Dark Wild Night

I want it to be conscious—intentional—between us. I don’t want to slide into something with her without thought, not only because our friendship is one of the best and most important of my life, but because even though we don’t talk about it much, I know her relationship history isn’t particularly positive.

Harlow has hinted that Lola’s few relationships have ended after only the briefest life spans, that Lola tends to keep men at an emotional arm’s length, and that she spooks easily. Even if I hadn’t seen the spooking with my own eyes two days in a row—at my house, at the store yesterday—I could have figured it out after a single conversation with her father where I learned the most telling detail of Lola’s life: her mother left when she was twelve, without even saying goodbye. It’s like a bruise that sits just under her skin, one that darkens whenever she lets herself get too close.

The store is pretty dead when I stop by just before I’m supposed to meet Lola. Joe is a great employee, but instinct tells me to not let a full workday go with him alone here.

“You missed a dude with a huge box of Tortured Souls figures about an hour ago.” Joe watches me drop my keys onto the counter, adding, “I feel unclean. I’ve seen some crazy shit in my day, but that stuff scares me.”

“Says the man who pierced his own cock.”

He laughs, stepping aside as I log in to the computer system. “I know,” he says. “But have you seen those figures? They’re babies in bottles of liquid and tortured people gestating their own murderer.”

“So what did you tell him?” A good deal of our business is the buying and selling of collector’s items: action figures, comics, graphic art. Joe has a good eye for stuff but doesn’t really have the same background in the scene that I do. The official rule is that if Joe isn’t sure whether he should buy something, he tells the person to come back when I’m here. In the first few weeks, he rarely knew what to buy and what to leave, but he’s a quick learner and I no longer panic that he’ll let something unbelievable slip through our hands.

“I told him we get a lot of kids in here and it’s not our thing.” He shudders visibly and then does a slight double take. “Why are you so dressed up?”

“I have a thing,” I say.

I can practically hear his eyebrows go up. “?‘A thing’?”

Sliding my eyes over to him to give him a mild glare, I squat down, and cut open a box of office supplies. To be fair, I don’t ever have things.

Joe steps into my peripheral vision and then bends down until his face is about five inches from mine. “A thing?” he repeats.

“For fuck’s sake,” I grumble, handing him a few boxes of pens. “A thing up in L.A. tonight with Lola.”

The three seconds of silence that follow communicate a good deal of incredulity. “Is it a date?”

I shake my head.

“Are you sure it’s not a date?”

I reach up, sliding a new box of business cards onto the counter. “Pretty sure.”

“Because lately she’s been looking at you like she might want—”

I cut him off. “It’s not a date, Joe.”

The bell rings and I hear someone walk in, heels clicking on the linoleum floor.

“This is the last time I’m going to ask you,” Joe whispers. “Are you sure it’s not a date?”

I open my mouth to say something sharp, but stop when I hear Lola ask, “Where’s Oliver?”

“On his knees under the counter,” Joe says breathily, and I look up to see him smiling widely down at me.

Her unsure speechlessness fills the room.

I shoot Joe an annoyed look. “Down here,” I tell her, and wave a roll of receipt tape over my head. “Just putting some stuff away.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, leaning over the counter so I can only see her face. I realize how utterly fucked I am if I think I can play it cool tonight. She looks bloody gorgeous. “Hi.”