Friends Don't Fall in Love(35)
Or maybe I’m the softy.
Never mind, I’m definitely the softy.
With the exception of my cock, that is.
Moving on.
After an appropriate amount of baby talk and cuddling, Lorelai lets Waylon go to do whatever it is asshole cats do when no one’s looking and hops up on a stool at the island, sipping from the glass of Pinot I’ve poured her.
She swirls it a little and I can feel her eyes on me as I divide dinner between two plates to take on the balcony.
“Go ahead and ask,” I say mildly, taking too much care to scrape the bottom of an already empty container of brown rice.
“You listened to my song?”
I roll my eyes lightly, not reminding her that we already established I listened last night and again this morning. “Of course I did.”
She’s quiet a beat and I put down the Chinese takeout container to give her my full attention. Lorelai’s dark eyes are bright in her pale face, and she’s worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. This is the Lorelai no one sees. The one I’ve had the privilege to know almost from the start.
The one I’ve loved nearly as long, but we don’t need to rehash that shit again.
I lean forward, moving before I’ve even made the choice to do so, and with my thumb, gently tug her chin, freeing her lip. “I have a question but I’m not sure how to ask it.”
She nods, reaching for her glass, but only playing with the stem, her eyes intent on mine.
“This is seriously the most humiliating thing I’ve ever asked, and depending on your answer, we might have to crack open a bottle of absinthe so we can erase it from our memories.” Old Huck, the one from all those years ago, had a lot more swagger when it came to women. He could wash down awkward conversations with a beer and laugh off rejection with an overabundance of youthful, fame-adjacent bravado.
Craig of today pre-games with ibuprofen and wakes up every morning feeling the press of time in his bones. He couldn’t spell swag with a dictionary. And he really needs not to ruin things with his friend. She’s too important.
The corner of Lorelai’s mouth quirks ever so slightly, as if she can read my hesitation, and somehow that familiar movement strengthens my resolve.
Because I know I’m important to her, too.
“Was that a real song or…”
“Or…?” she prompts, her eyes dancing over the rim as she takes a healthy sip of Pinot.
Christ.
This one time when I was in junior high, my sister took me to a water park in Georgia and forgot sunscreen. I had second-degree burns all over my body. I peeled like a fucking rattlesnake for weeks after.
But that was nothing compared to my face right now. I swallow and take a deep breath. “Or was it just for me?”
Lorelai’s cheeks puff as she exhales before licking the wine off her lips. “Maren and Shelby told me to pretend to accidentally sext you, but of course that’s asinine, so I decided to write a song that was the equivalent of a sext.”
My air rushes out of my lungs and I slump against the top of the counter, trying to stave off the tunnel vision. “Oh god, Arlo was right. He’s never gonna let me live this down.”
“You told Arlo?”
I speak in the direction of the oiled wood block underneath my sweaty palms. “I thought it might be a real song.”
“Bullshit!” she cries out, slapping the island and laughing, startling me into looking at her. “You know me better than that.”
And suddenly I know I do. I’ve always understood Lorelai Jones. I get her quirks and love her instincts. Even if I didn’t have secret deep-seated feelings for her, she’s still the one person I like the most.
And right now, I feel like I am knowing things—potentially scary things—about Lorelai that maybe she doesn’t even know about herself, and what the ever-living shit am I supposed to do about that?
Just roll with it, I guess? That’s what Old Huck would do. Find an equilibrium. Or at least a baseline we can both live with.
“Which is why,” I say even louder, cracking a smile, “I assumed it was a song. Because you couldn’t possibly mean to send me something like that. Not now, anyway. Years ago, maybe…”
She grabs up her wine and snorts into the glass before swallowing another gulp, and I’m mesmerized watching her long throat work. “Yeah,” she hedges softly. “Well. Not all of us have”—she makes air quotes with her guitar-callused fingers—“anonymous poetry accounts. Some of us have to get creative when expressing our … desires.”
At the last word, my heart seizes in my chest and I can feel the blood leaching from underneath my skin, every last drop on a raging course south. My voice comes out hoarse when I say, “Jesus fuck.”
She raises a fine brow and puts down her glass. Having pity on me, she nudges mine toward me. “Take a big sip. The Pinot is delicious and especially fortifying tonight.”
I reach for it. “I think I’d rather have the absinthe.”
“Get ahold of yourself, Huck. This isn’t the time for being shy. You regularly write about oral sex on a public forum.”
I choke on my sip and Lorelai flushes prettily, her lips pursed. “Are you gonna deny it?”
I chug the entire glass, which in turn burns my entire esophagus, but desperate times and all. “How long have you known?”