My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren
chapter twelve
reid
The minute I see Daisy in the restaurant, all coherent thought slips out of my head. Her photos don’t lie: even from across the room there’s something almost magnetic about her. She’s beachy-casual in a sleeveless shirt and skirt; she seems cut from the pages of a catalog. Even so, Daisy shrinks a little under the focused attention of the number of men who turn and watch her while she searches for me. I told her I’d be wearing a blue-checked dress shirt, and I’m relieved to see her eyes light up when she spots me.
I get a slight sour tang in my mouth because as she approaches, I feel that ever-present shadow of Millie in my thoughts—and the sex we had only three nights ago—and the twin shadow of Cat and the authenticity I find in those messages that I can’t honestly find anywhere else.
I’m not a juggler—I’ve never been a juggler—but the easy attraction and fun I have with Millie seems to crumble when we try to talk about real things. I can’t tell if Cat and I would have the same level of chemistry in person, even if our conversations feel infinitely deeper.
And then there’s Daisy. Sweet, beautiful . . . and right here.
I reach to shake her hand but she embraces me instead, pulling me in for a tight hug. Her breath is warm on my neck, her blond hair tickling across my cheek. “I’ve been so nervous!”
“Absolutely no need to be nervous,” I say, stepping back.
“I know.” She pulls out her chair. “I guess I’m just so glad you were telling the truth and you’re not, like, eighty and enormous.”
This bounces around inside my cranium. I can only say, “No . . .”
The waiter approaches, and Daisy orders a rosé, I order a scotch, neat, and my stomach slowly climbs into my throat while I wait for all my opening questions to come back into my head. But all I can hear is the mental peanut gallery of Ed protesting Daisy’s fat phobia and Alex reminding Ed that Daisy has nice stems, and Chris ignoring all of it. Mental Millie is gone; she must have disappeared as soon as I registered my own relief that Daisy was indeed beautiful.
We start speaking at the same time: “I hope traffic wasn’t too bad,” I say, just when Daisy says, “I heard this place is so good.”
And then we do it again. “It is really good,” I say, just as she says, “No, it was fine.”
“Oh,” she says, “go ahead.”
I clear my throat awkwardly. “No, no, I was just saying that they do have good food here.”
She nods, smiling around at the maritime décor. “Cool.” Daisy unrolls her napkin and puts it in her lap. “I used to have a beach theme in my bedroom, like shells and stuff.”
“Oh?” I take an enormous gulp of water, cooling down the path from tongue to stomach as it begins to dawn on me that Daisy and I have zero chemistry whatsoever.
“Like, when I was a kid. Some fish nets, shells—I already said that, oh my God—and, like, everything was painted blue. Blue walls, blue bed.” She pauses, looking at me like it’s my turn to speak. I have no idea what to say. Finally, she adds, “Blue dresser. I wanted to be a mermaid.”
“Oh.” I nod, smiling as I struggle to shush the part of my brain that wants to point out that a mermaid probably wouldn’t surround herself with nets. Or a dresser. I mean, if mermaids were real. I clear my throat. “I bet that was . . . fun. I had the same boring red comforter from when I was seven until . . . well, it’s still in our guest room at home.” I try to ease the tension with a joke. “Maybe I wanted to be a fireman.”
Okay, that didn’t work.
Silence stretches a mile in every direction. Mental Millie returns, lifting up her cocktail for a sardonic toast and letting out a long, throaty laugh. She says saucily, Oh, I’m familiar with that comforter.
“So.” I desperately tread water. “You’re a student at UCSB?”
“Early childhood education,” she tells me, and then thanks the waitress when our drinks are delivered. “I’m almost finished and will work at the Bellridge Preschool Academy starting in the fall.”
I have questions about a “preschool academy” but let them go for now. I mean, at least she seems focused, directed. “You’ve already got a job lined up?”
Daisy nods. “I know the owner, she’s really great. Tons of hot dads there, too,” she says, and then laughs.
“Oh . . . that’s . . .” I lift my scotch, take a slow sip. “That’s good.”
Daisy chugs a few gulps of her wine. “I don’t know why I said that.” She throws her hands in the air. “I’m on a date with you, talking about hot dads.”
I wave a hand. “We’ve all done it.”
Daisy laughs again and shakes her arms out. “I haven’t been on a first date in a while.”
“That’s okay—”
“I didn’t mention this before, but I broke up with my ex, Brandon, about six weeks ago, and I swear he’s probably dating every girl he meets, but I was never like that. I think that was part of what drove him crazy, that he thought I was really social—because we met at a party?—but really I just don’t like big crowds, or whatever, and he always wanted to go out and rage. I’m so over that, it feels so undergrad, you know what I mean? We were together for four years though, so.”
I dig around in the mental fracas, searching for something to anchor to here so I can craft a decent reply, but Daisy continues before I’m capable. “Anyway, I tried this IRL thing and it’s so easy to, like, talk online but then being here in person and you’re like—ahh!” She mimics being surprised, with wide eyes and a round mouth. “Like you’re so hot.” She takes a giant gulp of her rosé and then speaks after a rushed swallow, “But also sort of quiet?”
I feel like I’ve been run over by the train in this wreck, and it takes me a second to register that this time she really is expecting me to speak. “I’m quiet?”
“Are you? I mean, you seem quiet.”
“I’m not usually. Just . . .” I let the thought fade out. I’m floundering. I’ve never had to put someone at ease so . . . actively. I almost want to just tell her maybe we should try this another time.
“Brandon was the talker in our relationship,” she says, her face glowing pink. “Or, I mean when we were alone we both talked, but when we were out he did the talking and it was sort of nice. Not that I don’t like to talk. I do. I’m just bad at it.” She laughs at herself, and then looks helplessly down at the table, maybe like she might find a Xanax there. “Obviously.”
“You’re not bad at it.” Holy shit, I could not sound more disingenuous if I tried. Gesturing to our menus, I ask, “Should we take a minute to figure out what we want to order?”
Daisy looks quasi-mortified. “Sure.”
The two minutes that we peruse the menu in silence are torture. Absolutely the most awkward, loaded two minutes of my life. I can feel the pressure building in Daisy, almost like she’s going to explode without conversation happening.
The waitress comes to take our order, and afterward Daisy immediately excuses herself to use the restroom. I am praying that she’s texting a friend to help get her out of this date.
I pull out my phone, texting Chris.
Zero chemistry.
What?
With Daisy. I mean, it’s immediately clear why she’s single.
God, that sounds terrible.
I just mean—she’s incredibly nervous and talking a lot about the ex.
Man seriously? That sucks.
She’s hot. But there’s just no vibe at all and she’s so nervous it’s weird.
OK gotta go.
I expect her to be right out, but I wait a couple of minutes, then five. Our waitress brings bread, and I absently nibble a slice, waiting.
Another few minutes pass, with no sign of Daisy.
With twitchy fingers, I reach for my phone again. Other than a final message from Chris, a simple Later, there’s nothing. No emails. No voicemails. My thumb hovers over the IRL icon.
I open it, drawn to the red 1 beside my inbox.
It’s from Catherine.
Slowly and covertly, I scan her latest message. It’s long and personal—and a little rambly—but once I finish it, I go back and start again.
It’s like word vomit, but even so it’s pretty fucking endearing. Am I really this hungry for such bald honesty? Probably a little. I love my friends, but sometimes feel like we don’t go very deep, and whenever I read a message from Catherine, I feel like I’m gulping down water, or shoveling chips in my mouth. I devour it.
“Reid?”
I look up, and the schmoopy grin on my face cracks, fading. I’ve been sitting here reading a message from one woman, on what I’m pretty sure is visible as the app where I met this woman, and I have no idea how long she’s been standing at the side of the table.
With her purse slung over her shoulder.
Quickly, I stand, too. “Daisy. Are you okay?”
She shakes her head. “I’m not feeling great. I think I just got myself so nervous about tonight.”
I look for the lie, but don’t find it. Anyway, if she wanted to lie she probably would have said her friend needs an emergency pickup, or her dog had a seizure.
“What can I do to help you feel less anxious?” I ask her, and I can’t tell if the urge to calm her is because I was busted reading a message from Catherine, or because she looks so genuinely vulnerable. “I get it, I do. I’ve been out of the game for a while, too. But I’m the same guy you’ve been talking to online.”
“You’re the same guy who’s been talking to a lot of women, I guess.” She nods to the phone still clutched in my hand.
“Aren’t we all?” I ask her, gently. “I mean, we’re all on these apps . . . dating . . . But I’m sorry. That—checking my phone—wasn’t a very cool thing to do while you were in the bathroom.”
“No, it’s fine. I was gone for a while.”
“It’s okay—”
“I think maybe I’m not ready.” She takes a step toward me, like she might hug me again, and I can almost see the thought process pass over her face, how she started the date with a hug, and it went south so quickly, and she really doesn’t want to do that again. Daisy stretches out her hand to shake.
“I’m here if you change your mind,” I say, releasing her hand.
But as she turns to walk out of the restaurant, I know it’s not really true.
I don’t get up and leave right away. In part because I feel like I have to linger after she leaves in case she’s sitting in her car freaking out, and in part because I’m actually super hungry and the chicken piccata sounded fucking awesome. In the end, I eat my dinner alone, ignoring the questioning glances from my fellow diners because there are two dinners in front of me. When I finish, I have them pack up Daisy’s linguini to take home.
But when I get out to my car, I realize it’s only nine; I don’t want to go home yet. Any hopes about tonight being the answer to my Catherine/Millie conflict are totally deflated because Daisy was a terrible fit for me. I like having sex with Millie. I love being around her. Her loyalty, her wit, and the small ways she knows exactly when we need to be buoyed speak to the depth of her intelligence. But I can’t stand how she lives in a Teflon bubble and doesn’t trust any of us to carefully handle her more delicate truths. Or more depressingly: the thought that—emotionally—she doesn’t actually go a whole lot deeper than what I’ve seen. I honestly just can’t believe that about her.
I’m not sure why I drive straight there. I mean, before all the sex, it would have been natural to come over after work, or after a bad date. We’d pull off our shoes and put our feet up on her coffee table and watch a movie or have a couple of beers and play cards. I didn’t need more than that from her; it was perfect.
But now it feels like there’s something else to be had, which makes me not only want it, but feel like I’m starting to need it.
I wonder whether, after the first time we had sex, if one of us had said, “I’d really like to try having a relationship,” that would have changed everything and I wouldn’t be weighing the balance of her sexual availability against her emotional intimacy so much. What is it about talking to women online and evaluating interactions that makes a checklist appear in my head, giving equal weight to all these things, forgetting that we all have strengths and weaknesses, and that no one comes into a relationship fully grounded?
I don’t have a plan in mind. I park, I walk up her steps, I knock. I think maybe I’ll turn tonight’s Daisy Disaster into a comedy show or ask Millie to mull over these existential dating questions with me, but there’s something about her face when she opens the door that throws me. It takes a couple of seconds to register that she’s relieved that I’m here on her porch—that I didn’t go home with Daisy.
Her cheeks go pink—I can tell she’s a little tipsy—and she touches her ear and then tucks her hair there, and I scramble back in time, trying to remember when I first noticed all these little things about her, like the tiny dimple she has at the corner of her mouth, and that her left eye is a few shades darker than her right, and that she breathes through her mouth when she’s nervous.
We’re just standing there, staring at each other, and then she cracks and her smile breaks like the sun coming out, and it makes me laugh, too.
“So it was terrible?” she says. She’s giddy.
“Awful.”
Her hand comes up to my chest and curls, making a fist around my shirt, and it’s like being in an old movie, being pulled in by the scruff, door slammed behind me.
“Seriously?”
I smile against her lips. “Does it make sense if I say that I felt like I looked at her and saw all of her, in a single glance?”
She pulls me down again, more eager now. The first time, we were sweet, tender, talking. The second time was heat and passion and that sense that we were working something out of our systems. But tonight, it’s urgent and immediate: Her mouth comes over mine the same moment she starts to lift my shirt up. I probably have her shirt unbuttoned and her jeans on the floor before my car engine has even cooled outside.
We’re naked, stumbling down the hall before giving up and leaning into the wall, where I lift her up, holding her, taking her in a breathless flurry of movement. I keep moving until she comes, until she’s a boneless, soft weight in my shaking arms.
Carefully, I set her down, kissing the crescent-shaped scar on her shoulder.
“Did you come over here for that?” she asks with a sleepy drawl. Her fingers trace the side of my face and I can’t seem to help myself, I lean into the touch.
“I came over here for you.”
There’s so much truth embedded in my words that I’m surprised when she laughs, a single, breathy chuckle. It’s either disbelief or relief.
“What are we doing, Mills?”
She laughs again, pressing a kiss to my neck, sucking in the exact way that I like. That she’s learned that I like. We’ve done this three times now, it’s no longer just an accident. “Having sex, Reid.”
And it’s that—the condescending words, yes, but also the tone, so lighthearted—that hits a dissonant gong in my head. Her response is the verbal equivalent of a marshmallow, a Peep, something with shape but no volume. I wanted her to say something better, maybe even “I don’t know”—that at least would invite conversation, at least show that she’s as confused and affected by all of this as I am.
I step back, surveying her flushed chest, her weak legs and sated smile. Turning, I head to the living room, gathering my clothes as I go.
“You can stay,” she says behind me. Relief flushes warm through my bloodstream, until she adds, “I have to run to my office to grab a couple things, but you’re totally welcome to hang.”
At this, I actually laugh. “I mean, don’t get all needy on me, Mills.”
“Oh, no fear of that,” she says, and it doesn’t feel like a joke, it feels sincere. It’s as if she really doesn’t know why it would be weird for her to take off right after we have sex, without any emotional understanding, and expect me to just hang out here and wait for her to come home. In the past I would have gone with her, to keep her company in her office or do something at work myself, but she doesn’t want that or even expect it.
I feel half-oblivious and half-chauvinistic for assuming that recurrent sex with Millie would eventually mean more than sex to her, but I’m not sure it ever will.
“It’s cool, Mills. I’m gonna head home.”
My car door closes heavily and I let my head fall back against the headrest. Postsex, I feel like a well-used glove, a warm blanket, a body pillow. Soft and warm and sated. But inside, somewhere deeper, I’m a knot of angst.
I want Millie. I think I’m falling in love with her. And she just does not see me that way at all.
I text Chris.
You home?
Yeah.
Can I come over?
Sure.
His front room is lit warmly, and from the street I can see him standing behind his couch, facing his television, fiddling with something. He looks up when he hears my footsteps on the stairs, moving to open the door.
I don’t even let him get a word out: “I’m going to tell you some shit, and you cannot freak out on me.”
He glances at me, dropping the remote on the couch. “Oh, boy.”
“It’s about Millie.” I pause, and his eyes narrow. “And me,” I say.
“Millie,” he says, “and you. As in . . .” His brows go up. “Oh. As in, you’ve been banging her?”
“Three times.” I stop, wiping a hand over my face. “No, like seven times. But three separate occasions—”
“Wait, wait. You’re telling me there was a night where you had sex more than two times with Millie Morris?”
“The fact that I had sex with Millie at all is what I expected to be shocking.”
“What’s shocking is you’re fucking virile, son.”
I groan. “Chris.”
“I’m saying,” he says under his breath. “We’re not in our twenties anymore.”
I push my hands into my hair, wishing I could reach into my head just as easily and shift everything around until it made sense. “But she doesn’t like me that way.”
“She . . .” He scrunches his nose and looks at me with suspicion. “What?”
“I mean, no, no, she liked the sex—that was both of us—but she doesn’t want more.”
“You know this?”
“I sense this.”
He laughs again. “Oh, boy. I don’t think this is the kind of thing you can assume, especially where Millie is concerned.”
“How else would I figure anything out?” I walk deeper into his house, into his kitchen, fetching a beer from the fridge. “We have so much fun together, and the sex is . . . God, the sex is unreal, but when I try to imagine having an actual relationship? Where we talk about feelings and goals and fears?”
At this, Chris bursts out laughing, harder now.
“So you see what I mean.”
He nods. “Yeah, man, I see what you mean.”
“Then there’s Catherine,” I say, and Chris whistles long and low. “I’ve never met her, but online it’s like . . . we just click. We talk about everything—about family and work, and life. It’s good. I feel like we’d really vibe.”
“So, ask her out.” His tone says, What’s the problem?
“Tonight with Daisy was a bust. So I went right over to Millie’s.”
“Aha. And let me guess—”
I nod. “Yeah . . .” I scratch my chin. “I want to be with Millie.”
“So tell her that.”
“But if she isn’t on the same page, it will honestly make everything so awkward.”
Chris shrugs. “As opposed to now?”
I groan.
“Maybe you’ll want to be with Cat, too, once you meet her,” he suggests hopefully.
“I can’t really imagine wanting someone the way I want Millie. I just want Millie to be . . . more.”
Chris pulls out a chair at the counter and stares at the floor for a few long beats. “I don’t know, man. The Millie thing doesn’t surprise me, because I sort of assumed you guys hit it a while ago and got it out of your systems. But if you’re with that, and into it, I can’t exactly tell you to walk away just because Millie isn’t exactly the most emotionally deep person. I feel like maybe she could get there, with you.”
“So you do think I should tell her how I feel?”
“Then again,” he says, holding up a hand, “I’ve seen you after you’ve read a message from Cat. Why not explore that?”
“So you think I should ask Cat out?”
Chris looks up at me. “Do you need me to write out a flow chart? You can’t calculate your way out of this. Shit, Reid.”
I throw my hands up. “I just don’t know what’s the best decision!”
He stands and gets himself a beer, too. “What I think? Ask Cat out. See how it goes. If it bombs, either because there’s no chemistry or because you know you want Millie, then at least you know. You’ll have to tell her.”
From: Reid C.
Sent: 1:28 am, April 7
I can’t tell you how hard this last message from you made me grin—well, the end of it, at least. Not that the things you were talking about were funny, but the stream of consciousness is honestly refreshing.
I’m lonely, too. I know that feeling, and the energy threshold to do something about it sometimes feels insurmountable. Seriously, I get it so hard, even if I don’t necessarily think I’m bad at asking for what I need—I’m just not finding it anywhere. But it sounds like you have a good group of friends, and as someone in a group of friends myself, I can say that being needed is a really important part of feeling connected to people. I’m sure if you asked more of them, they’d step up. They might even surprise you.
And I’m so sorry to hear about your dad. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to my parents. You’ve lost your mom, and now your dad is sick—of course you’re feeling emotionally loose and filterless (even if I will never forgive you for the phrase “emotional diarrhea”). Ramble at me anytime.
All that said, your message threw my night into turmoil and I don’t know what else to do but to tell you about it. You’ve always been honest with me, so I’m going to keep being honest with you.
I was on a date tonight with another woman. I’m sure you’re talking to multiple people too, so I don’t feel the need to explain that away, but I’m sure you can understand that it wasn’t the right time to be reading a message from IRL (yours). This woman, we’ll call her D.D. (endless jokes), went to the restroom and stayed there for a while. I got restless, started reading your message and was absorbed in a second read when I realized she was standing there, waiting for me to look up so she could tell me she was leaving.
Suffice to say, it was awkward.
Afterwards, I went over to my friend’s house—I’ve mentioned her to you before, she’s one of my closest friends, and we’ve become a bit more than just friends in the past couple months. Again: going for honesty here. Well, we had sex again tonight but instead of feeling amazing afterward, I felt pretty terrible. I think my feelings for her are deeper than hers are for me, or maybe I’m hoping hers turn into something more, but we both know they won’t. She’s wonderful, and I feel like we know each other inside out, but then she’ll say something and it registers that I hardly know her at all, deep down. When I tried to ask her tonight what was going on with us, she answered the way I most worried she would: we’re just having sex.
I hope this isn’t upsetting you. Or, maybe I hope it is a little, because then it will mean that you feel things for me the way I think I feel for you. Despite wanting things to happen with this friend, I’ve also held a piece of myself back because I haven’t wanted to shut out the possibility that you’re a better fit for me. But not knowing you in person, and knowing her, it’s been easier to hope that things with her would start developing, start going somewhere. What if I meet you, and we have fun, but the connection we have by letters diffuses in person?
At the end of the day (and it is, the end of a very long day), I need to know. I’d love to meet, and have dinner and spend some time just talking together to see if it’s worth pursuing something. This isn’t an ultimatum, or a date meant to rule something out. It’s just needing to know whether the reason things haven’t slotted into place with my friend is because the right person for me is still out there.
Call me?
(805) 555-8213
—Reid.
