Lost and Found (21 page)

Oliver and I ran three times this week, both of us barely uttering a word or looking at each other. I couldn’t talk to him, and I’d planned on avoiding him for the rest of my life after being mortified at him leaving. In the end, I couldn’t stay away when he knocked on my door, averting his eyes as he asked, “We running now?” I’d gone with him every time.

I expressed my confusion to Emily, who had no i
nsights besides that Oliver was a no good, very bad human being who I should definitely shag and then throw out of my life.

So I tried. I was trying to be aloof and distant and cool. But when he followed me into my apartment the next Saturday and grabbed my waist, kissing me up against the door in a hurry, like he was marking it off of his to-do list, I pushed him away.

“What’s wrong?” he said, slightly breathless.

I wrinkled my forehead. “This. You have to stop doing this.”
Because you always stop.

He said, “I’ve been thinking, and I have a plan.” He led me to his apartment, and I fell back into his recliner, which felt like an overweight Muppet giving me a hug.

“A plan,” I said. “A plan that involves kissing?”

“Here’s the thing. Michael thinks I should stay away from you.”

“Ursula thinks that too.”

“Right, so we don’t listen to them,” he said as he sat on the arm of the recliner, tipping it forward, and him backward.

“But they’ll scream.”

“We do what we want, and we don’t tell them.”

“Tell them nothing?”

“Nothing.
It’s not their business, is it?”

“I suppose not.”

“So?” he said, smiling hopefully at me.

“But why?”
I said. “Why do you want this, when you could have someone like Mia?”

“Mia is complicated,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “This isn’t. It can be as uncomplicated as we want it to be. Plus, it’s convenient that we live across from each other and are awake when no one else in the world is.”

My eyes fell to my lap. “Right. Uncomplicated and convenient. That sounds very sexy,” I said, and then I stood up, headed for the door. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is for me, Oliver. I think you’re going to have to make a trip to the Saturn.”

“Wait,” he said, grabbing my fingers. “It’s not
just
that it’s uncomplicated and convenient.”

“Then what else?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I want you.” He said it with a twinkle in his eye, the corners of his mouth upturned, and I didn’t know whether to laugh at him or just push him.

I laughed. “You’re not a very good liar.” Then I pushed him, just because, which made him laugh and say, “I’m not lying! I just can’t say it with a straight face. You try.”

“No,” I said, but instead I stood on my tiptoes and kissed the side of his mouth. He kissed me back, lips pressed against lips, and then he kissed me for real, unhurried, his arms slipping around my waist, pressing me to him, and when he pulled away with a lustful, sleepy look, he said, “That’s why.”

“Oh,” I said, and I
let him walk me to his bedroom.

Saturday morning, I knocked on Delaney’s door and waited, bouncing on the balls of my feet to burn off some of the tension eating me up. I ran behind her at a safe di
stance, but then I stared at her butt, her legs, her back, her neck, the way her hair swung in her ponytail, which turned me on. Even the extra hairband she kept on her wrist made me uncomfortable, maybe because it was so very Delaney. So I ran beside her instead.

But then I could smell her, which turned me on.

I ran slightly in front of her, but then I imagined her staring at my back, and that turned me on. When I ended up pressing her into her apartment door, it was a relief, a reprieve, but only a small one.

Because it turned out Delaney was even more beaut
iful, even kinder, and lots of fun to lie next to and touch. I couldn’t think of anything else besides Delaney. She was making me dizzy and confused.

Weeks went by and it wasn’t enough to see her just sometimes. I camped out in her apartment whe
never she was home now, especially in the morning, the rare time when we were both awake. Monday morning while she was avoiding getting dressed, my hand drifted down to her calves. “You have beautiful legs. You shouldn’t wear tights today.”

She gave me a weak smile and then swung her legs out of bed. “I’ll think about it,” she said, which
was her overly polite way of saying, “Never.”

I followed her into the bathroom, pushing aside the neck of her t-shirt to kiss a small patch of white there while she brushed her teeth. “I’m not lying. No one is concerned with the way your legs look but you.”

“Okay,” she said, meeting my eyes in the mirror.

I hugged her back to my front and said, “And you’d look great without these bangs.” I swept my fi
ngers under them, pulling them aside so she could see her eyebrows, which were the perfect accent for her gigantic eyes. “There,” I said, kissing her neck again.

When she emerged from the bathroom fully dressed, she was breathtaking. Her legs were bare, her forehead was bare, but she had a watery smile. “I feel naked,” she whispered, but I shook my head. “You’ll be great. You’ll see.”

I walked her out of her apartment and entered mine, and then tried to go back to sleep, but my brain kept a loop of
Delaney Delaney Delaney,
and all I could do was stare at the ceiling and smile.

“Delaney? Delaney? Delaney?” Corey, the newest student assistant snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said as I took my sandwich wrap from her lunch run cart. “I’m just not getting enough sleep.”

Ursula wheeled over from her desk and studied me for a second. “She’s been like this for weeks,” she said to Corey. “Did you know the crazy girl gets up at 5:30 every morning to run?”

“I’m an early riser. It’s not a big deal,” I said to Corey, who was now looking at my legs, and I felt heat spread across my cheeks. I wasn’t wearing an
ything on my legs. Oliver had asked me to pin back my bangs, too, but I’d dropped the bobby pin the second he wasn’t looking.

“You have really nice legs. You shouldn’t wear tights so often. You look good like this. Different,” Corey said.

“Right,” I said tightly. “Thanks.”

“She’s right,” Ursula said. “Who cares about your patches? I swear you’re the only one who notices.”

“Everyone in LA noticed.
Everyone.
”

“Have you seen the people in LA?” Ursula said.

“I have. I lived there.”

“They’re not even real people. They’re simulacra of people! They don’t have any flesh or any fat or any em
otions.”

“They’re beautiful,” I said. “Like Cliff.
Beautiful, perfect human beings. Not meant for mere mortals. I have a complex after being around so many of them.”

“You’ve always had a complex. It’s not LA people. Maybe they’re beautiful,” Ursula said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re
not
beautiful.”

“Sure it does. They’re the opposite of me.”

Corey shook her head and said to Ursula, “Girl needs therapy.”

“Or a mirror,” Ursula said.

Later, after I got home from work but before Oliver left, I asked him, “Who do you think is the most beautiful woman in the world?”

He propped up on an elbow next to me on the bed and said, “I feel like this is a trap.”

“It’s not a trap. I won’t be angry. Name anyone. I don’t care.”

He laughed. “This is a trap, and I have to go to work in half an hour. No. I refuse to answer.”

“Okay, then, name a beautiful actress.” He shook his head, so I said, “Cliff always had a thing for Jessica Alba, even if she was a little too old for him.”

His lips thinned. “Can you not mention Cliff?
Ever again?”

“Name someone.”

“Delaney. Do you still talk to Cliff?” I fiddled with the pendant on my necklace, the one Cliff had given me for our third anniversary. It was a tiny book with my initials stamped into it. I loved it, even when I found out that Cliff’s assistant had been the one to find it for me. It didn’t make it any less me. Oliver’s eyes narrowed and my fingers dropped. “Laney?”

“Yes,” I mumbled. Then I straightened my spine and said, “Yes. So?”

“I don’t understand why you’d want to talk to that scum bucket.”

“He’s not a scum bucket. He’s a confused pe
rson, and I’m his friend. I was his best friend for a long time, until he drifted away.”

“He cheated on you.”

“So?”

“So, you’re being a doormat. You’re always too nice. You let pe
ople use you and you never listen to what
you
want.” My hands fluttered back up to my pendant and I thought,
that’s not entirely true.

I sighed and said, “Whatever. Tell me about beautiful women.” Oliver’s face was stony as I conti
nued. “Fine, what about Mia? Mia’s beautiful, right?”

“
Delaney,
” he said sharply, and then threw the covers off himself and turned around, getting dressed.

I sat up and stared at his back for a minute. I co
llapsed onto the pillows and then he leaned forward, fully dressed, kissed my forehead, and then left.

Dinner?

That was the only thing that Mia had written in her last text. I was staring at it from the sofa of the doctors’ lounge, figuring out how to answer it. I hadn’t told Mia about Delaney, but I hadn’t told anyone else about Delaney, either.

I wrote her back,
Sure. Tomorrow?
My phone almost immediately buzzed with a new text from Mia. I had a plan to see her for the first time since the wedding. She and Brad were officially unofficial. She’d moved all of her stuff out of their barely lived-in house. The wedding gifts had been returned. He wasn’t speaking to her. She was dividing their DVDs. Almost everything was taken care of, except that we hadn’t talked about the night in the hotel room, about what almost happened.

Michael came in a few minutes later, bleary-eyed. “What are you doing here?” he said, getting a terrible co
ffee from the terrible coffee vending machine. “Shit,” he said, as the terrible coffee spilled boiling hot water on his hand.

“I’m always here.”

“Not lately. You’re nowhere lately.”

“I’m here,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Delivery,” he said, and sat down on the sofa next to me. “I should have picked dermatology. Not as many late nights.”

“Yeah, but then you’d be a dermatologist.”

“Point,” he said, taking a sip of terrible coffee. “Wow, this is terrible coffee.”

“I know,” I said. “I just got a text from Mia. I’m going to see her tomorrow.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“You’re going to be together forever? Or you’re going to tell her you need to never speak to her again because she dumped your brother for you? Or you’re going to run away and have a horse farm in North Carolina?”

“What?”

“Sorry. Ursula made me watch a Nicholas Sparks movie,” he said, rubbing his eyes. His phone buzzed and he got up, dumping his terrible coffee in the trash. “Baby’s sliding down the chute!”

“I can’t believe you graduated med school,” I said as he left.

Delaney didn’t send me a text or call me or stop by my apartment when I didn’t show up the next morning. She didn’t try to get in touch with me when I didn’t stop by after I woke up, even though she knew it was a day off for me. I thought about not telling her about Mia, because Delaney clearly wasn’t attached to seeing me every day, but then I found myself knocking on the apartment door anyway.

“Hi,” she said, giving me a crooked half-smile. “Do you want to come in?” She held open the door and stepped aside.

“Actually, I just wanted to let you know that I’m seeing Mia tonight. Now. I’m driving up to the city and going to dinner with her.” I focused on Delaney’s eyebrows, so it seemed like I was looking at her without having to look at her.

“Oh. Good,” she said, and then I did look at her.

“Good?”

“Well, you two have some things to talk about, right?” She shifted her feet to the left, then to the right, then to the left.

“Oh. Yeah, we do.”

“So, good luck. I hope things work out,” she said in a small voice.

“You do?” I leaned forward and put my finger under her chin.

She grabbed my finger and slowly removed it, leaving it by my side. “You’re in love with her. You deserve someone who loves you the way you love them.” She said the words deliberately.

“Right,” I said, and took the stairs down two at a time without saying goodbye.

***

Mia sat at a small candlelit table with a white tabl
ecloth, wearing a strapless blue dress, her hair up, her gorgeous long, thin neck showing, and I immediately thought,
Delaney wouldn’t wear something like that.
Then I kicked myself, because Mia was sitting in front of me, smiling as I leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.

“I guess we should talk about what happened,” I said after we’d both ordered lobster ravioli.

“I think we shouldn’t talk about what happened. What matters is what comes next,” she said as she reached over to grab my hand.

I stared at our fingers entwined on the tabletop and said, “But what about Brad?”

“What about Brad?” she said with a high-pitched strain.

“Mia, I love my brother, and you love my brother. And you don’t love me.”

“That’s not true. I was just too scared to be with you.”

“No. You told me when I confessed my feelings for you how it was. You said I had a crush, that I was jealous of what Brad had, and that I was falling into kindness i
nstead of falling in love.” 

“I was wrong. Brad and I were all wrong together. I’m much ha
ppier now,” she said, pulling her hand away and tucking it into her own lap. “I was comfortable, but I need to go for the risk, not what was right there and an easy choice.”

“There’s a lot to be said for comfort and familiar
ity.”

“There’s a lot to be said for love.
Real love. What you did for me, for us? Giving us the money for a down payment because I hated our apartment? Visiting me when I was sad and lonely? Texting me all the time to make me laugh when Brad was in Africa? You saved me. That’s what love does. It fixes people.” She grinned widely and I swallowed the lump in my throat as I said, “It does?”

“It does. And Brad—he didn’t do that. He didn’t save me. He’s a great person, but…Oliver, I don’t think you understand the depth of my problems with Brad.”

“You’re right, I don’t, but your problems with Brad don’t have anything to do with your feelings for me, do they?”

“I—”

“When was the last time you were single, Mia? Like, completely on your own?” Her response was silence. “I just think you’re scared, and so you’re running for me.”

“No, I think you’re scared. Don’t you remember co
nfessing your love? If you’re still in love with me, we can make this work,” she said, her voice pleading, cracking. “We can save each other.”

“I’m not in love with you, Mia. I thought I was, but I was wrong. I didn’t know how this would feel, you lea
ving my brother, you telling me you loved me. It doesn’t feel like love. It feels like I’m constantly on a rollercoaster, waiting to get off, and I can’t. That’s not what I thought it would be. And…and there’s someone else. I’m seeing someone else. I can’t do this.”

“Delaney?”

I nodded.

“She cares about you a lot, Oliver. I could see it.”

“I care about her a lot, too.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think you understand. I’m pretty sure she’s in love with you. From ev
erything you’ve told me. Baking for you, and putting up with your insults about her, and coming with you to the wedding. The stuff you’ve put her through—only a girl in love with you would do that.”

“Delaney’s like that with everyone,” I said. “She did all of that even before we were seeing each ot
her.”

“Because she’s loved you since then.
She loves you, and you just like her. I can see it,” she said.

I took in a sharp breath. “So?”

“So, if you’re never going to love her, you shouldn’t be with her just because she worships you.”

“She doesn’t
wor—”

“She does. I know what it’s like to fall for you. I get that you’re the scared one, not me. You just wanted me to fall in love with you, right? Once I admitted it, then you could realize it wasn’t what you wanted after all.”

“No, I—”

“If you’re going to do that to me,
fine.
Fine. But maybe spare Delaney. I think she’s even more in love with you than I am.” Mia placed her cloth napkin on her unused porcelain plate and walked away.