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Lola took a deep breath. From the corner of her eye, Carmen could see she’d turned her gaze up at the sky too. There was something magical about the moment or the place or them… Carmen felt it in the very roots of her soul.
“Sometimes,” Lola admitted so softly Carmen wouldn’t have heard her words if the breeze hadn’t brought them to her. “When I forget about how the world works. When I pretend that the game isn’t rigged and people get what they work for. What they’ve earned.” She breathed deeply again, inhaling all the clean air Northern California had to offer. “When I hear a song I really like, I’ll close my eyes and imagine what it might have been like to get dealt another hand. To have started without someone’s thumb on the scale.”
The regret in Lola’s voice sank into Carmen’s muscles, stiffening her joints and curdling in her stomach. Whatever she’d been expecting Lola to say, that wasn’t it. She opened her mouth, wanting more than anything to say the right thing to connect with her. But how could Carmen ever say a word about lucky breaks? She’d been born into a legacy. Into a guaranteed place in the world.
“I’m sorry,” Carmen said because she was. Looking at Lola until she turned her eyes away from the stars and shone them back on her. “And I would love, more than anything, to hear you sing one day.”
Lola’s expression flickered, but she didn’t laugh. She didn’t accuse her or get angry or offended or insulted. She just gazed at her, eyes still soft and unguarded.
“Do you want to come over?” Carmen asked, heart pounding from a heady mix of bravery and recklessness.
Instead of saying no, Lola stood.
CHAPTER41
Lola’s legswere not her own when she traded the cold of her balcony for the stuffiness of her room. Her hands belonged to someone else when she reached for the doorknob, pulling the door open, leaving it unlocked as she floated toward the room next door. Her quick breaths, her racing heart, fluttering stomach… none of it was hers when she stood at Carmen’s door.
Opening the door before she had a chance to knock, Carmen was standing in the dark. A perfect silhouette, soft and backlit so gently by the conceited stars, bragging about their numbers.
Lola was in her room, standing in front of Carmen’s bed, the door closed behind her. Her eyes weren’t adjusting to the darkness. Everything was getting harder to see, blurrier, impossible to understand.
They shouldn’t ruin this building of color and warmth and anticipation with talking. Lola knew it. Knew that if she opened her mouth, there was no way they were going to end up in bed. Knew that she would ruin it. She would divulge too much. She would change everything with a single, stupid question. But she needed to understand. Needed to know what it meant. Needed to finally know, even if it was bad.
“Why did you leave me that sandwich?” Lola’s voice was softer than she’d like, betraying her uncertainty, her hope, her fear.
Carmen stepped into Lola’s space. Close enough to touch. But Lola kept her hands balled up at her sides like she might challenge her own messy emotions to take this outside.
“What?” Carmen’s tone was confused, not mocking.
“What is the point?” Lola tried to clarify. “The sandwich and the coffee and the snacks—”
“Because I like you.” Carmen’s response was wedged somewhere between a declaratory statement and a question. “And I didn’t want you to be hungry?”
Lola parsed every syllable of Carmen’s response the way only a person who’d grown up having to anticipate people’s moods from their tone could do. But she couldn’t read any deeper meaning. Any hidden code. It was almost like it hadn’t been a big deal.
“Why?” Lola whispered. “Why would you like me?” And because that question was too pathetic even if it was true, she added, “Why would you like me after the way we’ve treated each other?”
Carmen stepped back, but only a little. “The first time I met you. That day you cut me off in the parking lot a couple of years ago and we started cursing at each other.” Carmen’s tone hummed with a smile like she was remembering road rage fondly. Like she was remembering the way some people recalled the first time they spotted someone across the room or held their hand. “In my life, I had never been so angry at anyone.”
Lola furrowed her brow. Even in the dark. Even though Carmen couldn’t see her. That didn’t sound like a reason to like anyone. The opposite was more fitting.
“And what I’ve come to realize over the last couple of months, since you cut me off getting into the parking lot—”
“Is that you have a thing for automotive aggression?” Lola took a step forward but didn’t reach out to pull Carmen into her arms, even though she wanted to feel the warmth of her against her cold skin.
Carmen replied with a soft chuckle. “It could be a kink,” she joked before her energy shifted. “Every time I’m with you, I feel all these emotions and I feel them to max capacity. It’s like being around you… It’s like you turn the brightness up to ten.”
She paused, looking for her words, and Lola’s heart stretched like it wanted to get closer. To hear her better.
“I’ve been addicted to you since the beginning,” Carmen admitted. “You bring out this… like animalistic thing. And I used to think it was the adrenaline rush I was chasing… and the incredible high of sleeping with you.”
“But now?” Lola should have been embarrassed that she sounded so hopeful. That she was telegraphing her desire for more.
Carmen’s fingertips were warm against Lola’s wrist, searing as they skittered down her palm and devastating when her fingers slipped between hers.
“But now I realize that I chase those moments with you, whatever their form, because being with you is the only time I feel like myself. I don’t hold back. I don’t edit myself. I’m free,” she explained, a crack in her voice like she was trying not to cry.
A crack that Lola felt like a fissure in her foundation. An unstoppable splitting and breaking and crumbling. She squeezed Carmen’s hand, wanting desperately for her not to break any further or Lola wouldn’t stand a chance of leaving unscathed.
