“Except me,” I say.
The corner of his mouth lifts into a half-smirk. “Except you.”
This man stood nose-to-nose with the most lethal person in the Coppola crime family and didn’t blink an eye, but standing face-to-face with a girl to talk about his feelings is hard. He’s turned his hair into a mess, running his fingers through it. He looks at my mouth, my nose, and over my shoulder, but he won’t meet my eyes.
“We can be friends, Wilder. Don’t avoid me. Stop acting like I’m invisible when we’re together. All I want is to be your friend.”
The words taste like garbage coming out of my mouth, but I throw them out to let him off the hook. We’re wasting time arguing about something as inconsequential as casual sex when Lydia and Talent need him at the office.
“I don’t have any friends,” he admits, and my heart breaks. Beautiful, powerful, and rich people constantly surround him, and he doesn’t think any of them as friends. Wilder must be so lonely.
“If it makes you feel any better, my only friend is a cutthroat madam who probably tolerates me more than she actually likes me.”
He interrupts the quiet night with his roaring laughter, and it’s as comforting as the sunshine inside his coat. If the tip of my nose weren’t frozen, I’d think we were standing in daylight. It would be wonderful to capture his warmth in a jar and light it with a match like one of my candles.
Wilder nods toward the pathway and drapes his arm over my shoulders, tucking me against his side. He’s a true knight in shining armor, defending me from mob assassins and cold autumn evenings.
“This winter is going to be a cold one,” he says conversationally. The weather is a safer topic than,remember that night when I came inside of you?
“This is nothing compared to where I come from. I look forward to a California winter.” I slip away from his embrace and open the front door, letting Dog run inside ahead of me.
Wilder lingers at the walkway, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Where’s that?”
“North Carolina. The Bible Belt. It’s a real hellhole.”
An hour later, Lydia calls to say she’s safe and that she’s decided to stay at Talent’s place. We agree to meet for coffee the next morning before my appointment with Mill Redding, a financial advisor who doesn’t have a nosy receptionist or a wife who can walk in on us.
Despite showing up fifteen minutes early, I walk into the downtown coffee shop and find Lydia already seated at a table in the back. She looks up from her phone at the sound of my heels tapping on the polished concrete floors and motions toward the cup of coffee she’s preordered for me.
“I wanted to beat you here,” I say playfully, joining her at the table.
Lydia isn’t a woman of many words, but I’ve learned that her eyes convey everything she can’t put into sentences. Today, her hazel eyes are more gold than green, and they say,in your dreams.
Indulgence wasn’t allowed in my father’s house. To indulge was gluttonous, and gluttony is a sin. Our diet was basic, meat and potatoes, and it didn’t include sugar or caffeine. Even when the other families at church filled up on donuts and coffee before worship, we resisted. But I loved the scent of coffee. The dark liquid’s rich, chocolaty aroma felt like a hug.
As an adult who can make my own choices and indulge in whatever I want, coffee is my sin.
“Drink your coffee, Camilla. Then we’ll talk,” Lydia says with a small smile on her red lips.
I lift the glass mug between my palms and inhale the scent of comfort through my nose before filling my mouth with the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had. It’s cool enough to chug profanely, but warm enough to still feel embraced.
“Wow,” I say, looking around to admire the exposed brick and industrial décor design. Antique bikes are suspended on the walls and plants hang from the ceiling. And there are cute little succulents on all the tables. “Where has this place been my whole life?”
“That’s what I said the first time I met Talent here.” A blended drink with whipped cream and caramel drizzle sits on the table in front of her, and her eyes darken at the mention of Talent. He’s the only person who affects her that way. “You weren’t happy with me when you left the office last night. I hope this makes up for it.”
“It’s a good start.” I take another sip. “But I don’t understand why you made me leave.”
Lydia sits forward and rests her chin on the palm of her hand. She stirs her drink with the straw, watching the whipped cream swirl into the caramel drink. The more she spins, the farther back in time she goes. Lydia’s right in front of me, but her eyes are far away.
“Hush is this living, breathing thing with moving parts. There’re so many fucking rules to abide by, secrets to keep, and cautions to take. It needs to be handled with care, because at its core, it’s fragile. We’re always one moment away from losing it all, like you saw with the Coppolas last night. Inez had the audacity to drop it in my lap and die.”
I wouldn’t dare reach across the table and take her hand, but I not-so-subtly cross my legs and brush my ankle against hers, so she doesn’t travel too far back alone. She stops churning whipped cream into caramel for a moment, but Lydia doesn’t shy away or reciprocate the brief point of connection.
“I resented Inez because she didn’t give me a choice. She found me, loved me, and never let me go. Then she gave me you, and I understood why. Now I’m not giving you a choice either.”
Sitting straight, Lydia drops the straw into her cup and pushes it away. She wipes her hands on a paper napkin, but the Great Wall of Lydia is going up stone by stone, and I find myself hanging on the wordsloveandchoiceuntil the wall grows too tall to scale.
“Camilla, you look for the light in everything. When you realize it can only be found within, I’ll let you go. You won’t want this life anymore.”
