Dark Wild Night

His eyes are blue, but spotted with little swirls of green: an ocean contained in an iris. With a little smile, his lips come over mine, a sweet sweep from one side to the other as he hums, and my entire world shifts back into focus. “She loves me.”


“She does.” I can’t take in a deep enough breath. I want more; I need him closer. I’ve spent the last week and a half working for this exact moment, motivated by the prospect of forgiveness delivered in a kiss.

But he only gives me one more, this one a little longer, lips parted, just the hint of his tongue.

“Take me inside,” I beg, stretching to taste his neck, his jaw.

“I’ll take you all night,” he promises before planting one last kiss on my mouth. “But first, we talk.”

Ducking inside, he grabs his coat and then takes my hand, shutting the front door behind him. In the past few days, we’ve talked about such surface things—the store, my book, Not-Joe, Harlow and Finn, the parade of new releases I don’t have time to keep up with—but nothing heavier yet. We’ve wrapped up our hearts like presents, placed carefully beneath the tree.

It’s three blocks to the beach, and at this odd hour there aren’t any surfers dotting the water’s surface. Only the occasional solitary figure walking down the beach, a dog forging the path ahead of them.

We find a quiet section of the beach, broken by only a few sets of footprints, and stand a few yards away from the ocean’s edge. It’s windy, and still a little cold, but I’m warm in a long-sleeved shirt and with Oliver standing only a few feet away from me. We watch the waves crash for a few cycles and then I hear him clear his throat, as if he wants to say something.

He comes at me slowly, with a smile, and it’s like watching a form moving through water. Behind him the sky is a pristine cornflower; it’s still getting dark so early, down the coast, toward downtown, it looks like liquid blue sky with city lights bleeding everywhere.

“This is where we talk?” I ask with a smile, and I force some bravado in my eyes; I honestly have no idea why we’re at the beach and not on the couch in his living room, facing each other.

Me on his lap.

His hands beneath my shirt.

His mouth on my throat.

“I don’t reckon I know what else we need to say,” he says, shrugging sweetly. “But I know if we were at my place, we would have sex. And I just want to be with you for a little while first.”

When I look back up at him, the way he watches me is more intimate than any kiss could be, any sex, anything. I have this wild vision of climbing him, clawing at him, trying to get inside him somehow. I just need to connect.

“Are you still mad at me?” I ask him, chest aching. “A little, I mean?”

He shakes his head, and I see it past a shiver of tears through my eyelashes. I don’t know where they’re coming from. Relief, maybe. Probably exhaustion. More than a little triumph.

He reaches across the space, brushing away the first to fall. “I’m not mad.”

I nod, hoping if I keep swallowing, I won’t start crying harder.

“I’m not going to leave you,” he says. “You know that, right?”

A river of tears follows: the dam bursting. “It’s not that.”

But it is. My fear the past two weeks is at least partly that—that I changed his love, broke it somehow in the same way Mom broke mine—and now three feet between us isn’t nearly enough to dilute my need to touch him.

“Lola,” he says, stronger now. “I don’t want to be without you. I’m not leaving you. Even if you’re busy. Even if you’re scared. Even if you’re unreasonable or crazy, I won’t leave.”

“It’s not—”