Dark Wild Night

“The studio money came in.”


He nods, watching the floors tick down. “I remember that feeling when my dad died. It’s a good thing but terrifying. I felt like I had to go from being a slacker living with his grandparents and eating tinned baked beans to being a bona fide adult. I didn’t really have the mental tools to know how to budget or plan or save.”

“Yeah,” I agree, slumping into him a little. Oliver makes me feel so . . . safe.

“So, I put it aside until I was ready. Until I knew what I wanted to do with it.”

“The store?”

He nods. “You’ll figure it out. Just leave it alone until you do.”

The elevator stops at the third floor and we get out, following a sign to the restaurant. “I should probably get a new car,” I tell him.

He laughs.

“And I do know I want to get my own place.”

Oliver goes quiet for a few steps and then asks, “A house?”

“I think so.” And then my brain trips on the thought, because Oliver has his own house, and if anything happened with us, and it became more, would we live together? Would we want to own two houses?

“I can help you look,” he says, popping the rapidly expanding balloon of my thoughts.

We walk into the restaurant, and are seated at a table facing Santa Monica Boulevard. Oliver and I have had meals together dozens of times but it’s different right now, and I’m terrible at this kind of situation so I have no idea if it’s all in my head. Maybe because I’m letting in this floodgate of feelings, everything feels loaded and special.

What would Harlow do? I wonder. She would ask. She would say, “Is everything okay?”

Is it really that simple?

“Is everything okay?” I ask, giving it a try. Oliver looks up at me, brows pulled together in question. “I mean, after last night . . .”

He smiles and puts his menu down. “Everything is brilliant.”

Harlow would elaborate. Harlow would explain why she asked. Hell, Harlow would probably be in his lap right now.

“Okay, good,” I say, turning my eyes down to study the long list of waffle choices.

I can feel his eyes on me a little longer, and then he picks up his menu again.

I put my menu down. “It’s already different,” I say.

“It’s not,” he says immediately, and when I look up at him, I see he’s smiling. He expected this version of my panic.

I laugh. “It is.”

Shaking his head, he looks back at the menu and mumbles, “You’re a head case.”

“You’re a jerk,” I shoot back.

The waitress comes by and fills our coffee cups. Oliver watches me with a smile while I forego the buffet and order pancakes. He orders pancakes and eggs.

She leaves and he plants his forearms on the table, leaning in. “What do you want, Lola?”

Way to start small, Aussie.

“What do I want?” I mumble, pulling my coffee closer.

I want to feel a better sense of what shape my life is taking.

I want to draw every single story my brain is churning up right now.

I want to have Oliver, and not lose him.

“I don’t know.” I pour three creams into my mug.

He exhales, a tiny skeptical sound, and nods. “You don’t know.”

I look up at the sound of him scratching his jaw, the stubble scritch-scritching against his short fingernails.

And fine.

I want to make out until my lips are raw from the scrape of that stubble.

I want him to fuck me into next week.

I want the press of his cock to wake me up in the middle of the night.

“Well, Lola Love, you let me know when you figure it out,” he says. The tip of his tongue peeks out to wet his lips, and he sees me watching.

He knows.

It’s that easy? “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

I realize he’s walked over to my side of the court and carefully placed the ball directly in the center.