The conversation changes to more mundane things, and eventually Josh packs up his things to return to work. Arlo collects the trash and walks his husband out while I tidy up my desk and check my calendar for the afternoon. I have one more client today, and they’re going to require my full attention. It’s time to do what I do best and put the rest out of my brain.
13
CRAIG
COME OVER
I get held up with a late phone call with a guitarist I’m hoping to arrange for Lorelai’s record （and who’s currently residing three time zones away）， so I’m hustling up the sidewalk just as she’s parking her car on the street in front of our place.
Lorelai closes the car door with her hip, balancing a takeout bag in each hand. I rush to offer my assistance but stop short when she circles the car and heads up the walk toward me. She looks like—
Well, she looks like—
Like—
Fuck. My brain short-circuits as I hold open the front door and she ascends the stairs to my place ahead of me. Lorelai’s wearing a dress. Or a long shirt. Honestly, the best I can come up with is a shirtdress. With rolled sleeves and a belted waist and a skirt that reveals her miles of suntanned legs. Miles of them. Her skirt isn’t short and I’m not trying to look up it, but the way it flips off the back of her legs keeps flashing little glimpses of heaven at my eye level and my mouth waters and … stop.
I have to stop.
I slow my climb, letting her get far enough ahead of me to where I’m no longer within kissing distance of the backs of her toned thighs. Distance gives me the chance to take in the rest of her. She’s in leather sandals and her dark hair is pulled up off her neck in a high knot, and the overall effect makes her look stretched out and elegant and sophisticated and—
I can’t stop
Imagining your lips
Kissing every inch of me
—the keys?
“Did you forget your keys?” she asks me. She’s standing on the landing, hip cocked, and I can’t tell for sure, but her grin might be knowing. As if she can read the scrambled thoughts straight from my brain and knows the exact effect the words she sang, coupled with her miles of legs and that flippy skirt, are having on me.
Right. I need to unlock the door.
“Uh. No. Sorry. Long day.” I reach into my pocket to retrieve my key ring and quickly unlock the front door before taking the bags from her hands and gesturing for her to enter first. Lorelai flips on the light and my cat, Waylon, rounds the corner and dashes between her legs, nuzzling her ankles, that bastard. I drop the food on the counter as Lorelai is kicking off her sandals and scooping Waylon into her arms.
My cat hates everyone, including me, but for some reason loves Lorelai. Lore says it’s because “a catty bitch knows another catty bitch,” but I think it’s because they’re both secretly softies.
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.”