Lost and Found (20 page)

I woke up on my red sofa, and saw immediately that my lumpy pillow consisted of a t-shirt and chest, co
nnected to the body of Oliver, snoring soundly against the cushions. One arm was draped across my stomach, holding me in place, and his other hand was splayed against my hip, where he’d put it long before we’d fallen asleep together.

I’d been so unnerved by his hand on me, even after he’d pro
mised not to touch me, that I sat frozen watching the TV, but not hearing any of the words. But slowly, his fingertips began to caress my muscles, and it felt so good that I’d leaned into him, and relaxed, and trusted him. And fallen asleep.

That was the problem. I trusted him, despite what I knew he could do to me. I stretched and gently removed his hands, and he startled at the movement, waking up. “Hey,” he said sleepily, his face creased with marks from the piping in the cushions, his hair flattened on one side and stic
king up on the other. The sight of him like that, totally unaware, totally himself, made my heart want to implode.

I was in so much trouble.

“Hi,” I said. “I guess we fell asleep.”

“Makes sense.
That was a lot of running. What was that, five miles?”

“Six.”

“Jesus,” he said, and then stretched.

“You snore,” I told him, and he nodded. “I know.
Deviated septum.” He touched his crooked, imperfect nose at the bridge.

I looked around the room, aware of the awkward s
ilence about to swallow us up. I couldn’t think of a single safe topic, and he was still sleep-rumpled and gorgeous, his shirt riding up on his stomach, lightly furred in dark hair and as rigid and muscled when I’d touched it as it had looked. He was all hard planes, and yet when I’d leaned into him, he’d been comfortable and warm. I didn’t understand it, but when he stretched again, his shirt rising even further, I wasn’t sure that I cared to analyze it.

“Okay!” I said, standing up too quickly and smiling too widely. “I better get ready for work!” I clapped my hands as if dusting off the sight of him.

He stood slowly and put his hands on my shoulders, his fingers giving me a quick squeeze. “Okay. I’m going back to sleep. I’m on nights again.”

“Oh, so you won’t be here when I get home, huh?” I said, trying to keep my tone even. This would be good. I could recoup without him. I wouldn’t have temptation with him right across the hall, knocking on my door, as
king me to run. I wouldn’t have to see him stretching. My God, why did he have to stretch so much? This would be great.

“Nope.
But I’ll see you tomorrow morning? Same time, outside?” he said, and then he let go of my shoulders and put both arms behind his back, his t-shirt stretching across his chest as he did it, and I felt a tingling all over me.

“Yup.
See you tomorrow morning,” I said, because there was no way I was capable of saying no to him. Especially when he was stretching.

***

Emily pushed the plate of cheese fries over to me. “What you need,” she said, “is a man.”

I rolled my eyes. “That is what you’re
always
saying. And why do I need a man?”

“Because that’s what you want,” Emily said, and Urs
ula agreed with an, “Mmm hmm,” as she stuffed a dripping fry into her mouth and then licked the excess cheese off her fingers.

Emily said, “It would be one thing if you wanted something else. If what you wanted was to get an MBA or start your own company or have seventeen ferrets.
If that was your dream. But that’s not what you want. You want to be in love. That’s your dream life, and you think you can’t have it, so you pretend you didn’t want it in the first place. You act like you don’t care.”

“That’s not true,” I said, and then I blinked rapidly, trying to keep a sudden onslaught of emotion from ove
rtaking me.

“Which part?” Ursula said softly.

“All of it. I have everything I want,” I said hoarsely. “You two. A good job. Enough money. My health.”

Emily held a French fry out in front of me like a sword. “Oh yeah, you sound exactly like the woman who has everything she wants.”

“I do,” I insisted.

“No, you don’t. You want that job in Special Colle
ctions, but you don’t think you deserve it. You want a different body, but you think you’re being punished. You want true love.” I balked, then looked away to hide my shame. Emily was right about it all. 

Her voice softened. “You deserve true love, Laney. But for now, you have Oliver.” I put my head down on the table and thumped it once, twice. “I’m an id
iot.”

“You’re not an idiot. You’re a human. There’s a slight difference,” Emily said. “And as for Oliver, maybe try him out. Get n
aked. See what it’s like.”

“
Ew. We’re talking about my cousin. Ew. And also, no. I don’t think Delaney needs to get naked with Oliver. She just got over Cliff,” Ursula said.

“Your cousin is hot, and you know just as well as us that he regularly goes with ladies,” Emily said. “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen him go with the ladies at the Sa
turn much lately.”

“That’s because of his thing for Delaney,” Ursula said.

“No, he does not have a thing for Delaney,” I said.

“He does. But that’s too bad because he is
not
touching you,” Ursula said. She widened her eyes as if in warning. “Got it? He’s bad news. For your heart. I love him, he’s my family, and he can’t have you. No.
No.
”

“He still is kind of a jackass,” Emily said.
“Even if he did defend you against his mom.”

“That was so sweet,” Ursula said. “But still,
no.
Not unless he loves you forever.” Emily nudged me and said, “That seems like reason enough to rip his clothes off.”

“He didn’t exactly defend me,” I said.

“Are you kidding? He was keeping his ice pick of a mom away from you. He’s already better than Cliff,” Emily said. Then she added, “Now there’s a jackass. I’m so glad you left LA.”

“Yeah,” I said unenthusiastically, twisting my hands in my lap.

“What’s wrong?” Ursula said.

“Nothing,” I said with a shake of my head, trying to get the picture of Oliver out of my mind, b
ecause I knew Oliver didn’t feel that way about me. Oliver didn’t
anything
me. Oliver hardly ever thought about me, and that hand at my side this morning, the look in his eyes, his husky voice, they were all because I was a stand-in girl. I was like any other girl smiling up at him at the Saturn. I wasn’t ever going to be someone like Mia to him, even though he was already so much more to me. “I’m just low on cheese sauce.”

“You know what the Rolling Stones say,” Emily said. “You can’t always get what you want.”

“Don’t I know it,” I said.

I started working night float when Brad and Mia got engaged. Mia and I had spent the previous summer when Brad was away talking and texting, and I’d drive up for weekends to hang out with her, and I would fall asleep with the sound of her laugh in my head, her smile imprinted on me. She was so much happier with me than she ever had been with Brad. I was good for her. I loved her.

But it turned out she just liked me, and I was the one who wan
ted something from her.

I signed up for nights almost immediately after Brad called me about the engagement. It was pe
rfect, because I worked all night and slept all day, and there was barely time for anything more than a breakfast at three in the afternoon. I took night float whenever I could now, even though it had been nine months since the engagement. It kept life simpler. It was just work and sleep, with almost no fuss in between.

Standing outside the Victorian at 5:30 in the morning after wor
king all night, though, I was starting to regret my decision. All I wanted to do was sleep, but the second Delaney came out of the Victorian with a tentative smile on her lips, I forgot all about the exhaustion.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“I was wondering if you’d be okay with a short run t
oday. Maybe just two miles?”

“Thank God. I barely made it through yesterday,” I said, and we started running.

Thirty minutes later, we were sitting on Delaney’s couch again, except she was sitting two feet away from me, drinking from her water bottle, and I was trying not to go crazy from how she smelled. “I should probably go,” I said, standing up, and she said, “Oh, yeah, of course,” and stood, too.

“You probably didn’t get any sleep, huh?” she said, and I shook my head.
“Because you look awful. I have no idea why you go running with me after working all night.”

“Because,” I said.
“To keep you safe.” She gave a perfunctory nod of politeness, and it stung. I added, “So then I can be with you.” Her eyes widened.

“You want to be with me?” She sounded startled, su
rprised, which made no sense. How could she not see it when it was nearly impossible to hide it?

I closed the gap between us and bent my head down, wrapping my arms around her sweaty back.
“Very, very much. So much it aches to not be with you. It’s stupid how much I want to be with you.”

“Stupid?” she said into my chest with a laugh, and the reverber
ations made me go even stupider.

“Yes. It’s stupid that we’re not doing something right now,” I said, and then I kissed her.

He was pressing his weight against me as he kissed me, barely allowing me to pull away. Every time I did, he seemed to get even closer, invading my space. When I lifted my arms to put them around his neck, he didn’t give me a chance. He lifted the hem of my t-shirt and pulled it off, and then he pushed me bac
kward again until my knees hit the sofa. We tumbled down together.

When he landed on me, I had to close my eyes and breathe through my nostrils for a second, b
ecause it felt like too much. Oliver was too much. His hands were all over me, and he was kissing my lips, then my neck, then on the fabric of my sports bra as his hands fruitlessly worked to get under it. Finally, his head popped up from my chest and he said in irritation, “Take this off,” and he pulled me up.

“Oliver, I—” His head lowered and then he was kis
sing the white patch of skin across my ribs, the biggest one, the one that Cliff always avoided looking at, the one that made me look diseased.  The rough whiskers of his unshaven face grazed across it, making me shiver. 

He kissed it until he reached the waistband of my running tights, and then he only said, “God, you’re beautiful,” his eyes still fixed on my sto
mach.

I took off my sports bra.

He sat up then, staring at me. He didn’t touch me. His eyes wandered over me, and then he pulled off his shirt as impatiently as he’d pulled off mine.

His chest had a flat, dark brown patch in the center which trailed down his stomach. Cliff had been baby smooth and po
lished, and I’d thought that was sexy, but as I tentatively touched the hair to my thumb, I went a little dizzy from pleasure. Smoothness had nothing on this.

Oliver was just as broad-shouldered as he appeared clothed. He was also lightly freckled, a small constellation dipping into his collarbone. I traced a finger along one shoulder like a dot to dot, and I could feel the sinew of his muscle as he shivered.

And his stomach. His stomach was muscled and solid and taut as it pressed against me, pushing me into the couch cushions, somehow both less and more than I thought it would be. I put my hand over his belly and let my fingers graze and feel the muscle and the hair, and I felt his sigh on top of me, his face pressed into my hair, now loose and messy behind me.

I pressed my hips into his once and then he groaned and pulled away, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear as he smiled. “You’re beautiful, but I should go home,” he said, and then he sat up, put on his t-shirt, and left, not looking at half-naked me once.

“So, what you’re telling me,” Michael said as we drove to a Bed, Bath & Beyond, “is that you’re going to ask Delaney to have a friends-with-benefits situation. And those are bad news.”

“It’s not a friends-with-benefits situation,” I said. “I have u
nfriendly feelings for her.”

“Oh?”

“But she’s still dealing with her ex-boyfriend. And I’m still dealing with stuff. So I left. I couldn’t just sleep with her without sorting things first.”

“Like Mia?” he asked, and I nodded. “And I didn’t want to—I don’t want Delaney to think I’m ma
dly in love with her. She looks at me with those big eyes like I mean the world to her, and I just can’t crush her like that. I need her to get the right idea.”

“Uh huh.”
Michael said flatly. “Which is?”

“
Which is that I’m attracted to her and I like her a lot and that I don’t want the hassle of anything more right now.”

“Right,” he said.

“What?”

“Nothing.
Does Delaney know Mia’s been texting you?”

I shook my head. “And that’s complicated. Do I tell her?”

“That depends,” he said. “What is it that you want from Delaney? For her to just go along with everything?”

I groaned and thumped my head against the window. “I have no idea.”

“But you’re still in love with Mia?’

“Do you just fall
out
of love with someone, like you fall out of a window?” I said as we walked in the megastore in search of a yellow bathmat. “I’d love to be out of love with Mia. I’ve been trying for over a year.”

“But you’re not.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“And what about Delaney?”

“What about her?”

“
O, seriously? She’s a nice girl. What are you doing with her?”

“Hey.”

“You don’t have relationships, Oliver.”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t. You have flings. You don’t fall in love. The only woman you claim to love was, until a few weeks ago, in a committed relationship with your
brother.
And when she gave you what you wanted, when she confessed her love for you, you left her alone in a hotel room.”

“It wasn’t like that.” I grimaced. It looked like that.

“It doesn’t matter. My point is that you’re not going to stay. You said so. And if you’re not going to stay, maybe you should not mess with Delaney.”

“No one can promise to stay. You can’t promise Ursula fore
ver.”

He twisted his mouth. “Maybe I can’t, but I can try. But you can’t even promise Delaney
today
.”

“I can.”

“Then do it,” Michael said.

“I know her. She’s my best friend. I know she’ll be okay with this arrangement as long as I tell her everything ahead of time.
As long as she knows my feelings.”

“And that’s why you left in a panic right before you were about to get lucky? No. And I’m sorry, but
I’m
your best friend. You’re being an idiot. Delaney doesn’t want anything from you. She keeps trying to stay away, so stay away.”

“You’re wrong. She does want something from me.” We stopped in front of the bath mats, and standing there was a twenty-something girl with long red hair down the back of her tight t-shirt. “Hi,” she said to me in a way that was much more than
hi.

“Hi,” I said back, and then she curled a lock of hair around her hand and moved toward me, a
ngling her hips to bump mine as she told me her name and batted her eyelashes, and okay, it felt nice to be wanted, and it made all the mixed up feelings about Delaney and Mia melt away for a second. We talked. She told me to look her up on Facebook as she sauntered away.

After the redhead left, Michael shook his head. “Ma
ybe Delaney does want something from you, but you don’t have it to give.”