Page 64 of Love Out Loud

Chapter 23

Lark

“Please tell me you’re calling because you’re finally fucking Hot Lennon,” Hannah says by way of greeting.

I scramble to turn the volume on my phone down as I glance past the screen to make sure his door is still closed. “Oh my god,” I whisper. “Could you not? He’s in the next room.”

Her brown eyes go even darker through the screen as she pins me with a look. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that wasn’t a flat-out denial.”

Unsure of what to say, I stare at her for a minute. “Fucking Hot Lennon” is both exactly and not at all what I’ve been doing for the past week or so. He has been my entire world, and we’ve barely come up for air. I had hoped calling Hannah would anchor me, or at least remind me of what I would miss back home if I stayed here.

On one hand, it has only taken me a matter of days to completely fall for Lennon. On the other, it has taken twenty-five years. It has been a whirlwind summer romance where everything is happening too fast, but it has also been a lifelong slow burn where nothing is happening fast enough, and I want more of everything I’ve been missing.

As I study Hannah’s face, hoping to see something in it that will bring me to my senses and remind me that shifting my life in such a significant way is madness, the very specific color of sage-green paint behind her registers. I squint at the wall. “Are you at my place?”

“Uh…” She tries to shift, but that only results in me being able to see my couch where there are clearly blankets strewn about and her legs which are clad in very comfortable-looking joggers. Piles of books I don’t recognize litter the cushions.

“You are!” I exclaim, happy to have a distraction from the whirring of my mind. “You look pretty cozy. Are you staying there?”

Her mouth spreads into a smile that looks more like a grimace. “That depends. Would you be mad if I were?”

“No,” I say slowly. “But why?”

“It’s so much bigger than my place,” she whines. “I only have the one tiny bedroom, and the office is so lonely without you, so one day I just…brought some stuff over here to check up on the place like you asked me to.”

“And then you, what, didn’t leave?”

She nods guiltily. “Please don’t be mad!”

“I’m not!” I exclaim through my laughter. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The image on the screen bounces as she shrugs. “I kept meaning to go home.” She ticks an eyebrow up, and I know before she even opens her mouth what’s coming. “Are you going to bother coming back and kicking me out, or can I squat here indefinitely?”

“You sure are jumping to a lot of conclusions.”

She starts to tick things off on her fingers. “I know the audiobook is going well, because you texted me last week. I know you turned Silas down for a date, though I still think you’re absolutely bonkers for that.”

I roll my eyes. “You could always come visit for a weekend before we’re done recording. I could introduce you.”

“I might actually take you up on that,” she says before returning to her list. “I also know you get googly-eyed whenever you talk about Lennon—”

“I do not!” I interject.

“You do.” She raises a hand to stop me from protesting further. “At the very least, you’re a single, hot-blooded woman in her sexual prime who is living with her very attractive best friend for the summer.”

“Women are in their sexual prime at forty?” I ask skeptically.

She slips into her professor voice. “Some studies suggest it. Each individual is different, of course, but it makes sense. By forty, most women have finally figured out what they like in bed and how it works for them, and you’re going to want more of something you’re finally enjoying.” She props her chin on her fist. “So, tell me, Lark. Are you enjoying it?”

I’m an actress. Or at least, I have been. My entire life’s work has been teaching students how to present the emotions of the roles they’re playing while essentially masking their own. But even I can’t help the slow smile that spreads across my face.

“Aha!” Hannah’s image shakes again as she pumps her fist in triumph. “I fucking knew it. Please tell me it’s amazing and Earth-shattering and has made you rethink everything you thought you knew about pleasure.”

I cringe. “That’s a little intense.”

“Sex with your high school best friend is intense!” She pauses as she reels back a bit. “Do not tell me you’re pretending this is some summer fling that’ll end when you’re done recording.”

I shake my head. “No. This doesn’t feel like that at all. It’s just…” I trail off and sigh. Hannah waits patiently for me to continue, adjusting her dark glasses higher on her nose. My right foot starts wiggling as if the jittery movement could somehow alleviate the pressure of everything I want to tell her.