekend anyway.”
“Wow, it’s like I’ve been saying that for the last week or something.”
“Have you?” I tease. “Okay, then. New plan. We’ll get dressed up, we’ll get a little bit tipsy, and we’ll celebrate with whatever guy sparks our fancy. Or we will celebrate sans guys and treat ourselves to a late-night ice cream run. It’ll probably be more fun anyway.”
“Because you’ve been ruined by counter sex?”
Because I’ve been ruined by JT Johnson sex. “Because these fools act like boys, and we deserve real men,” I say instead.
“And you’re going to find a man in Wild Bluffs?”
“Certainly.”
“As a small-town girl, I feel I must warn you again that dating is much more complicated in a town the size of Wild Bluffs than you think it is.”
Elise is from a small town on the western side of Colorado and has been filling me in on the political maneuvering that is required to live in a town where everyone knows everything about everyone. She somehow thinks I’m going to both be swarmed by single men and all the married women trying to set me up with said single men, and, at the same time, be totally alone after offending every person in town somehow. I can only hope she’s exaggerating.
“It will be fine. I can casually test out the dating pool without offending everyone I meet.”
She sits down next to me on the bed, her larger frame dipping the mattress down and pulling me into her side. I accept my fate and lay my head down on her shoulder. “I wish I could believe you, but you just don’t understand. Unfortunately, you can’t understand until you get out there. At least you’ll have the Harper sisters to help you navigate it, I guess.”
“Or you could just ask your big, fancy job if you could work remotely and come live with me…” I plead for what is likely the hundredth time.
“If only I could. Unfortunately, I will be stuck living downtown, working in a building that holds more people than my entire town growing up.”
“You can come visit me anytime you want. Especially for the first six weeks, when I’ll be living in Jameo’s rental on the golf course.”
“I cannot believe how lucky you are,” Elise says, leaning her head on mine.
I swipe one of her curly blonde hairs out of my face before replying, “What do you mean?”
“You are the only person I know who finds an awesome house to rent and then, when it won’t be ready for the first six weeks you’re there, your brother ‘just happens’ to be out of town traveling that whole time. And, and” —she’s really on a roll now—“instead of you having to ask him if you can stay there, he asks you to stay there and even offers to pay you if you watch his girlfriend’s dog for them.”
I pat her leg in a consoling gesture. “It must be hard being best friends with someone as awesome as me.”
“You mispronounced annoying .”
“Can’t be that. I exude awesomeness. It leaks from my pores.”
“Gross. You should really get that checked out.”
“Nothing can be done about it. They tried to tone it down, but the awesomeness just keeps shining through.”
I swear I can feel Elise’s eye roll from where her cheek still rests on top of my head. But instead of engaging again, she lets it go, tugging me back into a hug before getting to her feet and staring at her piles of clothes.
“Why is my maybe pile four times larger than the other two?” she asks.
“Because you’re terrible at making decisions,” I offer.
Her shoulders slump before she lowers herself back to the ground and starts sorting her maybe pile again.
“I hate packing.”
“You and me both. Though at least yours is all either going straight into your apartment or into the trash. I have to figure out what I need for the next six weeks so I can store the rest until my place is ready.”
“It’s nice your new landlord is willing to let you store your stuff in the garage while the work is done, though,” Elise says.
“True. I got pretty lucky with Tim. He seems like a decent guy to rent from. I mean, it sucks that I have to continue to rely on Jameson’s handouts, but it’s not like anyone could have predicted the pipes bursting and flooding the entire first floor. And housing options are slim in Wild Bluffs.”
“And you get to stay in a swanky house on a golf course with a dog…and get paid for it…”
“You make a good point. Things really are looking up for me.”