“Thanks for coming over,” I say, skipping through the first commercial break.
She closes her eyes. “Shut up.”
I give her a series of overly dramatic wide-eye blinks. “You’re the best big sister ever.”
“I know.” She stretches, pressing her foot into my hand. “More on the arch. I was standing all day today at the bench.”
I wince. “Your feet smell.”
Margot snorts. “You went home with a stranger before realizing you’d already boned her before.”
Sighing, I admit, “You’re right, I’m grosser.” I take a deep breath before telling her the other important event of the day. “So, hey. I ran into Ansel on campus today.”
She opens one eye. “Ansel?”
“Mia’s husband.”
Her mouth forms an O several seconds before she lets out a small “Ohhh.”
“You would have been proud of me. I went up to him and apologized for being a dick to Mia.”
She pushes up on one elbow, eyes wide. “And?”
“And . . . he’s a good guy.” I tell her about my conversation with him. “I still need to talk to Mia, but I felt about a million times better about it after.”
“Luker, can I ask you something?”
I press my thumb into the ball of her foot. “Sure.”
“Do you ever look at Mia and think about—”
I drop her foot, holding up my hand. “No. No. Not anymore.” At her blank expression, I add, “I don’t want to sleep with Mia.”
She bites back a laugh. “Okay.”
Margot can barely keep from cracking up and dread settles in my gut.
“That’s not what you were going to ask me, is it?” I ask her.
“Nope.”
I drop my head. “Damnit.”
“Luke: you have a problem with sex.”
I smack her calf. “Just finish your question.”
With an evil grin, she asks, “Do you ever look at Mia and wonder whether she’s gone home with someone she’d already banged before, but forgot?”
Reaching for her ribs, I dig a knuckle there, tickling her until she shrieks.
“Fuck you,” I yell over her screams, “ask the real question.”
“Okay! Okay!” she gasps, swatting at my hands. “Do you ever look at Mia and think it’s cool to see her so happy again?”
I let my head fall back against the couch so I can think on how to answer, because the truth is, I feel a lot of things. The simple answer is I am happy for Mia, because she’s an amazing woman with so much love to give, and deserves it. But it’s also complicated. I feel bad I couldn’t be what she needed. I feel disappointment in myself for the way I reacted to that part of my life closing, and that I went to such extremes to open another. I hate that I’m still sad sometimes over the way things ended with Mia, and even sadder that it wasn’t until I met London that I felt anything at all.
“It is cool, yeah,” I tell her, and Margot must see everything behind my eyes because she gives me a small smile, and then kicks me in the stomach.
“Ow! Jesus Christ, I changed my mind, I don’t want you to sleep here.”
She pulls her feet from my lap. “I just wanted to knock you out of that little funk you’re slipping into. You had a shit night, but you’ll learn something and move on. You might be an idiot sometimes, Luker, but you’re not dumb. Just don’t make the same mistake again.” She hesitates, adding, “I mean, again.”
I rub a hand over my ribs and glare at her.
“Now, it’s late and I need to get to bed.” She leans over and kisses the top of my head. “I love you. Don’t stay up too late.”
“I won’t,” I say, impulsively adding, “I think I want to call London.”
I expect a certain degree of shit for this but instead I get “I think this is a great idea” before she walks down the hall to her bedroom. Once the door clicks closed, I pull my phone from my pocket. It makes me laugh, a little, that I’ve missed seventeen texts in the time I’ve been talking to my sister, and none of them are from the girl I want to talk to.
Even in the time it takes me to work up the nerve to call her, two more come in: one from Dylan, telling me to come join them at Andrew’s, and one from a girl I spent one night with and who lives in Seattle.
What the fuck is my life?
Without thinking more, I swipe my screen and find London’s name. She’s probably at work and won’t check her phone for a few hours. I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve in a few hours. I press her work number.
“Fred’s Bar,” she answers, and my heart does an irritating clenching thing.
“Logan? It’s Luke,” I say.
She’s quiet a beat too long for my liking before she says, “Hey.”
“Hey.” I know she’s at work and I have to cut to the chase before she’s called away. “So I was thinking, maybe we could hang out.”
“Hang out?”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling. Never before have I felt like such a nervous idiot. “It’s a saying the kids use these days when they want to do something together. We could hang out at the beach. Or hang out at dinner. See?”
Laughing, she says, “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”
“I know you don’t,” I tell her, sitting up straighter. “But I promise I will make it one hundred percent worth it. I’ll turn off my phone. I’ll pay for dinner. I won’t order a single Heineken.”
“You’re calling me at work to ask me out on a date?”
“I worried you wouldn’t answer your cell if you saw it was me calling.”
I close my eyes at the sound of her laugh again. It’s breathy, and in it I can hear both exasperation and the “no” she’s about to give me. “When are you thinking?” she asks.
Hope explodes, warm in my blood. “Tomorrow?”
I can imagine her chewing her fingernail while she thinks. “I work tomorrow night,” she says.
“How about during the day? I mean, obviously the law offices are closed.”
“During the day?”
“Yeah.”
Her hesitation lasts a million years. “I have . . . inventory.”
“Inventory?”
“All day,” she says quickly. “It’s, um, starting at like ten or maybe earlier? I need to look at the calendar, that, um, Fred has in the office. And then it goes until, maybe like right when I start work?” She pauses, adding, “Actually, the next couple weeks are really bad for me overall.”
I can’t decide if I love or hate that London is the worst liar in the history of time. It feels like the real-life version of watching her gun me down on-screen.
“Oh, yeah, no worries. Well, have a good night at work,” I tell her. “And maybe we can find another time.”
I end the call and fall back on my couch, swearing up a storm of frustration into a pillow.
Chapter NINE
London
WE TURN OFF University and make our way up the tree-lined Park Boulevard into Balboa Park. Lola sits in the driver’s seat of her new Prius, singing along quietly next to me, her hair tied back with a green and white scarf. Mia is in the backseat, looking up something dance-business-related on her phone.
I’m trying to be cool, bouncing along to the music. But inside, I’m sort of a mess.