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“What shouldn’t we do?” I asked.
“This,” she said. “Things could get messy. Really messy.”
“Mmm, I like messy. Big fan,” I said.
“Emotionally messy, Sydney. I don’t think you’re into that,” she said.
I mean, she had me there. Getting my emotions tangled together with my hookups wasn’t my thing. It was one of the reasons why I only liked to be with someone once and then send them on their way. Sexual ships passing in the night before moving on to new adventures. I wasn’t made for forever. I was made for tonight.
“That’s what I thought,” Lark said, pushing at me to get off her. Reluctantly, I got to my feet and Lark sat up, running a shaking hand through her hair.
“This is a bad idea for a million and one reasons, Sydney. I think we should cool it off before one of us gets hurt.”
“I wouldn’t get hurt,” I said automatically.
She looked at me and sighed. “But I might, and I don’t want that, Sydney. It’s best if we just leave things here and move on.”
Well, fuck fucking fuck. This night had not gone how I’d planned. The girl I’d been kissing just a few minutes ago was telling me we could never do it again.
I wanted to argue with her. I wanted to throw a tantrum on the floor and scream and beg her and completely embarrass myself if it would make her change her mind.
“That’s how you feel?” I asked.
“That’s how I feel,” she said, nodding. “I think we should go to our rooms for the rest of the night and cool off.”
I didn’t feel like I was ever going to cool off after that kiss. I was completely on fire. Every single one of my cells burned for her. But I wasn’t going to beg. I wasn’t going to tell her all the reasons we could hook up and then move on with our lives. She had made up her mind, and it would be wrong of me to try and change it.
So I nodded, turned, and walked to my bedroom. I shut the door without looking back at her. I only opened it when Clementine meowed on the other side. I glanced toward the couch, but Lark had already gone to her room.
* * *
The next weekwas one of the most miserable weeks I’d had in my life. Lark barely spoke to me, stayed in her room, or went and hung out at Mia’s house. It was ridiculous to say, but I missed her. I missed just talking to her. I wanted to know how her week had gone, if she’d had any funny customers, what she wanted to have for dinner, everything.
Even my mom noticed something was off.
“You’ve been a total grump this week, Sydney,” she said on Thursday. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing a million dollars couldn’t fix,” I said, trying to smile.
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” she said. “If only we could go viral and get on one of those favorite things list from that talk show host.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I said. Mom shrugged.
“Maybe someone famous will vacation here and come into the shop,” Mom said.
“Maybe,” I said. It wasn’t as good as a celebrity, but I had made a consignment deal with Liam for some of our mugs, which was nice. He was a genuinely good guy, and it had been really nice to catch up with him. He’d even asked me about having his girlfriend, Gwen, join book club. She worked as a nurse, but loved to read in her spare time, but was newer to the romance genre. We had a long talk about books, and I came home late, but at least I hadn’t had to be in the apartment with Lark ignoring me.
Mom drifted away and that was about as much parental attention as I needed from her.
Joy called me that night and had insisted that we needed to hang out that weekend and I had the feeling that she and Layne had had at least one talk about me.
“We are going away this weekend and you have no say in it,” Joy said. “This is an emergency friend trip.”
We hadn’t done one of those since we went away for a week, and that was before Layne and Honor had gotten together.
“Where are we going?” I asked as I put the phone on speaker and pulled my rolling suitcase out of my closet.
“To a cabin in the woods, so pack layers.”
