Lola and the Boy Next Door
Page 55

But I can’t sleep.
The silk fabric of my Marie Antoinette gown, draped across my sewing table, shimmers with a pale blue glow in the moonlight. It’s so close to completion. The winter formal is still a month and a half away, there was plenty of time.
It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not going.
And I don’t even care about not having a date. It’s the idea of showing up in something so ridiculous, that’s what hurts. Max was right. The dance is stupid. My classmates wouldn’t be impressed by my dress; they’d be merciless. I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at its folds when a yellow light flicks on outside my window.
“Lola?” A call through the night.
I close my eyes. I can’t speak.
“I know you’re in there. I’m coming over, okay?”
I stiffen as the CLUNK of his closet-bridge hits my window. He called out to me once more last weekend, but I pretended that I didn’t hear him. I listen to the creak of his weight against the bridge, and a moment later, he drops quietly onto my floor. “Lola?” Cricket is on his knees at the side of my bed. I feel it. “I’m here,” he whispers. “You can talk to me or not talk to me, but I’m here.”
I close my eyes tighter.
“St. Clair told me what happened. With Max.” Cricket waits for me to say something. When I don’t, he continues. “I’m—I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I was angry. I told Cal about that night in your bedroom, and she went ballistic. She said she’d warned you to stay away from me, and we got into this huge fight. I was angry with her for talking behind my back, and I was angry with you for not telling me. Like . . . you didn’t think I could handle it.”
I cringe and curl into a ball. Why didn’t I tell him? Because I didn’t want him to realize that her accusations were true? Because I was afraid that he’d listen to her words over mine? I’m such a jerk. As fearful of Calliope as she is of me.
“But . . . this is coming out backward.” I hear him shift on his knees, agitated. “What I was trying to say—what I was getting at—is that I’ve been thinking a lot about everything, and I’m not actually angry with you at all. I’m angry with myself. I’m the one who keeps climbing in your window. I’m the one who can’t stay away. All of this weirdness is my fault.”
“Cricket. This is not your fault.” It comes out in a croak.
He’s silent. I open my eyes, and he’s watching me. I watch him back. “The moon is bright tonight,” he says at last.
“But it’s cold.” The tears have found me again. They fall.
Cricket reaches out and brushes my neck. He traces upward, along my jaw, and then my cheek. I close my eyes at the unbearable sensation of his thumb drying my tears. He presses down gently. I turn my head, and it becomes cradled in his hand. He holds the weight for several minutes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that I talked with Calliope,” I whisper.
He pulls away, carefully, and I notice another star drawn on the back of his hand. “I’m only upset that she spoke with you in the first place. It wasn’t any of her business.”
“She was just worried about you.” As the words spill out, I realize that I believe them. “And she had every right to be worried. I’m not exactly a good person.”
“That’s not true,” he says. “Why would you say that?”
“I was a terrible girlfriend to Max.”
There’s a long pause. “Did you love him?” he asks quietly.
I swallow. “Yes.”
Cricket looks unhappy. “And do you still love him?” he asks. But before I can answer, he says in one great breath, “Forget it, I don’t want to know.” And suddenly Cricket Bell is inside my bed, and his torso is flattening against mine, and his pelvis is pressing against mine, and his lips are moving toward mine.
My senses are detonating. I’ve wanted him for so long.
And I need to wait a little longer.
I slide my hand between our mouths, just in time. His lips are soft against my palm. I slowly, slowly remove it. “No, I don’t love Max anymore. But I don’t want to give you this broken, empty me. I want you to have me when I’m full, when I can give something back to you. I don’t have much to give right now.”
Cricket’s limbs are still, but his chest is pounding hard against my own. “But you’ll want me someday? That feeling you once had for me . . . that hasn’t left either?”
Our hearts beat the same wild rhythm. They’re playing the same song.
“It never left,” I say.
Cricket stays through the night. And even though we don’t talk anymore, and even though we don’t do anything more than talk, it’s what I need. The calming presence of a body I trust. And when we fall asleep, we sleep heavily.
In fact, we sleep so heavily that we don’t see the sun rise.
We don’t hear the coffeepot brewing downstairs.
And we don’t hear Nathan until he’s right above us.
Chapter twenty-seven
Nathan grabs Cricket by the shoulders and throws him off my bed. Cricket scrambles into a corner while I flounder for my closest eyeglasses. My skin is on fire.
“What the hell is going on in here? Did he sneak in while—” Nathan cuts himself off. He’s noticed the bridge. He stalks up to Cricket, who shrinks so low that he almost becomes Nathan’s height. “So you’ve been climbing into my daughter’s bedroom for how long now? Days? Weeks? Months?”
Cricket is so mortified he can hardly speak. “No. Oh God, no. Sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
Andy runs into the room, sleep disheveled and frenzied. “What’s happening?” He sees Cricket cowering beneath Nathan. “Oh.”
“Do something!” I tell Andy. “He’ll kill him!”
Murder flashes across Andy’s face, and I’m reminded of what Max said ages ago, about how much worse it was dealing with two protective fathers. But it disappears, and he takes a tentative step closer to Nathan. “Honey. I want to kill him, too. But let’s talk to Lola first.”
Nathan is terrifyingly still. He’s so angry that his mouth barely moves. “You. Out.”
Cricket lunges for the window. Andy’s eyes bulge when he sees the bridge, but all he says is, “The front door, Cricket. Out the front door.”