I smile but don’t reply, because honestly, what can I say? That I’d put up with crazy around the clock, if it meant it was her crazy?

Finally she turns, reaching for the door. “You’re like my blanket fort.”

“I’ve been called worse things,” I tell her.

With a small smile, Lola pushes herself up on her toes and leans in, pressing her lips quickly to my cheek. “Night, Olls.”

“Night, Lola Love.”

And then she’s gone.

Chapter

FIVE

Lola

WHAT DOES ONE do after a night of intimate cuddling with a friend on a couch and then going home to a very cold, very empty apartment?

Well, first one pulls one’s vibrator from the bedside table. But the next day, one goes directly to said friend’s store and pretends not to watch him all day.

I honestly don’t know what is wrong with me. I vacillate so starkly between keep it in the friend zone and jump him immediately that I feel a little locked up every time I think about it. And the fact that, last night, Oliver didn’t seem all that opposed to the cuddling and the flirting? Encouraging, even? I just . . . I honestly don’t know what to do, and the person I most want to talk it out with—Oliver himself—is also the last person I want to talk it out with. I want to push, just a tiny bit, to see if things have changed and he’ll make a move. It’s just that I can never quite tell what’s going on in his head.

“Do you live here now, Lola?” Not-Joe asks from behind the counter as I walk past him to the back of the store. “Because if so, I could show you how to run the register so I can go smoke a blunt.”

“I heard that,” Oliver mumbles from across the store. He looks up as I pass and gives me a little smile.

There are a thousand words in that tiny expression¸ and I don’t speak the language.

“Stalking you two is one of the many perks of being a comic writer,” I answer, stretching out with my sketchpad on the new couch in the back corner. Lately, the front reading nook is almost always full of Oliver’s fangirls and high school kids sneak-reading Sex Criminals. “I get to hang out here all day and call it research.”

“She’s hiding from the paparazzi.” Oliver lifts his chin to the front window to indicate the lone man standing with a notepad near some parking meters. “It’s only eleven in the morning and he’s been there for two hours now,” he tells me. “I think he’s hoping to get an interview with you for his tiny free paper with a circulation of about five thousand in Chula Vista.”

I’m grateful for the steaming Starbucks cup in his hand because I suspect the time he took to go get that is the only reason I missed him on my way in.

Although the press release got widespread coverage, trending hashtags, and the Tumblr memes are already out in full force, so far the buzz is all about casting, and there doesn’t seem to be much more interest in me. Writers are boring. Introverted writers who don’t seek attention are even more so. I’ve been able to forward all of the big interview requests to Benny so far, or answer questions via email. Thankfully, for now, Angela Marshall was wrong about how my day-to-day life would change.

“What’d you do last night?” Not-Joe calls to me, handing a customer a bag and closing the register.

“Went to Oliver’s for dinner.”

The man in question doesn’t look up when I say this, and again I wonder what’s going through his head. Is he thinking about how it felt to lie front to back on his couch? Is he thinking about how he maybe ate all the ice cream by himself after I left? Is he wondering what the hell got into me? I know I am.

I can’t say I regret it, though.

“Din-ner,” Not-Joe repeats.

“Joe.” Oliver’s voice is a gentle warning.

“This guy here made barbecue ribs,” I tell Not-Joe. “They were fantastic.”

Oliver’s eyes meet mine for a brief second and then he looks away, fighting a smile.

“So, eating meat off some bones, then?” Not-Joe asks, grinning at me. “Sucking off the hot juices?”

I love Oliver’s easy laugh that follows, the subtle slide of his eyes over to me again. I love that the pace of his work doesn’t change even when we look at each other, breathing in, breathing out. He pulls a stack of books from a box and puts it down on a counter. Lifts another stack and puts it down.

“You’re a menace,” I say. I blink over to Not-Joe when I say it, but can pretend I’m saying it to Oliver.

Because he is a menace. A calm, steady, sexy-as-fuck menace.

Not-Joe shrugs, moving on, and bends down to inspect a book. “Say, this new issue of Red Sonja features a lot of breast curve. I mightily approve.”

Oliver turns around to look at him across the room. “Show me both of your hands, Joe.”

Not-Joe holds up his hands, laughing. “You’re the guy who wanks to comics, not me.”

“You’re the guy who gets asked ‘is it in yet?’ ” Oliver drawls.

“You’re the guy who keeps asking, ‘Is it good, baby, does it feel good?’ ”

“Don’t need to, mate,” Oliver tells him, looking back down at an inventory sheet. “I know it’s good.”

Not-Joe laughs but I feel my eyes go wide at the growl in Oliver’s voice, the casual way this fell from his lips. I’m choked by the weight of jealousy and longing when I think about him having sex. Or maybe it’s the leftover needneedneed from last night.

Last night was weird.

I blink, turning to look at a rack of new releases and urging my brain to reboot.

“Just because it’s good for you doesn’t mean it’s good for them,” Not-Joe says.

“Well,” I answer absently, “there were the lesbian roommates who made him practice, practice, practice. . . .”

I trail off, having felt the store go completely still.

Reboot fail. I can’t believe I just said this.

The story of Oliver and his lesbian roommates was one I heard when we were all hammered—from Ansel, no less, and he had on his adorable troublemaker face when he told me—but Oliver and I have literally never talked about it. Shocking as that may be.

I can feel him staring at the side of my face, and one of his fangirl customers basically eye-fucks him from across the store.

“How did—?” he begins.

“Wait.” Not-Joe stops him. “Lesbian roommates? Why am I just now hearing this story? I feel betrayed.”

Oliver continues to watch me, and lifts his eyebrows as if to say, Well? You were saying?

“According to Ansel,” I tell Not-Joe, trying to sound casual, like this information doesn’t make me itch under my skin whenever I think about it, “Oliver had two female roommates at universiy in Canberra. Both were into other women, but being that it was college and we’re all sort of loose about things in college, they took it upon themselves to show Oliver the ropes, as it were. Ansel says that loads of women have just raved about Oliver’s—”

“No one has ever raved to Ansel,” Oliver cuts me off, looking flustered. “I mean, it’s not like that at all.”

“Well, it sounded exactly like that,” I say, giving him a playful smile.

But he doesn’t return it.

In fact, he looks really tense, like he doesn’t like that I’m talking about this. And of course he doesn’t; we’re in the middle of his place of business. But . . . wasn’t he just the one talking about knowing sex with him is good?

Confused, I blink down to the book in my hands and read the same dialogue bubble over and over.

“That . . .” Not-Joe claps a hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “That is legendary. Remind me of this the next time I give you shit.”

Oliver doesn’t say anything; he just scowls down at his clipboard.

And now it’s weird. I made it weird, but when I think about it, it’s been weird all morning. I took a leap and crossed an invisible line last night at his place. I exposed the farce of this Just Friends business, at least my end of it. Just friends works as long as everyone is on the level. As soon as it’s clear one person wants more, the entire house of cards crumples. Saying I wanted to draw him a few days ago . . . last night, with the spooning and the hand-petting, and now here with the knowledge about his former sex life when he and I never talk about those things . . . I’ve probably knocked down the entire carefully constructed fortress and doused it with gasoline.