He snorts on his champagne, choking on the alcohol.
I pat his back. “Take it easy there. Maybe you should switch to something you can handle. I’m an alcohol aficionado. You should listen to me.” I flash a smile.
“Is that so?” he says, his face red from hacking up a lung. He takes another sip to clear his throat.
“So why did you take Juliana?” I wonder. “You never answered.”
He shrugs. “I don’t remember.”
“And I don’t believe you, Loren Hale.”
“Use my full name, Lily Calloway, its authority is lost on me.” He flashes an equally smug smile.
“You escorted me to plenty of balls before that one,” I remind him. “So what changed?” I shouldn’t nag, but my curiosity prevails over my sensibility.
He sets his empty tray aside and holds the champagne bottle between his legs. I wait while he thinks about the right words, on how to frame his answer. He picks at the flowery gold paint. “The night before Juliana asked me, I came home trashed. I paid off some guy to buy me a bottle of Jim Beam. I spent that afternoon drinking in the back of our old elementary school.” He rolls his eyes. “I probably looked like a fucking delinquent. I was bored. And I guess that’s not even a good excuse anymore. My father saw me stumbling in, and he went off on some tangent about being unappreciative.” His eyes narrow at the brick walk. “To this day, I remember what he said. ‘You can’t even fathom how much I’ve fucking given you, Loren. And this is how you repay me?’”
I’m afraid to touch Lo. He’s in some kind of trance, and if I put my arm around him, he may jerk out from it, sullen and unhappy. He may be both regardless.
He continues with a heavy frown, “I listened to him rant for an hour. Then he started talking about you.”
“Me?” I touch my chest, not believing I could enter this kind of conversation.
He nods. “Yeah, he said you were too good for me, that I would never be able to grow up and be with a girl like you. I was young, rebellious, and when he said ‘go,’ I yelled ‘stop.’ When he said ‘Lily,’ I shouted ‘Juliana.’”
“Oh,” I mumble, not realizing how deep-seated the truth really is.
“For the record,” his voice lightens, “I was miserable all night having to listen to her go on about her horses. And if I remember correctly, you did use Jeremy’s short height to your advantage.”
My ears heat and redden at the memory. I use my hands as blinders to shield my mortification. “You’re not supposed to find my past conquests amusing,” I whisper-yell, still blocking my peripheral vision.
His lips quirk. “I love all of you.” He raises my chin with a finger and kisses me so delicately that I wonder who the man is on the other side of me. The tenderness draws me in, and I lose breath in the short moment.
I break away first, not sure if I can last kissing him like this without the promise of wild, passionate sex. He raises his eyebrows, putting his cup to his lips, grinning. Yes, he knows exactly how I feel right now. I’m so transparent.
I change the topic to keep from oozing into the fountain. “Poppy keeps asking me about your birthday. She wants to meet all of our friends at the party they’re supposedly throwing for us—Charlie and Stacey especially.”
He remains calm. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her that she’d hate the party. Too many drunken college students, and she’ll have to meet them some other time. She bought it pretty quickly. Besides, she has no reason to believe we’d create fictional friends.”
“I wish you’d chosen a better name than Stacey. I don’t know any Staceys that I’d ever be friends with.”
“That’s name prejudice and immature.”
“There’s no such thing as name prejudice, but I don’t doubt it’s slightly immature. I have many faults.”
“About your birthday”—I stay on track—“since you’re not passing out at noon, can I actually take you out to celebrate?”
He rips off the last of the champagne label. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on. We can dress up in costumes and go to a party.”
“Why can’t we just stay at home, drink and have sex?”
“We do that every day, Lo,” I say irritably. Since we’ve been together, my late night clubbing customs have disappeared. Unlike Lo, I’m not used to being cooped up in the apartment so much. “There has to be some perks to having a birthday on Halloween.”