Lost and Found (19 page)

Emily sat next to me on the bench, sipping a glass of white wine. “Delaney looks nice in that skirt, doesn’t she? I’m slowly trying to convince her to be bravely tights-less. At least around friends.”

My eyes had barely left Delaney, who was standing up and laughing with Ursula, wearing a dotted white skirt, an electric blue shirt and a mismatching dark cardigan that was falling off her shoulders. We were having unseason
ably warm weather for early October, and she was bare-legged, something I hadn’t from her seen since the rehearsal dinner. The skirt fell above her knees, on her smooth, tan thighs, and I had to look away for a minute, counting to ten to remember my name.

“Oliver?”

“Hmm?”

“I was asking about Delaney,” she said with a smirk.
“Who you’ve been staring at for hours.”

“Days,” I corrected her.
“Maybe weeks.”

“You still agree to not hurt her?”

“Isn’t Cliff still calling her?” I said, ignoring her question. Delaney seemed oblivious to how much I wanted to rip Cliff’s trachea out every time she mentioned his name, and blithely told me about his life whenever we had dinner, or ran together, or when I sat on her sofa watching TV and eating popcorn or dessert with her, which was often.

“I think he calls her every day,” Emily said, a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.

“Why does she answer him? I don’t get it,” I said.

“Jealous much?”
Ursula said, coming up behind us. I watched Delaney cross the roof and bend over, the wind picking up her skirt and pressing into her legs. She was so beautiful I had to look away. 

“I want to ask her out,” I said, just as Ursula and Em
ily said, “No.”

“You’re right. Never mind. I won’t. I can’t date Delaney,” I said. “I like her too much.” A slow smile crept across Emily’s face and her eyes lit up as she said, “Oh? She said she hasn’t seen a woman at your apartment in a while.”

“So? I’m taking a break. I don’t have a quota to fulfill, you know.”

“Could have fooled me,” she said. I scanned the crowd again, but Delaney was gone.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, standing up abruptly. When I was back in the apartment, I found Michael and Delaney, both with their heads down, whispering to each other.

“Oh, you,” Michael said when I knocked on the wall to alert them to my presence, and Delaney gave me a shifty smile.

“What are you two up to?” I asked, and Delaney nudged Michael and said, “I think you should tell him. He deserves to know.”

She gave me her wide-eyed owl look as I said, “D
eserves to know what?” I looked between them, both looking guilty, and I wanted to throw up. Michael and Delaney had been whispering, and Ursula had been weirdly distant. Maybe Delaney was going back to LA. Maybe this was it. Cliff had won her back. I sucked in a breath.

“Oliver?” Delaney said, grabbing my elbow. “You look green.” She guided me to a chair and sat on the arm, rubbing my back in small circles. I closed my eyes, trying to refocus.

“Oliver, I have something to tell you. A secret,” Michael said, sitting across from me, nervously folding and unfolding a napkin.

“Just tell me.
Quickly.”

“I’m going to ask Ursula to marry me,” he said, and a bubble of laughter escaped my lips. “What?” I said.

“You don’t have to laugh at me,” Michael said with a frown.

“No, I think it’s great. This is great,” I said, clapping my hands together. I got up and put my hands on M
ichael’s shoulders, shaking him. “This is so great!”

“It is? But you were chewing me out over me and Ursula mo
ving—”

“I was wrong! I was so wrong!” I said with another laugh.

“Wrong about what?” Ursula asked, coming down the stairwell from the roof.

“There won’t be enough seven layer dip,” Delaney said quickly, and walked to the kitchen. “I’ll check the fridge for some more food. People are scavenging up there!”

“Wait for me!” I said, and followed her.

I was scanning the contents of the fridge when Oliver put his hands on my hips, pivoting me around to face him. “Hey?” I asked, drawing my eyebrows together. “What are you—” Before I could get out my sentence, his hand was on the nape of my neck, his mouth on mine, savagely kissing me.

I watched him for a second, but when his tongue touched mine, I closed my eyes and kissed him back, just as hard, and I felt it in my toes, in my stomach, between my legs. I let out a soft moan when he broke the kiss to brush my hair off my neck and kiss the corner of my jaw, behind my ear, down my neck, and the hollow of my throat. My head fell back and hit a shelf in the fridge, and my hand slipped under the back of his t-shirt so I could feel his skin, his muscles,
him.

I melted against him and he pulled me closer, kissing me even harder. He lifted the edge of my shirt and I felt his calloused hand slide up my side. Then he was running a finger along the edge of my bra along the swell of my breast, and I sighed against his mouth as a finger slipped into my bra.

“Delaney?” Ursula said, and I opened my eyes in surprise and removed Oliver’s hand from my shirt, pushing him away as awareness washed over me, of where we were and what we were doing. “Oh God,” I mumbled, and I looked to Oliver, expecting to see regret and shame, but he was still in a lust haze, eyelids half closed, his lips wet, his face flushed, and he looked like—

Ursula grabbed my arm and yanked me across the kitchen until we were in the small bathroom in the hal
lway, with the door locked. “What were you
doing
?” she asked, as if she’d caught me spelunking without a harness.

“I was—” I shrugged and looked down at my feet. “I don’t know. One minute I was looking in the fridge for something to carry u
pstairs, and then next I was about to undress Oliver in your kitchen.”

“You looked pretty intense. I don’t like that.” There was a knock at the bathroom door, and I opened it to find Emily staring at us. “What are you two
nutballs doing?” she asked as Ursula pulled her in and filled her in on the kissing details.

“I felt pretty intense.” An ache settled low in me, and I groaned at the reason why. “I don’t think I’ve been kissed so intensely.
Ever.”

“More intense than with Cliff?”
Emily asked.

“More intense.
Way more.”

Ursula’s eyes widened.
“Way more? I thought…” She trailed off.

“What a disaster,” I said.

“I have a theory,” Emily said, but Ursula shushed her as she said, “We can fix it. You can stay far away from him. He just made his move, so it will be easy to lie and say you’re not attracted to him.”

“No, no. He already made his move. Weeks ago,” I said.

“You told us. All that stuff about Oliver being dangerous and how you were going to stay away from him. But this is different. This time I get how serious this is, and I’m going to help you stay away from him,” Ursula said.

“I’m not sure she should stay away from him,” Emily said, and Ursula said, “
What
?”

“I think he’s falling for her,” Emily said. “He cares about her.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t tell you everything. Oliver made his move weeks ago. And then he unmade his move.”

“What are you talking about?” Ursula asked.

“I’m talking about that last kiss I had with Oliver. It was a disaster. We were in my apartment, and I took off my shirt, and he looked down at me, and I might as well have had a tattoo of George W. Bush’s face on my abdomen instead of my spotted skin. He immediately left my apartment and then came back telling me that what had just happened was a bad idea. It was
humiliating.”

“Oh. Oh, honey.” Ursula hugged me tight, putting a hand on my hair. “I had no idea.”

“I know.”

“So what was that out there?” Emily asked.

“I have no idea, but I can’t possibly let it happen again.”

“You don’t think that maybe he changed his mind?” Emily said.

I thought of how he’d looked at Mia. “He has feelings for someone else. He told me so. And…”

“And what?”
Emily said.

“And I really like Oliver. I think he’s great. He’s one of my best friends. I can’t have him r
eject me. It would be bad. I don’t know if I could survive it. He’d break my heart. And it wouldn’t be slow and deteriorating like it was with Cliff. I know Oliver would just throw me away. That’s what he does.  I’ve seen him do it with so many women. He doesn’t get involved, because he’s in love with someone else. He’s commitment-phobic for every woman but this one unavailable one, conveniently. And I can’t have him treat me like that,” I said in a hushed tone.

“Who’s he in love with?” Emily asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I can’t tell you. I promised him I wouldn’t.”

“Okay,” she said, hugging me.

Ursula said, “And if he hurts you, I don’t care if he’s my cousin. I already hate him a little bit for what he’s putting you through. I get to kick him.”

“Agreed.
But will you keep me far, far away from Oliver tonight? At least until I get my senses back?”

Ursula nodded and unlocked the door, and I did my best to i
gnore Oliver for the rest of the evening, and then, maybe for all the evenings after that.

“Delaney? Delaney?” I bumped my forehead against her door. After I’d mauled her in a refrigerator, she’d refused to speak to me for the rest of the party, which would have been understandable. It was impulsive and rude and crazy and I had just needed to touch her. And then she ran away, and I’d known instantly what an idiot I was.

But I caught her staring at me several times during the party. I knew because I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her, and I couldn’t stop thinking about our kiss, or my hand up her shirt, or her hand up mine.

I’d been working, and running, and going to the Saturn, to avoid thinking about Delaney. Except that running reminded me of Delaney, and walking to and from work reminded me of how Delaney wasn’t walking with me, and the Saturn was full of women that weren’t Delaney.

And then there was Mia.

Mia wasn’t talking to me, either, not that I’d actually tried to talk to her. Because I hadn’t. I’d given up on Mia. Or maybe I hadn’t given up on Mia so much as I’d realized Mia was never going to be mine, and never should have been mine. And maybe I didn’t want Mia. Maybe it was the idea of her, or the fact that we could never be together. I knew what it said about me, abandoning Mia when she finally expressed interest in me.

Once Mia had broken off the engagement, she’d su
ddenly seemed lighter, and happier, and more
her.
But all I could think about was that Mia wasn’t Delaney. And I wanted to be with Delaney.

I wasn’t having much success. I couldn’t even talk to her through Ursula. She’d glared at me after r
eturning from the bathroom with Delaney, and later at the party, she’d said, “Just stay away from her, okay?”

But I couldn’t stay away from Delaney. I leaned against the doorjamb and knocked on the door again. “Laney?”

She wrenched it open and I scanned her face, a bit puffy with tired eyes, her hair in a half-hearted ponytail hanging around her shoulder. It was early for most people, before six, and she was still in pajamas, thermals with hearts all over them. She looked like a child in a maple syrup commercial. “Hey. Listen, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk to you right—”

“I don’t want to talk. I want to go for a run with you,” I said, even though I wasn’t dressed for it. “No talking.” I reached my hand over to her and then thought better of it, pulling back. She still took two steps away from me, so I added, “No touching.”

“Okay,” she said after a long moment, twisting her ponytail.

“Give me two minutes to change, and I’ll meet you on the sid
ewalk,” I said.

I could see the hesitation in her face as I walked backward toward my apartment, my eyes never lea
ving hers. “Just running. I promise.”

I waited on the sidewalk for five minutes, sure she wasn’t going to show up, but then the door to the Vict
orian opened and she came out with her ear buds already in, and my fists unclenched.

We ran in silence. We ran longer than we ever had b
efore. She kept going, not turning around, and I followed her, caught up to her, stayed at her side. We watched the sky go from inky colored to orange-pink to light blue in the span of an hour, together, and then we came back, both climbing the stairs, exhausted.

“Can I come in?” I said in a whisper after we’d reached our lan
ding.

“Why?” she said, as if I’d asked if I could dangle Jenny out of her window by only one paw.

“Because.” I shrugged. I was afraid to say any more. If I confessed,
Because I need to be near you,
she might shut me out again. If I played it off like I didn’t care, she might shut me out again. I had no good answer. “Because,” I said again.

“No touching?” she asked, tentative, as she unlocked her door, and I nodded even though my hand was braced above her, my hips just a few inches from hers. I moved even closer, and the toes of our sneakers touched. I wan
ted to be near her. Smell her. God, I was creepy. She opened the door and then we both collapsed onto the sofa, and she turned on the TV.

After only a minute of being so close, my hands ached from not touching her. I didn’t know it was possible for my hands to have a libido, but around Delaney they did. I slipped one finger b
ehind her on the sofa, and snaked it onto the small of her back. She stiffened, but didn’t say anything. I could feel the prickles of her skin. I put another finger on her, and then another, until my whole hand was wrapped low around her hip. She leaned into me, soft and warm and sweaty, and I had to close my eyes for a second to get my bearings. It was just a
hand,
I told myself.

Then she pressed her whole back against my side, and my other arm went around her. We watched TV in s
ilence, pressed to each other like that. 

I inched the hand on her hip up a little bit, hoping she’d get the message, and she did. Her head dropped onto my shoulder. I peered into her face and saw she was sound asleep.