“So, I’ll be flying into Raleigh-Durham on Wednesday. Come pick me up, bitch!”
And that was how Liz ended up driving into Raleigh after class on Wednesday. Victoria walked through the sliding glass doors at the airport looking as gorgeous as ever in a flouncy cream top, pale pink skinny jeans, and electric blue platform heels. Her long, dark hair was in big curls, and her eyes were covered in heavy makeup. She carried an oversize hobo bag in a soft light brown leather and rolled a sleek suitcase behind her.
Victoria placed her bag in the backseat and dropped into the passenger seat. “Hey, bitch! I’ve missed you!”
Liz rolled her eyes and smiled. “Missed you too.”
“I need a drink. Let’s go to a pub,” she said, sighing as she looked out the window.
“There aren’t pubs in the States, Vic. You probably need to detox for a couple weeks.”
“God I haven’t been in the lab in so long,” she said, tilting her head back. “I’m dying to get back to work.”
That was what Liz loved about Victoria: Under all the drama and ridiculousness was a brilliant, beautiful mind. She never thought that someone who cussed like a sailor and dressed like a superstar would be interested in being a lab researcher in genetics and dreamed of isolating genes to reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s.
“Lunch instead of booze?” Liz suggested. Victoria nodded and they headed back into Chapel Hill.
Liz parked and they walked across the street to the second-story restaurant Top of the Hill. They were seated at a high top table on the outdoor balcony overlooking the Franklin and Columbia intersection that Justin had blown through the night of his DUI.
Victoria accepted water instead of beer, and they both ordered lunch. The weather was hot, but they had an umbrella to shade them from the sun. It was nice hanging out with Victoria again. Liz had spent half her summer at the newspaper and with Brady. She needed some girl time, time to kick back and relax.
“So, did you do anything other than the TA the whole time you were there?” Liz asked, leaning back into her chair.
“Yeah. We took a weekend and went to Paris. I should have taken more time to see the rest of Europe, but his bed was really comfortable.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “Did you like London, at least?”
“Oh, yeah! I loved it. My kind of city…busy, busy, busy. Hot guys everywhere, all with accents, who like to dance. Surreal life over there. We should go back together sometime.”
“Sounds fun.”
“What about you? Anything fun? I see you have a tan. That’s new. I didn’t think vampires came out during daylight.”
“Ha. Ha,” Liz said dryly. “I don’t work all the time.”
Victoria tilted her sunglasses down so she could stare at her.
“Okay, fine. I’ve been working the whole time, but I’ve been playing tennis, and I even went to a frat party with Justin.”
Victoria wrinkled her nose. “Why the eff would you do that?”
Liz shrugged. “Desperate for company?” She couldn’t tell her the real reason. “I got trashed and he drove me home…”
“Did you sleep with AV Justin?” Victoria asked, her eyes going wide.
“What? No! Have some faith in my taste for once, Vickie!”
“Oh my God, stop calling me that!” she cried.
Liz laughed, loving how much it irritated her. “Actually, he ran a red light and then was arrested for DUI.”
“Shit!”
“Yeah, it was a rough night.”
“Well, at least you did something interesting instead of following around politicians.”
Liz choked on her drink and coughed a few times to clear her throat. Oh how true that assessment of her was.
“What about that guy you were crushing on? Have you talked to him?” Victoria asked, tapping her manicured finger to her lip. “Gah, what was his name?”
Liz knew who she was talking about. It certainly couldn’t be Brady, because she had never spoken about him with anyone. It had to be Hayden Lane. A trickle of doubt formed in her stomach when she thought about him. It felt a little strange to feel bad that she missed him.
She liked what she had going on with Brady. It made her a bit antsy and uncomfortable at times…especially when she had thought he had been with someone else. But she really liked being with him. Then why at the thought of Hayden did her insides squirm?
She hadn’t heard from him since the emails at the beginning of the summer session, and she didn’t know whether he had even thought about her. Actually, she didn’t even know whether she was still going to visit him.
Her life felt so removed from what it had been last semester, and she kind of liked it that way. She liked that Brady consumed her thoughts and that she got to look forward to every moment they shared together. With Hayden it was more complicated on some level. At least with Brady she knew where she stood.
“Hayden?” Liz finally offered when it didn’t seem that Victoria was going to be able to place his name. She could remember entire DNA structures of a thousand different plants and animals, but names…who needed to remember names?
“Right! Hayden Lane. Have you talked to him? He was going somewhere else for the summer, right?”
“Yeah, he has an internship in D.C., but I haven’t really heard from him. He emailed me some work stuff at the beginning of the summer, and we talked about me coming to visit, but I doubt that’s happening anymore.”
“Wait. What?”
“What?” Liz asked, confused.
“He invited you to come see him over the summer?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly.
“Why haven’t you called him and talked to him? Don’t you want to go visit? That boy would not invite you if he wasn’t crushing on you hard.”
She hadn’t thought about it like that. Hayden had been giving her mixed signals, and she didn’t want to push him. But Vic had a way of knowing whether a guy was into you. It felt strange, considering how much time she had invested in liking Hayden, thinking he didn’t even notice her. Then when he finally did, he pulled back.
“You think?” she asked uncertainly.
“No, I know. When am I ever wrong?” she asked. Liz opened her mouth to speak and Victoria shook her head. “Exactly. Never.”
“You’re ridiculous. Hayden had his chance to make a move and he didn’t.”
“Sometimes men are pussies, and they need you to dangle yours in front of them to remember that they’re all dicks.”
Liz couldn’t stop laughing. “Victoria Glass! I’m not dangling myself in front of him!”
“Your pussy, more specifically,” Victoria said, drinking her water.
“Oh my God, we’re not having this conversation. What do you want me to do—walk around his place naked and wait for him to realize?”
“Not a bad plan…”
“Correction: horrible plan.”
“My plans work!” Victoria said, smacking her hand down on the table.
“Your plans get you double-teamed while a professor you were fucking walks in on you…”
“Well…there is that,” she said with a bemused shrug.
“No shame.”
“I mean…he could have joined.”
Liz buried her face into her palm. How did she end up with the most insanely sexual roommate on the planet?
“Anyway! What I’m trying to say is you need to call him and you need to remind him why he invited you in the first place,” she said, shaking her boobs from side to side. “I would have invited you because of your rack, but he could be different.”
“He’s probably not,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“No, probably not. So call him. We’re just waiting for our food.”
“I’m not calling him from a restaurant.”
“Why not? Give him a call, tell him how much you’ve missed him, and can’t wait to see him…maybe hint at more. You know the gist,” Victoria said.
“No way. If I call him at all, which is unlikely, it will be when we get home.”
Victoria gave her the look. The one that said, I won’t forget. Liz had seen it a thousand times since they started living together two years ago. She wasn’t going to get out of this.
As she suspected, Victoria badgered Liz the entire way back to their house and Liz had had enough when she made it through the door. “Okay! I’ll call him. Jesus!”
Victoria gave her a smug look and then sauntered into the bathroom. Liz heard the shower running a second later. She knew that meant she would be occupied for at least the next half hour, and the room would be like a sauna when she exited. Liz could have put off the phone call, but now that it was in her mind, it was like a disease spreading through her body. She couldn’t let the thought go.
She wanted to see Hayden even though she was seeing Brady. Well, she wasn’t seeing Brady. Okay she was, but it was different. It’s not as if she could walk around in public with him or anything. They were a behind-closed-doors kind of couple. Still, she had freaked out when she had thought Brady was seeing someone else; would it be hypocritical to then go see Hayden? Even if nothing happened, she was sure two years of crushing on him wouldn’t disappear just like that.
But she didn’t even know if he still wanted to see her. So maybe one phone call couldn’t hurt.
He picked up on the second ring. “Liz, hey!”
“Hey. How are you?” Liz said, surprised by Hayden’s enthusiasm.
“Good. It’s good to hear from you.”
“Yeah, it’s been a while,” she said, walking into her bedroom and shutting the door.
“Sorry about that. I’m sure it’s my fault. You know how I said they just had me getting coffee?”
“Yeah,” she said, lying back on her bed.
“Well, I still do that and about five hundred million other things every single day. I’m working ten- to fourteen-hour days.”
“Geez! You must be exhausted.”
“I’ve never worked this hard in my life. I can’t wait for you to come up and visit. That will be my first full weekend off. It’ll be good to see you and not have to deal with everything else,” he said.
Liz smiled despite herself. It was nice to hear that he hadn’t forgotten, and he wanted to see her still. Butterflies fluttered around in her stomach. “So, you’re still set for me to visit?”
“Yeah, you do still want to come, right?” he asked a bit tentatively.
He hadn’t had any hesitation when talking about seeing her. Why was she so hesitant then? With how enraptured she had been with Brady so far this summer, it was strange to even think of Hayden like that. But he still had a pull, even if it wasn’t like Brady. Still, she wanted to see Hayden—that much she knew—but it felt unfair to Brady.
She knew Brady wasn’t going to be happy with her going to D.C. to hang out with another guy. He hadn’t been happy at the lake house when she had mentioned she was seeing someone, and she had been jokingly talking about him. Then with the incident with Justin…it was asking for trouble. She was playing this game on Brady’s terms. That was the agreement.
But she still wanted to see Hayden even though she knew it would make Brady angry with her. She and Hayden were friends after all. She was allowed to visit friends if she wanted.
“Yeah, I do. Last weekend in July, right?”
“I think exactly a month from today. Let me check.” She heard noise on the other end of the phone as he checked the date for her. “Yeah. I was right. One month. July twenty-sixth is when I get to see you. Are you driving?”
“Yep. It’s not that far.”
“Cool. I’ll have to find you parking. There isn’t much up here. But let me worry about that; tell me how you are. Tell me about the paper.”