That there was love, true and fierce and loyal, in a world where like called to like . . . and I was no longer the rule.
Where I was the exception.
As if the universe answered, I stood when the emcee called for another volunteer, another person to bare their heart. And so did someone else. Someone near the front of the bar, where the tables were so tightly packed the tweed suits blended together.
I froze.
“Oh, my!” the emcee cooed. “What a treat. Which one of you’d like to go first?”
The man in question turned to see who else had volunteered. Our eyes met. I knew then that it was him.
I could recognize him anywhere.
Even after a hundred years, after I’d scrubbed my brain of everything he was, I would know him.
Platinum-blond hair and a loose-cut V-neck and tight jeans and a birthmark just below his left ear in the shape of a crescent moon that I had kissed so many times my lips hurt just thinking about all of the nights I rubbed them raw, trying to forget about it. About him.
It was the universe telling me that I couldn’t forget. That if love was true, then love was a lie. That I had been happy once, happy then, but not happy forever. Because that wasn’t my story. That even my stories weren’t mine.
Perhaps they never were.
5
Dead Serious
THE FIRST TIME I met Lee Marlow, I was at a party with Rose and Natalie, our other roommate, who had since moved to South Korea. The party consisted of a lot of publishing people, though it wasn’t a mixer. There were authors, editors, quite a few assistants, and agents. It was for some milestone, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what. They all blended together after a while, party after party, book launch after book launch, swanky bars after rooftop restaurants after extravagant apartments in Midtown.
I had grabbed Rose by the upper arm and brought her close. “Oh my god, four o’clock. Red Vans. I told you I could’ve worn my Converses.”
“But those Louboutins make your ass look amazing,” she replied.
“I can’t feel my feet, Rose,” I complained, envying the guy in the red Vans. Then he turned around and my breath caught in my throat. “Oh.”
“He’d look better in a nice pair of Gucci leather loafers.”
“That sounds so pretentious.”
“Says the girl wearing her best friend’s Louboutins.”
“You made me!”
She inclined her head. “And I don’t regret it for a second.”
I did, however, regret it a few hours later when my feet had gone from numb to stabbing pain. The party was in someone’s swanky Midtown apartment, and while most people were in the living room or on the balcony, I had hobbled my way into the library and sank down on the leather high-back chair that probably cost more than my NYU tuition, and taken off those priceless Louboutins, and I never felt more relief in my life. I leaned back in the plush leather chair and closed my eyes, and basked in the quiet.
Rose thrived on parties, on the energy, the loudness, the people. I liked them sometimes—on special occasions, like at concerts or Comic-Cons, but there was nothing quite like the silence of a well-loved library.
“Guess I’m not the only one looking for a little quiet,” came a good-humored voice from the other side of the library.
My eyes flew open and I sat up straight—only to find the man in the red Vans sitting on one of those ridiculous bookshelf ladders, the autobiography of some dead poet in his hands. It was like a scene from one of those cheesy nineties rom-coms—light streaking in between the dark velvet curtains, painting his face in angles of pale moonlight.