Chapter Text
Lucy had to get out of the house for a while.
She didn’t intend to sleep with Skull again. It just sort of happened. It always just sort of happened, one thing leading to another. A drink or a bad day or a sketch. This time, it was an oil painting for class. They were practicing their anatomy, so the assignment was bodies. Lucy had an unhealthy fascination with all of Skull’s sharp angles, so she’d texted to see if he was in town, and unfortunately, he was. He was just so beautiful in a Victorian street urchin fed toxic waste kind of way. He made her art better in a way that hurt like good art was supposed to.
He also listened to her bitch for three hours straight about her professor who kind of reminded her of George and who never gave Lucy praise not once ever, but she gave other students praise for mediocre bullshit that Lucy had mastered with goddamn crayons.
“Are you sure you don’t just want to fuck her?” Skull had asked with a toothy grin, and she’d responded of course not. This woman had a wife and an underbite and eyes that made Lucy feel vivisected and such poignant, interesting opinions on art, all of which Skull responded with—
“Are you sure you don’t just want to fuck?”
This was where one thing passed the baton off to another.
She made Skull hide in her room until morning when she kicked his unhappy night owl arse to the curb, and still, she knew George knew. Lockwood preferred to ignore anything and everything that went on with Skull under his roof unless they were feuding over cards, but George was always an observer. And a bloody prick.
When an annotated copy of Falling Back on Bad Habits appeared at the bottom of her attic stairs, Lucy knew it was time to brave the elements and have a guaranteed hour to herself. Hyde Park was as good as anywhere, and she huddled around her steaming thermos of tea like an ancient priestess getting high to spout nonsense. The early morning air pricked her cheeks, and she burrowed deeper into the scarf she’d stolen from George in her retribution. He would whine at her this evening about it, lamenting about his poor city boy circulation as opposed to her rugged northern blood, and she would bite back as always that if he wore anything other than a cotton graphic t-shirt as a base layer, maybe he wouldn’t freeze his other testicle off.
Lucy smiled, hitching her chin out of the scarf so she could take a sip of tea.
George only having one ball in the sack was a joke dating back to his and Lockwood’s university days, but Lockwood was enthusiastic about bringing her in on it. It had apparently started as retaliation for George telling some people Lockwood was born without nipples. Lucy had her suspicions about the attractiveness and availability of said people which neither boy would confirm or deny, even though they all knew Lockwood was a bit of a flirt. Lucy certainly never took any of his casual overtures seriously, but that was a matter of her health. It was really bad for her blood pressure to have a crush on Anthony J. Lockwood. Her dad died of a heart attack. She had to be mindful of that sort of thing.
Only the extremely dedicated were out at the crack of dawn in the dreary early-winter. Or, as in her case, the extremely desperate. That left a thin camaraderie between her and the joggers and the retirees feeding the birds. She watched the former trace wide patterns through the trails and the latter shuffle to their favored benches. The sun struggled to break through the bare trees, the sky turning a watery blue overhead.
Some pitiful nostalgia had her snapping a photo. Maybe she’d use it in a warm up sketch.
…
“Hey,” Lockwood said, sleep-soft and warm like kettle steam.
“Couldn’t sleep?” She asked even though they both knew he would never see this side of daybreak unless he’d been acquainted with the whole night as well.
“Not the right night for it,” he responded. His fingers traced the top of his tea mug, long emptied. He asked, “Going to the park again?”
“It’s good to move a bit,” Lucy said. “I’ve been blocked, and I’m hoping the change of scenery will help.”
She’d been really blocked. Only able to force out flat, uninteresting pieces for her assignments, and she kept trying to capture that sad thing that had tugged in her chest the morning she took the picture of the park. Pastels, charcoals, watercolors—it all came out too greeting card. So she had her sketchbook under her arm and a small contingent of trusted pencils shoved in her coat pocket. She was going back to the source.
With a tired smile, Lockwood said, “I would join you, but I’m afraid I don’t want to.”
“Wuss,” Lucy snorted.
“Guilty,” he said back, gesturing to himself.
“Will you try to get some rest?” Lucy occupied herself with the kettle, with the dishes. With anything except the tenderness making a pink mess of her face. Her blood pressure was acting up again.
“But it’s such a nice morning, Luce,” he said, and the way he sheepishly mumbled her name into the quietness of the mid-dawn kitchen made Lucy seriously consider making an appointment with a cardiologist.
“I’ll stop by Arif’s on my way home,” Lucy said. The water in the kettle was still warm and boiled easily.
“Jelly donuts?” He perked up, and she smirked at her thermos.
“Fine, but I better find you horizontal.” She turned finally to catch his dark, glittering gaze. Like treasure sunk deep in a mire.
“I’ll even have my eyes closed,” Lockwood said, and he drew an X over his heart. Her answering smile was an unstoppable force, and she was by no means an immovable object.
“Alright then. I’ll see you in a bit.”
Lucy breezed out of the kitchen; Lockwood would take care of the kettle for her. He was good like that. She wasn’t feeling particularly breezy though when she stepped out of the front door and got smacked in the face with the morning’s ungodly temperatures. Even her northern blood and synthetic base layer were struggling as she clung to her thermos for dear life. It was unseemly to even be alive in weather like this, and like a Hellenic hero, every step in her journey made her consider turning back.
Of course, the first thing she saw when she got to the park was a guy in shorts.
“The nerve of some people,” she muttered to herself like she was some boomer complaining about unnatural hair colors. She made sure her coat was underneath her arse, and then she settled into her favored bench.
Damn, she really was an old lady.
She would never bring food for the birds, though. Once they clocked you as soft, you became a target.
It was hard for her to peel her hands from the tea’s warmth, but the sooner she got down to business, the sooner she could return home, triumphant and art block free. The landscape hadn’t changed all that much from her picture. She started sketching out the crackling outlines of the trees with their bare branches. She found herself absently monitoring the Scantily Clad Stranger on his way around the park. He jogged with an efficient consternation, and when he paused near her to take a few gulps from his water bottle, she got a good look at his face. He looked like the kind of person who took being in the emergency row on an airplane seriously.
Then he jogged past, and she got a glimpse of his arse. And his thighs.
Lucy wasn’t all that cold after that.
…
It was raining, and she couldn’t force herself to get out of bed. Doing her best to imitate an amorphous blob, she snuck one hand out from under the covers to grab the self-help book that had been haunting her nightstand, bringing it back into her humid cocoon. She opened to the first page and squinted at George’s now-recognizable scrawl.
I think it’s funnier if you imagine she was a nun before writing this
Lucy laughed to no one.
…
She heard him before she saw him. Engrossed in her second draft of Morning in Hyde Park, she heard the scrape of runners on the path, and then a scuff. A grunt, followed by a quick curse, and then her Scantily Clad Stranger was skidding into her vision on his elbows and knees.
“Oh, fuck! Are you okay?” She asked, scrambling to set her sketchbook to the side.
“I’m fine!” He was quick to say, holding up a pavement-dented hand in her direction. At the very least, he was wearing a windbreaker that protected his poor elbows. Hopefully some sleeves underneath it. His knees looked far worse for wear though, crosshatch patches of skin flaked off and quickly turning red. No gushing blood, so that was a win.
“Do you need help?” Lucy hovered, holding back a comment about the karma of shorts in winter because he’d already taken a tumble; no need to kick him while he was down there.
“I’m fine, really. Just—Recontextualizing my life,” the stranger said, and he rolled onto his back. On the cold pavement, he just flopped over like he was about to take a kip. His legs splayed out, pebbles sticking to his skinned knees, and he threw an arm across his midsection to rise and fall with his deep breaths.
“Sounds like a horizontal-type activity,” Lucy said, dipping her chin. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
“Much obliged.”
Lucy went back to her sketchbook, retracing the horizon line, making it half a millimeter thicker. She dappled a couple leaves with the soft tip of her pencil. She rested her graphite-smudged hand on a blank-ish section of what amounted to the sky. She smudged it, but it was fine. She could turn it into a wisp of cloud if she wanted to.
She flipped to a fresh page.
She drew a quick line for the ground, and then she started in.
Flatbacked on the path. Running shoes that had seen better days. The bagginess of his windbreaker. A sharp haircut and a furrow between his brow like he was chewing on something, and he didn’t know if it was going to break his teeth. It wasn’t a real sketch. It was more comic book than anything, but it captured a certain… Patheticness was too harsh. Brooding was too suave.
But there was something here about the human condition and the voyeuristic nature of representative art.
Very Schadenfreude.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Lucy said finally because she was worried he was going to lay there and freeze.
“I had a professor one time who would say that, and then he’d say ‘Because that’s all they’re worth.” The stranger’s lips twitched, and then he rolled his head towards her to peek out of one eye.
She kept her focus on the drawing, adding a bit of depth here and there as she said, “Well, if I’d done that, it would be rude.”
“It’s nice to meet someone who isn’t rude,” he replied sincerely.
“I never said I wasn’t rude.”
“Oh? Prove it, then.” The man’s chin hitched up, his Adam’s apple dipping as he swallowed, and Lucy found herself staring at the bump, tip of her pencil hovering over the sketch’s throat.
“So I’m just supposed to say something rude to you now?”
“To be fair, I have goaded you. You’ve been goaded,” he replied.
“That makes me want to do it less,” she said, lips twitching at the edges.
His head rolled back to stare at the sky, and he sighed, “I knew you didn’t have it in you. Rude people don’t check in on those of us unfortunate enough to be defeated by flat, unmoving surfaces.”
“I’m rude-reformed,” Lucy said, and that got a real smile out of him, some of that despondent energy siphoning out into the crisp air.
“Lucky me then,” he said.
He had nice teeth, straight and shiny. It was the first thing Lucy’s mum always asked when she heard tell of a new boy sniffing around the Carlyle house.
“Lots of people get defeated by flat, unmoving surfaces,” Lucy said after a while.
“Speaking from artistic experience?” He asked, slanting an eyebrow at her sketchpad.
Lucy’s mouth hinged open.
The nerve!
“Rude,” she said.
“I’ve yet to be reformed,” he replied, curling up into a sitting position and assessing the tender state of his knees. He really did have nice thighs.
“They have meetings for that kind of thing, you know.”
His head tilted to the side, mouth shrugging, and he said, “I’d need a good sponsor. I’ve tried quitting before, but I just couldn’t hack it.”
Lucy fought a smile because it felt like too easy a win to give it up now. It would be a bad habit to establish, and of course, her mind kicked back to that stupid book with George’s all too hilarious notes in the margins. The occasional doodle covering up something George thought was too asinine for joke material.
We don’t always have the luxury, but the best place to stop a bad habit is not to develop it at all.
George had some choice words to say about that. He added a sticky note.
“Well, I think I know somewhere you could find—”
His phone rang.
Buzzing loudly from a pocket in his windbreaker, he jumped like he’d been shocked. The furrow between his brow was back, the one that made him look like a bank teller inspecting a check. He flashed her a glance and then pulled his phone from his pocket.
“It’s early for you,” he said.
Lucy had the brief thought that maybe he wasn’t kidding about the whole being rude thing.
He sat up straighter, his mouth pulling into one tense line, before he said, “Alright, I’m on my way.”
He rolled onto his feet in the kind of lithe display one might not expect from a guy who just ate a sidewalk sandwich, and only a twinge of pain flashed across his face. He dusted off his back with a fun twisting maneuver, listening intently to the tinny monologue Lucy could barely hear over the winter breeze. His eyes drifted up to hers again. He blew out a small breath, sagging like a birthday balloon after a few days.
He hit a button on his screen, tilting it back away from his face.
“Looks like I have to continue my life of degeneracy,” he stage-whispered.
And then he winked.
“No, tell them to wait,” he said after unmuting himself. He set a brisk pace away. “Of course I want hard copies. Who do you take me for—?”
The one-sided conversation faded into the morning air, and Lucy was once again alone with her pencils.
Well.
Alone, but she did have this hasty sketch of a Scantily Clad, Clumsy stranger.
…
When Lucy got home from her shift at London’s shittiest tourist shop, she was really hoping the heater hadn’t broken again. The weather had taken a turn for the worst, winter well and truly settling in, and for some reason, the inside of 35 Portland Row wasn’t much warmer than the tempestuous outside. Lucy stomped her feet on the doormat to get the worst of the moisture off then she stripped her raincoat.
“Lockwood?” She called, hesitant to shed anymore layers when she could nearly see the outline of her words in the air. The hallway carpet had been dragged to the side, and the bench was rearranged. She investigated the new placement of the awkward leg that tamped down the rug over one of the floor vents.
There were voices in the house, and Lucy’s mind shifted to echolocate, vestigial instinct activating from when it was important to know exactly where everyone was to avoid getting cuffed for playing silently in the den. Her awareness ping-ponged around, eliminating the kitchen, their rooms, the basement, all adding up to the very unusual—
“I’ll tell you what, George—Good God!” Lockwood hit nearly a screech as the door to the bathroom on the landing crashed open.
“This is the worst part,” George said, and Lucy hurried to the stairs.
She caught them both coming out of the bathroom, steam billowing like a flock of white doves at a wedding, sweat flattening the edges of their hair. George was shirtless, and the shifting planes of his chest glistened, rain making the desert shine, and he was grinning, swiping a towel over the back of his neck, eyes on Lockwood like they always are anyways.
And Lockwood.
Lucy was surprised everything didn’t go slow-mo with a bit of Kenny G underneath.
He’d sweated through his white t-shirt, and a flop of slick hair dangled in front of his forehead. He laughed at the next thing George said, flashing is perfect, posh teeth, and then his eyes slid down to find her staring. They did this thing. This thing that always made her heart stumble in her chest and her hands reach out for the nearest solid object. Lockwood’s eyes glittered sometimes when they looked at her. It was the stars out in the country. Daybreak on the dew.
Her fingertips itched, some sort of sludge caught in her artistic soul washing down the storm drain.
“Why on earth is it so bloody cold in this house?” She demanded, balling her fists against her hips.
The boys trundled past her, Lockwood slanting her a debonair smirk like she was the jailor, but he had a skeleton key.
“Have you ever heard of hot yoga?” Lockwood asked.
Lucy shook her head, less in answer to the question and more in trying to dislodge certain new thoughts. They smelled like sweat, sour and familiar and rich, and she wanted to bash her head against the bannister for breathing in deep again, filling her lungs with the humid, masculine stench. She’d always hated the way boys smelled in gym; girls were just a lot kinder on the nose, but she couldn’t uncurl the knot of anticipation sitting low and warm in her belly as she followed them into the frigid kitchen like a stray following the butcher’s boy.
“Lockwood wanted to try it,” George said, and he kicked a box out of the way of the floor vent in the kitchen.
“George mentioned he was interested, and I’m just good at planning,” Lockwood said.
“So you blocked up all the vents in the house?” Lucy asked, still masquerading as someone interested in the conversation at hand.
“And made our own sauna,” Lockwood said with a grin. “It got a bit cramped in the loo, but we made it work.”
“I prefer yoga in my room, thank you. At least I’m not in danger of poking anyone’s eye out,” George replied.
“You hardly came close to my eye, and besides, I’ve already forgiven you, haven’t I?”
Lucy went to sit at the table, knowing a warm cup of tea was in her future. She hauled her boots into the seat of the next chair, fighting with the damp laces to get them off. Her feet weren’t usually aching this much, but she hadn’t pulled a full six hour shift in a while with her new class schedule, so she was building back up the leg muscles to dawdle around putting mini double deckers back on the shelves after tourists didn’t buy them for their kids.
“How was work?” Lockwood asked, shifting the kettle from the tap to the stove.
George knelt down in front of her, brow furrowed, and he took over tugging at her laces. She let him.
“Another day on the front lines,” Lucy sighed.
“Tirelessly in Her Majesty’s service,” Lockwood said. “I swear, you do more for the GDP of London than those tossers standing around at Buckingham.”
“I don’t really think it’s the guys who don’t move for eight hours straight who are really part of the oppressing class here,” George interjected, and Lockwood nodded swiftly.
“You’re right. We’ll just have to assassinate the Queen.”
“Again, as far as economic political targets go, you’re much better off going for the guys who funnel money into Parliament like it’s their personal assistant,” George said.
“You don’t think killing the Queen would send a message?”
“I think it certainly would. The wrong kind, and it would be pretty useless after the fact.”
Lucy tilted her head back, basking in the slow warmth creeping up from the floor vent now that it had been uncovered. She listened to them plot treason—or something adjacent—and she tried to ignore the way they ran through her veins, fatty and thick. She had an idea for a new sketch.
…
Lucy wasn’t usually one of those coffeehouse artist types. She liked things slow and quiet and with far less people, but she’d already committed to being out this morning even if the thick cloud cover decided to start spitting after all. Settled in a corner booth, she had her headphones in, and she could almost admit to a certain atmospheric charm. At least as long as her Bauhaus playlist lasted.
She got tea. No matter how she thirsted for espresso, it would make her jittery, and she’d wasted enough good drawing paper this week.
She was just settling into a groove when she saw him come in.
She resisted the urge to melt behind her sketchbook like butter across toast.
Fresh rain dappled his hair and slicked his rain jacket. His cheeks were pink from the cold, and yet his lips stood out starkly against his skin, fidgeting against each other. He was still in shorts, but he was compensating for the weather with a pair of socks that almost went to his knees, greyed along the calf where he’d kicked up puddles. His gaze tracked lazily around the coffeeshop, and Lucy stared very hard at the shading on Lockwood’s left dimple that had been giving her trouble all morning. He noticed her.
Have I washed my hair this week?
Lucy dropped her pencil, trying to be casual as she ran her fingers through her hair. The same girlish insecurity that wouldn’t look in the mirror whenever Holly was around flared up, and she hastily extracted a hair tie from around a collection of markers in her bag. It was stretched out, but an extra twist made a passable ponytail at her nape, and she gave herself a shake to separate any greasy strands in her bangs.
He was still talking to the barista, even though there was a snappily dressed woman tapping her pumps against the hardwoods behind him. His hands gestured in the air, and the barista turned a blank minimum wage gaze to land right on Lucy.
She was pretty sure she knew what getting struck by lightning felt like now.
Her Scantily Clad, Clumsy Stranger rubbed both hands over his face, and then he peeked towards her. Or rather, the smoking, singed place where she’d just been sitting. With a small shake of his hand, he waved.
She waved back.
The barista confirmed something, and her stranger pulled out his wallet to pay. She couldn’t keep herself from staring as he stepped off to the side to wait on his order. He fiddled with his phone for most of the time, but like a dog checking the treat was still there, he did glance up twice.
Then he was grabbing two cups and balancing a pastry plate on his arm, and he was coming over to her!
“Shit,” she said under her breath, and she yanked her earbuds out, sweeping her arm over the table to gather all her wayward art supplies.
“Please don’t tell me you’ve got to see a man about a dog,” the guy said, bending down to slide the plate onto the edge of the table. “Or you think you left your oven on.”
“No!”
Lucy dumped her various drawing instruments into the yawning mouth of her backpack, never to be organized again, and she set her sketchbook on the booth next to her. A single novelty eraser rolled across the now-empty table. It was shaped like a rabbit vibrator—part of a schoolgirl-themed promotional Norrie’s second job at the sex shop did about a month ago. The not-as-clumsy-with-a-pastry stranger’s eyes landed on it like the last thwack of an executioner’s axe.
“I’m just clearing it off in case you want to… sit?” Lucy snatched the eraser and had the urge to chuck it over her shoulder.
“I do, if that’s alright,” he said with a smile.
A really nice smile.
“Well, I’ve done all this work,” she gestured at the table, fingers unfurling to flash the bright pink eraser. His gaze dropped, and his lips twitched.
She actually did throw it over her shoulder this time. As soon as he broke eye contact to shed his rain jacket and slide into the booth on the other side, she catapulted it right into the wall behind her. It bounced off the faux wood planks with a dull noise that drew his attention again, but by the time he was settled, the eraser had fallen to the floor, and Lucy was propped up on her fist, looking for all the world like a girl who’d never even heard of a rabbit vibrator.
“Tea,” he led off with, pushing the cup towards her. “I bribed the guy at the front to tell me what you’d ordered.”
She picked it up, cocking her head. “Really?”
“No, I didn’t even get that far. He just rang me up, and I’m hoping he didn’t screw me,” he said, and she smothered the laugh that wanted to trollop out by taking a sip from the small opening.
She was lucky; she didn’t get scalded. Lucy pursed her lips and set the cup back down.
“I’m afraid not. Looks like he thinks I’m a hot chocolate sort of girl,” Lucy said, massaging the sweet taste into her hard palette. Her stranger’s eyebrows pulsed.
“Oh! Sorry, that’s for me. This should be yours, then,” he said, and he swapped their cups.
“You drink hot chocolate?”
He hunkered down over his cup, slouching enough that when his eyes flicked to hers, he was looking up at her. He said, “It’s a perfectly acceptable drink.”
“At seven in the morning?”
“It’s right there on the menu at seven in the morning.”
“I guess it is,” she said, her teeth coming out over her bottom lip. The second cup was right; it was her tea. Just on the verge of scalding, she blamed it for the way her body was warming up.
“I wanted to thank you for the other day, but if you have a problem with my drinking habits—”
“No!” She finally let the laugh slip, and he grinned in his victory. “I’m just naturally curious. Do you not drink coffee?”
“I drink coffee.”
“Just not at seven AM?”
He gestured haughtily with his cup, and he said, “I drink my coffee at six AM, and then I go jogging. When I can. Then I need a little sugar to perk me up, so naturally—”
“Hot chocolate?”
“Hot chocolate,” he confirmed. She nodded her head at the iced custard donut.
“And that’s also when the pastry comes in?” She asked.
“No, the donut is for you,” he replied.
She raised one eyebrow, reaching over to hook her fingertip in the groove of the plate. She dragged it over, ceramic rumbling against the table, and she inspected the donut. She was usually a jelly kind of girl, but this was definitely custard filled. Her haughty inspection faltered when she thought about the cream bursting in her mouth, thick and sweet and—
She was spending too much time with Skull.
“All this because I watched you eat pavement the other day?” She scooped up the donut, keeping her eyes on the shiny chocolate glaze.
It was his turn to laugh and her turn to preen, and he said, “It’s actually to buy your silence. I can’t have you spreading around my sad state of affairs.”
“I’m not much for gossip anyways,” Lucy said with a half-shrug. Whenever Lockwood monologued to her about the latest scandal, she usually got distracted staring at his lips moving.
“Then that’s all settled.”
He took a sip of his hot chocolate, and the memory of the taste splashed across her tongue. A girlish revelry squirmed in her gut—it was an indirect kiss! She was speedrunning a Hallmark movie right now, and she had a sneaking suspicion she was going to careen headfirst into a black painted circle on a brick wall labeled ACME.
At least the donut was good.
Without a pencil in her hand, she was tempted to shove the rest of the donut into her mouth instead of trying to navigate the next conversational stepping stone. Lockwood was the smooth talker, and George never seemed to mind an awkward silence, but the longer Lucy let the coffeehouse atmosphere hum between them, the longer she was going to have to spend stretching out her shoulders later.
“So what’s your—”
“What were you—”
They both stopped, and he smiled sheepishly at her.
“You go,” he said, and maybe it would have been polite to argue, but she wanted to know.
“What were you recontextualizing the other day?” She asked. He blinked, his teeth working against the back of his lip.
“That’s what you want to know?” His eyes sparkled with the challenge, and she hitched her chin.
“It’s all I’ve been able to think about for weeks,” she deadpanned.
He shook his head, leaning back against the booth. His arms folded over his stomach, and he squinted into the distance like he was about to tell her about The War.
“I had a bad date, if you must know,” he said after an appropriately dramatic beat.
“You? Really?” She threw her hand over her mouth and drew in a gasp, and he shot her a withering look.
“I’m so disappointed in you. Have you been going to your meetings? Have you told them you’ve fallen off the wagon?” He said. “‘Cause that was fucking rude.”
Lucy laughed, bright and loud enough to make the screenwriting student at the closest table break concentration and glance over. She curled her fist against her mouth, stifling the titters, and she managed to say, “I’m sorry. You’re right. Very uncalled for.”
“And just when I’m being vulnerable.”
“I really do apologize.”
He held her gaze like it was something fragile to be inspected. The din of the coffee shop faded, the world tightening in on their small corner booth. His eyes were so blue.
“Well, I guess I accept your apology,” he said finally. “Where was I?”
“Bad date,” she breathed, and he nodded.
“Bad date. I dressed up, took her somewhere nice, but it turns out she wasn’t really expecting all that…” His hand flopped out as his mouth slid into a grimace.
“You mean you didn’t take her out for tea in your footie gear?” Lucy asked, bumping his ankle under the table, and his frown got more exaggerated.
“Look, you’re doing it again. You were so nice to me when I was injured on the ground, but I bring you a donut, and suddenly—”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Lucy said, poorly hiding her smirk behind a sip of tea. “She wasn’t expecting pomp and circumstance? I guess she just wanted a hookup, then?”
“I was always taught women like to be wined and dined. Does that make me old fashioned?”
“Undoubtedly,” Lucy said, and his bottom lip shrugged up.
“Any advice for this old man?” He asked, tilting his head in a way where the still damp strands of his hair sparkled under the lights.
Try it on me this time.
It almost slipped out. It would have been perfectly acceptable. After all, he was a cute, single guy who bought her tea and a pastry, and he was sitting here talking with her like they’d known each other for years. Nobody would blame her for lining up her shot and pulling the trigger. Honestly, he stepped right into her sights, practically slathered a bullseye across his chest.
But.
She could still keenly feel the grease on her scalp and the holes in her tights where her thighs rubbed together. That drawing of Lockwood lingered in the graphite on her fingertips, with his warm smile and the creases at the edges of his eyes. If she went to the doctor and got her blood tested, Lockwood and George would show up and get flagged for being too high in their concentrations.
She couldn’t just ask a regular coffeeshop guy on a date, could she?
“What app are you using? You’ll find different people with different things they want,” Lucy said, putting away that conversational gun and picking up another one. “What do you want?”
He frowned at her, but his eyes slid away, considering the question. His lips fidgeted against each other, and she had a hard time not imagining how they might press against her own.
Maybe she was just desperate.
“I don’t want something casual,” he said after a moment. “But I do want something… simple.”
“That describes exactly no relationship I’ve ever heard of,” Lucy deadpanned.
He rolled his eyes and said, “Fine. I want to take someone out and buy them flowers and have sex, but I don’t want to get married or anything.”
It was like he was built in a romcom lab, and he’d only just recently escaped. Lucy had to be strong.
“You should look at reviews online. There’s a dating app for everything these days,” she said, taking solace in a warm gulp of tea. The donut wasn’t getting any fresher, either, so she went after that next.
He pulled out his phone and squinted at it. Because Lucy wasn’t going to fall prey to the three act structure, she held her quip about his elderly eyes needing glasses. The light on his face changed once, twice, as he flitted through apps and tabs.
“I don’t play group sports by the way,” he murmured.
“What?”
His eyes flicked up to her as if over invisible glasses.
“This isn’t my footie gear.” His socked ankle knocked against her calf. “I just don’t like the way the rain feels when I jog.”
“You could, I dunno, wear trousers?” Lucy suggested, and crows landed next to his eyes.
“But then I would get too hot.”
You’re too hot already, Lucy wanted to say, but his phone screen still glowed with the promise of better dating apps, of people who weren’t already a hopeless case.
“Why don’t you play team sports?” Lucy asked, polishing off the last of the donut.
His head tilted, arms folding to rest on the table. She mirrored him, leaning forward and meeting his assessing gaze. He said, “People like me less after we play.”
Lucy shook her head, a grin sprouting across her face. George called her competitive, but that was only because he was so ridiculously competitive. They sniped at each other, sure, but it was nothing like the unholy rows Lucy got into back home with her sisters.
“Maybe if you came to some meetings…”
“Oh, because they’re doing so well for you,” he shot back, and she batted her eyelashes at him innocently which she definitely picked up from Lockwood.
“I wasn’t being rude. That was—was poorly executed friendly banter,” Lucy said.
“I’ll tell you what is rude.” He tilted his head, eyebrows wrinkling his forehead, and he said, “You haven’t even introduced yourself.”
Lucy blinked. He was right. They’d been friendly bantering almost at the level she had with George and Lockwood, but she didn’t know literally that first thing about him. It was so Cinderella, she could smash her face into a pillow and scream. She used her jeans to wipe the sweat off her palm, and then she offered her hand.
“I’m Lucy,” she said.
He reached up and gave her a firm shake that felt anything but businesslike, the tendons in his wrist flexing. He held her there, and he said—
“My name is Quill.”