“Oh my God,” I say to him. “What were you thinking?”
“Look,” Luke says, gesturing down the length of his body. “Sometimes you just can’t keep the beast contained, okay?”
There’s a collective groan and now everyone has completely lost it, Lola laughing so hard she looks like she can barely breathe. “He had to do community service at the senior center and spent the summer having his butt pinched by old ladies who’d already seen it in the newspaper.”
“I can’t believe I forgot about that,” Margot says, and reaches up to swipe away a few tears. “Oh my God, I’m crying.”
“My sides,” Harlow says, leaning forward to catch her breath.
“I do what I can,” Luke says. He looks completely unfazed by all of this as he takes a giant bite of his sandwich and I can’t help but be impressed. It also occurs to me that I haven’t seen him look at his phone once, and I wonder if that has anything to do with his sister being with him.
Finally recovered, Harlow turns her attention to Luke. “So now that that’s out of the way,” she says, and dabs at the mascara just under her eyes. “What have you been doing with yourself?” I hold my breath, but exhale quietly when she says only, “I heard you were going to law school?”
“Hopefully,” he says. Luke explains that he’s a law clerk—Margot cuts in to brag that he works for the biggest transactional law firm in San Diego County—and that he barely has time to use the bathroom without taking files into the stall with him. He’s hoping to attend law school in the fall. “My mommy and sister made sure I mailed off my applications,” he says with a grin aimed at his sister, “so we’ll see what happens.”
Harlow points her water bottle at him. “That is such a coincidence because you know Mia’s husband is an attorney.”
“Subtle, Harlow,” Lola says, and puts another cupcake in her hand. “Why don’t you shove this in your mouth for a while?”
“What?” she says, but takes the second cupcake nonetheless. “It’s an interesting bit of trivia, don’t you think?”
“I know this,” Luke says, “because I ran into him on campus the other day and went up to talk to him. He seems like a great guy.”
Everyone goes still, except Luke, who casually takes another bite of his sandwich, and Mia, who seems to already know this story.
“He is,” Mia says, smiling at him with such gratitude it makes my throat go tight in relief for both of them.
Lola hands out more cupcakes to everyone and the others continue to catch up, talking about Harlow’s mom’s recovery from a double mastectomy and chemo, Margot’s teaching job, about Finn and Ansel, and, of course, about Luke, when he turns to me, leaning in.
“You owe me, you know,” he says, and I feel my brows disappear into my hair.
“I owe you?”
“Calm down there, Zurich. I don’t mean like that. I mean that you lied to me and just gave my sister enough ammunition to last her through the summer.”
“Hey, don’t look at me,” I say, unable to hold in my smile. “It’s not my fault you offer up so much amazing material. You’re a comedic gold mine.”
“And yet you ignore the fact that you lied.” His brows draw down, but even so, he can’t remove the smile from his eyes. “That wasn’t very nice.”
He has a point. “You’re right, but in my defense I was just trying to keep your expectations manageable. I didn’t want you to think there was anything between us that could lead to—”
He holds up a hand to stop me. “We’re not doing that. I know.” Surprisingly, he glances at Harlow and then back to me. Maybe he catches more than he’s letting on? “And I get it. But even you have to admit that this—hanging out?—doesn’t completely suck, right?”
“Way to set the bar high there, superstar.”
He laughs. “You know what I mean.”
I pick at the wrapper of my cupcake. “It doesn’t suck,” I admit.
“You just said I was right. I’m sort of mortified by how happy that makes me.” He leans in again, nodding to Margot. “Don’t tell my sister.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
Luke reaches for a piece of my cupcake and I let him, watching as he tears off a chunk and pops it into his mouth. A smear of white frosting colors his bottom lip, and he flicks out the tip of his tongue, licking it off. He watches me watching him with a knowing smirk.
I swallow, and can only hope it’s not as loud as I imagine. Lola—who by all accounts is totally engaged in the other conversation—covertly squeezes my hand on the blanket behind Luke’s back. She is such an enabler.
I clear my throat, and busy myself wiping imaginary crumbs from my shorts. “So what have you been up to?”
“Let’s see . . . I texted you”—he says with a teasing smile—“feel free to answer those anytime. Practiced up on my video games, did some laundry, hung out at my mom’s house, and jerked off a few times.” He pauses and his brows come together. “Absolutely not in that order.”