He exhales slowly through his nose. “You had to grow up early.”

“You did, too, didn’t you?” I know so little about his life before college. He never speaks of siblings, of parents. He’s mentioned grandparents once or twice, but it’s not in our nature to push. At least that’s how it’s been until now. I want to crush that pattern with a brick.

Oliver looks back up to my eyes but we both turn to the bartender when he slides our drinks in front of us.

“Want me to open a tab?” he asks us.

“Yeah, sure,” Oliver says, pulling out his wallet and handing him a card.

The bartender turns and realization smacks me. “What? Wait.” I reach behind me for my purse. “Wait. I should be paying for this! You’re doing me a favor coming up here.”

“Lola,” he says, stilling me and shaking his head to the bartender to indicate he is still paying. “Stop. It doesn’t matter who pays.”

“It does, but thank you.”

Oliver grins. “You’re very welcome.”

I hang my purse back on my chair, smiling guiltily. “Is it weird to forget that I can afford to pay for drinks now?”

“I don’t think so.” He runs his finger over the rim of the glass. “God, I remember how long it took me to get out of the starving-student mentality. My father died five years ago, left me this sum of money.” Long fingers curl around his tumbler, and he lifts it to his mouth, sips his drink. I want to taste the scotch from his lips. “It was this huge shock. I hadn’t seen him since I was seven. I lived with my grandparents. I figured Dad was off doing heroin most of my childhood.”

I blink, jerked out of my Oliver Lust Haze. “What?”

He nods. “So when his lawyer contacted me, telling me my father was dead—but good news! He’d left me money—I was furious. He’d got his life together enough to earn money, to save money, but he hadn’t bothered to come back for me.”

I feel the pressure of tears in my head, the heating, tightening of it in my throat when I look up at his pained expression. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, anyway.” He hands me my drink, gently clinks my glass with his. “To finding your people,” he says.

I nod, drinking when he does, but even the sharp burn of whiskey doesn’t really register. His dad left him, too. Even his mom. I feel like we’re two wires, wound around and around and around together, propagating current.

“Lola?” he says.

I look up at him, try to smile. “Yeah?”

“Dance with me?”

I nearly choke on my pulse. “What?”

Oliver laughs. “Dance with me. Come on, live a little.”

He holds out his hand and after what he’s just told me, what else can I say, but “Okay”?

We put our drinks down and slide from our stools, walking over to the empty floor. There are three other people here, not including the bartender, and they don’t give a single shit what we’re doing or why we’re standing in the middle of the empty floor staring at each other.

“There’s not really any music,” I tell him.

He shrugs. “S’alright.”

But then music comes on, too loudly at first and we both flinch. The bartender has put on the sound system, and after he adjusts the volume, Aerosmith drifts down over the dance floor.

“Oh boy,” I say, laughing.

Oliver grins in playful apology. “This will have to do.”

“It’s almost so bad it’s good again,” I tell him and hold my breath when I feel the slide of his hand around my waist, feel every single one of his fingers against my spine. His other hand comes just beneath it, to the spot low on my back that suddenly becomes the convergence point for all of my nerve endings. Oliver pulls me in, flush against him. I can feel the waistband of his pants against my stomach, can feel how my breasts press against his solar plexus.

My hands are curled around his biceps and I’m staring up at his face. The dark of his brows, the light of his eyes, the shadow of a beard at his jaw . . . somehow it comes together to make my favorite face in the world. Oliver’s lips come apart just the smallest bit when he looks down at me and I see his jaw flex, feel his fingers press more firmly into my back. This is tension. This, right now, is lust, and I’ve never wanted anything more than I want his kiss. It’s nearly painful, the wanting. Something inside me is rebelling, stabbing itself with need, telling me it won’t let up until it gets what it wants. I’m being held hostage by my own heart.

We move, shifting feet, very, very slowly turning.

“This is nice,” he says. “I haven’t danced in ages.”

I keep waiting for the oddness to descend, the realization that what we’re doing is a little weird, but it doesn’t happen. It feels like I’m holding my breath, waiting for a sneeze to come.

“Breathe, Lola Love,” he whispers, and something inside me trips.

I haven’t been breathing. I’ve been standing here, holding my breath, waiting for him to kiss me and for my body to relax and for time to stop and for me to suddenly know what it is to be in love with someone.

“I’m terrified,” I tell him. We’ve shifted so close now I can’t really make out all of his features, but I can feel his breath, can nearly taste the scotch he’s had.

His eyes move back and forth between mine; his voice is a gentle reassurance: “I know, pet.”

“I’ve never been good at romantic relationships. I want to be,” I add quickly, “but it scares me.”

“I know,” he says again, bending to press a kiss to my temple. One of his hands slides up my back and into the hair at the back of my head. “But I just want you. I don’t need easy or perfect. I don’t need to rush anything.”

And there, laid out so bare and easily between us, it is. His honesty breaks a dam in me and I feel my own truths tumble forward, messy and raw.

“My first time was with a total stoner,” I tell him in a burst, closing my eyes and nearly crying out when he turns his face, pressing his stubbly cheek to mine. His ear is right next to my mouth; I can whisper right into the confessional. “He worked at the 7-Eleven on the corner, and just wanted to get high and have sex. We didn’t even really talk.”

Swallowing, I tell him, “I was only fourteen. He was twenty.” I can feel Oliver tensing against me. “No one knows about him, not even Harlow or Mia. They think I lost my virginity senior year. But Dad worked until dinnertime, and I’d go over there a lot of days after school, just looking for some kind of”—I shake my head—“distraction or, I don’t know. After Mom left, I wasn’t great with decisions.”

“How could you be?” he asks, kissing my jaw. His lips leave a streak of fire on my skin.

“But how horrible is it to admit that that relationship was the easiest one I’ve ever had? Everyone I’ve dated since then has ended up mad at me.” Pulling back to meet his eyes, I tell him, “It’s always when things get serious that I start to . . . I don’t know. Short-circuit. I don’t want it to be like that with us.”

He’s watching my mouth when he asks, “You don’t want it to be serious, or you don’t want to short-circuit?”

“I don’t want to mess this up,” I say. “Our friendship is too important to me. What if we . . . do this, and it changes that?”

Oliver nods, bending and pressing his cheek to mine again. “I don’t have a choice but to want to do this, Lola. I’m in love with you.”

The words incinerate my lungs and I stop breathing again. There isn’t a word for what I’m feeling. It is the direct, razor edge of ecstasy and terror.

“Shh,” he whispers. “Don’t panic, okay? I’m just being honest here. I love you. I want you.” He exhales, and it’s a massive, trembling gust against my neck. “Fuck, I want you. But I understand it isn’t simple, and I don’t expect simple. I just want you to try. I mean, if—”

I nod quickly—my heart is lodged in my throat, pounding, pounding, pounding with need for him—and he jerks me tighter into him, relief evident in his posture. I didn’t think it was possible to be any closer, but it was. It just required our bodies to collapse, air to evacuate lungs.