It all started innocently enough.
I’d been behaving—if you can call working on an opposing column to Lola’s best oral techniques behaving.
Seems a little sketchy to me.
But I’d been alone in my apartment and occupied with something that led to a paycheck from my current employer, so it was at least flirting with responsibility. The farther I got into the column, and the more I read Lola’s—over and over—as research, the more obsessed I became with connecting to her in more than words tonight.
Knowing she was out, I’d opened up some of our old emails and started to read. And then before I knew it, even that wasn’t enough.
I didn’t have her phone number, and I knew Cam was done doing me favors of the personal information variety. That idea seemed stale before it even fully developed anyway.
I wanted a physical connection. I wanted her eyes to meet mine, and I wanted to find a reason to touch her skin.
Honestly, the topic of these columns had me goddamn buzzing, humming, practically frothing at the mouth, and with one look to her Facebook page and a quick shower, I’d ended up here—handing my ID to the bouncer and scooting past a group of giggling girls in ass-grazing dresses.
Lola was easy to find the second I stepped into Vertigo Lounge and allowed my eyes to adjust.
She had a presence that stood out from all of the other people there, trolling for love and lust and racing to lose themselves to a mind-altering substance.
Secure in herself, she didn’t need an escape like the others, and it showed.
I watched as she chatted with two other women, her focus on them and theirs on the men around them. They spoke to her with genuine affection, but Lola wasn’t their end game the way they were hers.
When they jumped from their seats and headed for the stairs without her, I moved with purpose in her direction and didn’t let the packed crowd slow me down.
I made it to her easily enough, but she was so lost in her thoughts, I stood there in front of her for a full minute without her even noticing.
“Fancy seeing you here,” I finally greeted, breaking the spell. Her head jerked up.
It didn’t take her pretty features long to turn hostile.
“Seriously… Are you stalking me?”
“Actually, I bumped into some friends from college, and we decided to come in here and throw a few back,” I lied easily.
Her eyes narrowed, bullshit meter pinned in the red with an ability no one else seemed to have around me. “Yeah. Okay.”
I smiled. Something inside of me fucking loved that she could read me.
“You’re right. That’s not true at all. I don’t have any friends from college. I didn’t even go to college.”
“Yes, you did,” she said with a snort.
“Okay,” I admitted, still fucking smiling. “I did. But I didn’t finish, and I really don’t have any friends.”
“Reed.”
“Fine. I finished, and I have friends. But they’re not here tonight.”
And that was true. I’d gone to college at University of California Santa Cruz and gotten a degree in something—sociology—that was altogether relevant to my life but meaningless to ninety-five percent of the working world. My friends majored in business, joined major corporations, found trophy wives, and quickly impregnated them with multiple babies. I hadn’t seen all that much of them since. Actually, if you asked me for my best friend now, I’d probably say San Francisco.
Or Lola, a little voice whispered in the back of my mind. No. I haven’t known her that long. My inner voice raised a pointed eyebrow.
The city never seemed to let me down, and I had people and amusement all over it. I wasn’t planning tons of dinners at my house or trips to the bar, though.
Maybe I need to have Lola over for dinner.
“There we go,” she said with a little half smirk. “Now, why are you here tonight? The truth.”
I shrugged. “I’m stalking you.”
“I fucking knew it!”
“See, LoLo,” I said, my inner voice hanging out right above my voice box, apparently. “We’re pretty much best friends. Knowing each other and shit. Next thing you know, we’re going to be finishing—”
“Each other’s sentences. Yeah, yeah.”
“Now that’s just creepy,” I teased, and she shook her head with a smile.
“Why are you stalking me?” she semi-yelled over the music.
I didn’t want to yell. My days for screaming a conversation ended a few years ago when I started avoiding overcrowded places like nightclubs.
“I’ll tell you on one condition.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. No thanks. I don’t need to know.”
Leaning forward, I lifted the glass out of her hand and set it on the table before taking her hand in mine despite her protests.
“How many times do I have to tell you we’re not friends?” she asked, pulling at my hand in order to try to get me to release her.
I used my other hand to grab her elbow and pull her body close enough that she could hear me over the din. “I’m not sure. But I don’t think the tally begins until you start doing it without a gigantic fucking smile on your face.”
When I leaned back, her features were schooled into a scowl. I laughed.
“Come on, Skeets. Dance with me. It’s just a dance.”
“You probably don’t know how to dance,” she accused.
“You’re probably right. But hey, just for fun, let’s see.”
I could see the wheels spinning in her mind as she considered it over and over again. What would it cost her to dance with me just this once? Would it lessen the intensity of her hatred or aid it?
I didn’t know which decision would win the battle, but I knew what action would win the war—she was going to dance with me whether she knew it or not.
After several long seconds, she saved me the trouble of having to carry her and conceal her cries of protest and jumped to her feet. She shoved past me and headed for the stairs to the level of the club made for dancing.
I followed her dutifully, watching the line of her shoulders as she walked. One peeked out from the collar of a dress I thought might have been a sweatshirt in a former life, while the other climbed to her ear and fell down again on a circuit.
I guessed she was talking to herself as she walked, or maybe cursing me, but eventually, my eyes moved down to her feet. Sparkly and overadorned heels belied the casual nature of her dress and spoke to what part of an outfit she found most interesting. Heels, Converse, boots—each was chosen precisely, while the clothes were there only as a means to combat nudity.
I honestly expected her to ditch me as we made it to the top, but she kept a slow pace and headed straight for the center of the mass of writhing bodies.
Amber green eyes lined to garner attention found mine over her shoulder to ask a question. I didn’t know what and I didn’t have one fucking clue about the answer, but she seemed to find it nonetheless, turning to face me completely in one smooth move.
She held out a hand for me to take, and my heart thumped. Naïveté wasn’t one of her recurrent qualities, but picturing her thinking about us doing the waltz and comparing it to what I actually intended to do made my blood pump faster.
Awareness shot through my arm as I took her tiny fingers in mine and clasped them tight. She gasped as I gave her hand a rough, calculated yank and spun her to face away from me, pressing the front of my body up against the back of hers at once. Her hand in mine, I brought them down to the front of her hip and pressed in.
“Ready?” I whispered in her ear, smiling when she trembled.
“Sail” by AWOLNATION hummed through the speakers without waiting for her answer, and I had no choice but to move. I loved to dance, the naughtier, the better, and this was one of my favorite beats. It reminded me in all the best ways of fucking, and with Lola’s body pressed up against mine, tonight couldn’t have been different if I’d tried.
One side to the other, I moved our joined hips in unison until her legs gave up the fight and her body relaxed into mine. I moved my face to her neck and just breathed her in. My lips never touched her skin and my tongue stayed inside my mouth, but I felt her so intensely, so acutely, I’d swear until I died that I tasted her that night.
“Reed,” she whispered, and by some miracle, I heard her.
Back and forth we swayed as my hands skated from the tops of her shoulders down to her fingertips and over the curves of her thighs. “Just feel it, Lo.”
Her head fell back onto my shoulder, and I pushed my body deeper into hers, circling my hips and making hers go with them. The back of her throat hummed with the effort to contain a moan as I spun her body out from mine and back in to press her front to my own and pushed her up my thigh until our hips met again.
Hand at the back of her neck, I held her face an inch from mine and kept her eyes captive, guiding her hips with gentle pressure from the other hand. My thumb rounded her throat and forced her chin up.
I shoved my nose to her neck and breathed.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered on a forced breath. Around her delicate throat, my hand traveled to the front and stopped. My pressure was light, but noticeable enough that her eyes opened and rounded, transfixed by mine as the song came to a close.
Everything was silent for one fraction of a second while the music changed over, and I swear I heard her heartbeat.
It’s probably my own.
“Hey, Lola?”
“Yeah?” she asked, scared. By me, by the intensity, by something even I couldn’t pinpoint, but mostly by the unknown mix of all of those things.
“Don’t ever check in with your location on Facebook again.”
“I…okay.”
I pressed my lips to her cheek, but I didn’t let them kiss—just the feel of her skin under them was enough.
Before she could ruin everything with questions or a fight, I forced myself to back away. One person between us led to two and three, and before I could count anymore, I turned and walked straight out and into the chilly night air to take my first sober gulp.
Something about her drugged me right into oblivion—and despite knowing the downsides of addiction, I couldn’t make myself stop loving it.