“What’s with you, Blanche?” I ask, grinning.
“Shh.” Mia waves me off.
The girls crowd around me in the living room—London and Mia next to me on the couch, and Harlow sitting on the coffee table, facing me.
“The thing we need to discuss,” Mia says with dramatic sincerity, “is how we failed you.”
Harlow turns to look at her in thrilled amusement.
I lean away from Mia, skeptically observing the three of them. “You what?”
“All this time,” Mia says, lifting a delicate hand to her throat, “things were developing with Oliver, and we have to assume if you weren’t telling us everything it’s because we weren’t available to you. As friends.”
I level her with a flat look. “Are you being a passive-aggressive troll?”
London and Harlow nod.
Mia shakes her head solemnly. “We’ve just been so busy.”
“You were buying a house, asshole,” I remind her.
She agrees with a smile. “So busy signing all those papers for days on end, I couldn’t answer my phone, asshole.”
I lean back against the couch, laughing. “It just happened.”
“No thought at all,” Harlow deadpans.
Nodding, Mia says, “That sounds like our Lola. Impulsive.”
“No, I mean, last night—” I begin.
“Last night was the first time you guys ever flirted and then boom! Sex?” Harlow asks, nodding as if she’s got the answer right.
“The three of you are enormous dicks,” I say, grinning. “And I need to pack.”
I push up from the couch and start walking down the hall to my room.
“But we still need details,” Mia calls out as she follows.
Details.
My head swims with them. I still feel full of Oliver. I want to tattoo every detail on my skin: The curve of his mouth when he’s coming. The soft brush of his fingers on my shoulders when he’s moving to touch my hair. His shoulders over me, shifting up and down, up and down as he moves.
“It was nice.”
Harlow snorts from my doorway, watching as London and Mia settle on my bed. “He broke your vagina and—from the sounds of it—almost broke furniture, and it was ‘nice’?”
I look up from where I’m pulling clothes from my dresser. “Can you not say ‘vagina’?”
“It’s an awesome word,” she argues. “You should be proud—”
“God, I’m sure my lady parts are unbelievable,” I cut in, turning back to my packing, “but it’s not an awesome word. It’s an awesome thing, but it’s a horrible word.”
“We need a better one,” London agrees. “I do like pussy, though.”
“But we wouldn’t just casually refer to our pussies the way guys refer to their dicks,” Harlow says.
“Is that a bad thing?” Mia asks. “Do we need to casually refer to them?”
Harlow looks insulted.
“Like, how about . . . sock.” London angles both hands to point between her legs and looks at us for agreement. “This is my ‘sock.’ ”
“Maybe something that isn’t already a thing, and doesn’t rhyme with cock?” I suggest.
“Oh.” London deflates. “That’s so weird. I didn’t even think about that. Clearly it has been far too long since I thought about cock.”
“How’s the new house?” I ask Mia, changing the subject. I zip up my duffel bag and drop it near the desk.
She shrugs, grinning with bliss. “Gorgeous. We got the keys yesterday.”
“Did you spend the night there?” I ask.
She nods. “No furniture, no electricity, it’s about two degrees inside, and Ansel ran around the entire place naked before attacking me on the wood floor of the living room.” She grips her lower back, wincing. “Is twenty-three too old to comfortably have sex on the floor? I thought we’d have more longevity than this.”
“Well, that explains the geriatric curve to your spine,” I say.
London sighs. “I would have sex on a pointy rock right now.”
I high-five her, but she immediately grabs my hand and swipes her palm across mine. “Wait. I’m taking back my high-five. You got superbanged last night. And today.”
“It was nearly a year ago that I was last banged!” I protest. “And I’m headed to L.A. for three days with no banging. Give me that high-five back.”
London limply wipes her hand back over mine and the four of us fall into silence at the mention of L.A. The quiet tells me they’re done giving me shit. But their continued presence tells me they’re not leaving until they get some more details.
So I give them what I can.
I tell them about drawing him, about the tension that seemed to be let loose after that, about how my feelings seemed to grow exponentially as soon as I gave them air. I tell them about the night at his house, cuddling, about the party in L.A., the bar afterward, and Oliver’s bare admission that he’s in love with me.
My heart seems to balloon until it’s hard to take a deep breath.
Harlow’s hand is pressed firmly to her chest. “He said that?”
I nod, chewing a nail and speaking around it: “He said it.”
“And you didn’t have sex with him immediately that night?” Mia asks.
“In a hotel room,” Harlow adds, horrified at my missed opportunity.