“The three of you are enormous dicks,” I say, grinning. “And I need to pack.”

I push up from the couch and start walking down the hall to my room.

“But we still need details,” Mia calls out as she follows.

Details.

My head swims with them. I still feel full of Oliver. I want to tattoo every detail on my skin: The curve of his mouth when he’s coming. The soft brush of his fingers on my shoulders when he’s moving to touch my hair. His shoulders over me, shifting up and down, up and down as he moves.

“It was nice.”

Harlow snorts from my doorway, watching as London and Mia settle on my bed. “He broke your vagina and—from the sounds of it—almost broke furniture, and it was ‘nice’?”

I look up from where I’m pulling clothes from my dresser. “Can you not say ‘vagina’?”

“It’s an awesome word,” she argues. “You should be proud—”

“God, I’m sure my lady parts are unbelievable,” I cut in, turning back to my packing, “but it’s not an awesome word. It’s an awesome thing, but it’s a horrible word.”

“We need a better one,” London agrees. “I do like pussy, though.”

“But we wouldn’t just casually refer to our pussies the way guys refer to their dicks,” Harlow says.

“Is that a bad thing?” Mia asks. “Do we need to casually refer to them?”

Harlow looks insulted.

“Like, how about . . . sock.” London angles both hands to point between her legs and looks at us for agreement. “This is my ‘sock.’ ”

“Maybe something that isn’t already a thing, and doesn’t rhyme with cock?” I suggest.

“Oh.” London deflates. “That’s so weird. I didn’t even think about that. Clearly it has been far too long since I thought about cock.”

“How’s the new house?” I ask Mia, changing the subject. I zip up my duffel bag and drop it near the desk.

She shrugs, grinning with bliss. “Gorgeous. We got the keys yesterday.”

“Did you spend the night there?” I ask.

She nods. “No furniture, no electricity, it’s about two degrees inside, and Ansel ran around the entire place naked before attacking me on the wood floor of the living room.” She grips her lower back, wincing. “Is twenty-three too old to comfortably have sex on the floor? I thought we’d have more longevity than this.”

“Well, that explains the geriatric curve to your spine,” I say.

London sighs. “I would have sex on a pointy rock right now.”

I high-five her, but she immediately grabs my hand and swipes her palm across mine. “Wait. I’m taking back my high-five. You got superbanged last night. And today.”

“It was nearly a year ago that I was last banged!” I protest. “And I’m headed to L.A. for three days with no banging. Give me that high-five back.”

London limply wipes her hand back over mine and the four of us fall into silence at the mention of L.A. The quiet tells me they’re done giving me shit. But their continued presence tells me they’re not leaving until they get some more details.

So I give them what I can.

I tell them about drawing him, about the tension that seemed to be let loose after that, about how my feelings seemed to grow exponentially as soon as I gave them air. I tell them about the night at his house, cuddling, about the party in L.A., the bar afterward, and Oliver’s bare admission that he’s in love with me.

My heart seems to balloon until it’s hard to take a deep breath.

Harlow’s hand is pressed firmly to her chest. “He said that?”

I nod, chewing a nail and speaking around it: “He said it.”

“And you didn’t have sex with him immediately that night?” Mia asks.

“In a hotel room,” Harlow adds, horrified at my missed opportunity.

It’s too much, and I feel months of longing crash into everything else going on in my life right now. “It’s a big deal to me,” I say. And, inexplicably, tears fill my eyes.

Pushing past a surprised Harlow, I rush into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

“What—?” I hear London say.

Harlow’s voice is a calm murmur: “I got this.”

I hear her knock quietly on the door as I fill my cupped palms with cold water, splashing it on my cheeks before pressing my face into a soft towel.

Breathe.

It’s just a lot all at once, I tell myself. Breathe.

“Lola?”

“Just give me a second.”

I don’t know why, but I have this dark sense of dread. My blood rushes cold in fear and hot in thrill, wildly alternating between these two poles. This is good. Everything is good. So why do I feel like I’m trying to contain a hurricane in the palm of my hand?

I take a few minutes to brush my hair and put it back up in a neat ponytail. I put on a little makeup. I stare at myself in the mirror, and try not to worry that the woman staring back at me is going to fuck all of this up, every last bit of it.

“Lola,” Harlow whispers through the door. “Lola. It’s okay for it to be intense. Oliver isn’t going anywhere.”

THE CAR PULLS up in front of the Four Seasons Beverly Hills and the driver lifts my sad little duffel bag from the trunk, smiling blandly when I give him a pathetic tip because I only have ten dollars in cash.

I’m startled when the bellhop reaches for my bag before I can pick it up and we apologize in unison. He gives me a sympathetic smile and nods to the opulent hotel entrance. I must look like I’ve just emerged from a cave: I’m going on a night with little sleep, and napped like a milk-drunk newborn the entire drive from San Diego. But even with the darkening sky all around me and the promise of a comfortable bed, unfortunately I know I will be up for hours now.

The room is already paid for, and with my key in hand I head upstairs. It’s a lavish suite, decorated in soft neutrals with bright flowers in a vase on the desk. A giant king-size bed takes up much of the bedroom floor, and just beyond is a set of French doors to a balcony overlooking the Los Angeles skyline.

It’s beautiful, and this week promises to be exciting, but my stomach feels a little low in my body. As desperate as it sounds, I don’t like the idea of being away from Oliver for the next few days. Things are so new between us still; it isn’t time yet for interruption.

I pick up my phone to call him, and see that in the past three hours, I’ve missed two calls from my editor, three from Benny, and one from Oliver.

I listen to Oliver’s message first as I walk into the bathroom and undress, needing a shower, some room service, a full night’s sleep.

“Hey, pet. Just missing you. Hope the drive went smoothly. Havin’ dinner with the group tonight. Will miss you there, and later.” His voice drops. “I don’t want to sleep alone in my bed tonight. I want you in it, on top of me. Lola, I’m obsessed. Call me when you’ve arrived so I can play with you. I love you.”

I listen to it again, and again, and again, until I turn on the water, lips curled in a smile as I remember every single one of his touches, and forget that I have other messages waiting, red and urgent on my phone.

A CAR PICKS me up outside the hotel at nine the next morning, and I look out the window as we weave our way through downtown L.A. traffic. I called Oliver last night after my shower, talking to him for three hours until both of our words were coming out thick with exhaustion. I suddenly want to see a picture of him, of us—something to stare at other than the monotony of cars merging into our lane, the endless view of sidewalk and taillights.

But when I pull out my phone to scroll through whatever pictures I have stored there, my screen is already lit up with another missed call from Benny.

“Fuck,” I breathe, feeling with my thumb that my phone has been on silent since I left San Diego yesterday. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I’d forgotten that he called. I never listened to his messages.