Dark Wild Night

He nods.

Lola glances at me and for a moment, the weirdness between us is gone and we’re on the same team. “You’re driving six hours,” she says, “to take Harlow camping in the woods for an entire weekend.”

His brow pulls tight as he turns to look at me. “Those are the bullet points.”

“Have you met your wife?” Lola asks.

Finn’s mouth curves into a cocky smile. “She’ll get into it.”

“If you say so,” she says with a wink. Fuck. My chest does a tight twist at the playful side of her coming out. “And yes, I think she has the weekend off.”

“Lola, you’re still here,” Joe says, walking out from the back room with a banana, peeling it suggestively. “Ready to run away with me yet?”

“Not quite,” she says, grinning.

“What were you doing all the way back there, anyway?” he asks.

She stares at him, before glancing quickly to me. “Browsing. And then Benny called. I have something big due next week. So . . . I’m changing the trip I had scheduled to L.A. for the week after.”

I file this away. I didn’t even know Lola had a trip coming up, let alone one she needed to postpone. I hate this distance between us—the pointlessness of it all, the absurdity—the way things seem to be moving forward in both of our worlds and we aren’t compulsively sharing any of it. I miss her.

Fuck. I need to get over it.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Joe says, “because I wanted to show you something.” He walks to where he was just a moment ago, pointing Lola’s attention to a shelf. “Look what came in.”

“Oh my God,” she says, and moves to get a closer look. From where I stand, I can’t see what they’re looking at, but Lola adds excitedly, “Can you get it?”

Joe smiles over at me. “Oliver? Can you reach the new consignment item?”

“I got it,” Finn volunteers, taking a step toward the ladder, but Joe stops him with a hand to the chest.

“I think Oliver knows what I need.”

I give him a warning look, sensing he’s up to something. But as soon as I get on the ladder and glance up, I know immediately what they’re talking about. Joe has somehow managed to find a set of the action figures based on Lola’s book, and placed it up on the shelf for her. I start to tell her that I haven’t even been able to get these new yet, but when I turn to hand it to her, I realize that her eyes aren’t on the box at all, but on my bare stomach, where my shirt is riding up.

I clear my throat and Lola blinks back up to my face, before turning about six different shades of pink. Joe is already laughing, and wearing the smuggest I told you so face I’ve ever seen.

“You are such an asshole,” she says under her breath to Joe, laughing and punching him in the shoulder before taking the box from my hands. I’m half-irritated with him, half-amused at his persistence.

“Where did you get this?” she asks, avoiding my eyes.

I shake my head, having never actually seen one in person before. They’re not even available online yet. “I didn’t know we had one.”

“I bought it today,” Joe says proudly. “It’s the first one I’ve seen.”

“Someone was selling this?” I ask, and notice that even Finn—a guy who looks like Superman but probably couldn’t differentiate Catwoman from Batgirl—has moved in for a closer look. Even Ansel is interested.

Joe shrugs as if it was no big deal, and takes a bite of banana. “Yeah.”

“They made this for the book?” Ansel asks, peeking over Lola’s shoulder to get a better look.

Nodding, Lola says, “It’s part of the promo for the paperback release in a few months. I don’t even have one of these. I’ve been waiting to hold one for weeks now.”