He examined it closely. “That puppet looks exactly like her.”
“It’s a marionette. And yes, it does.”
He shook his head minutely, his lips curving up like maybe, just maybe, he thought I was the cutest fucking thing he’d ever seen in his life. “And her marionette is literally feeding squirrels.”
“I know.” I smiled wide and nodded my head excitedly. “I want to be exactly like her when I grow up.”
“Exactly like her?” he questioned in amusement. “With the look-alike marionette and all?”
“You bet your sweet ass, I do. I want to take it to the park and feed squirrels with it, too.” I took in his befuddled expression. “Wait…is that weird?”
“It’s probably the weirdest life aspiration I’ve ever heard anyone speak,” Reed said through a quiet laugh. “But it’s weird in an eccentrically adorable, Lola kind of way.”
“Reed Luca, are you sweet on me?” I whispered and placed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.
He smirked. “You bet your sweet ass I am.”
Ditto.
Column in hand, I opened the door to the San Francisco Journal and passed the receptionist with a smile on my face.
She looked at me differently, and I had to imagine it was because I was looking at things differently.
Lola had opened my mind to the fact that I couldn’t dismiss things as trumped up or falsified just because they excluded a portion of the population—especially if that portion included me.
Sometimes people are opinionated and bold, and that’s part of the glory of their personality. It’s how they function, how they breathe, how they move from one activity to the next, and Lola was one of those people.
But what set her apart and made her the woman who’d sunk her entire being into me and hung around was the way she did it. The zeal she had for nearly everything, and the honesty with which she approached it. She was herself through and through, even in the weird ways that most people didn’t understand or didn’t like, and she wasn’t afraid to align herself with people who were different.
She found comfort from within herself, rather than from the validation of the people around her, and hell if that didn’t make us two peas in a pod.
But her validation of me and my opinions… Well, that had become something to strive for. And the newness of that desire on my part really made me stand up and take notice.
I approached the Leech’s office so satisfied, so smug, so fulfilled in all the ways I really wanted, I almost didn’t notice the look on her assistant’s face. It took him sticking out a hand and planting it in my chest to gain my attention.
“She’s on a bender,” he warned.
I smiled. “What’s got her riled now?”
He winced. “You.”
My smile melted slowly. “Me? What did I do?”
He tilted his head and I laughed. “Okay. What’d I do this time?”
“Reed! Get in here!”
He raised his eyebrows and whispered his best wishes. “Good luck.” I had no choice but to meet my fate head on—not that I ever handled anything any differently.
I swept in the door and sat right down in the chair in front of her desk. “Hello, Rhonda.”
Her eyes narrowed at my innocent tone.
She didn’t even bother with small talk, and instead, held out her hand in wait. Suspecting she expected my column to fill it, I looked down to what pretty much equated to my heart in my hands and forked it over.
It was the second column agreeing with Lola’s, but more than that, it was a declaration of all the things I was terrified to give in to. Normalcy, love, long-term commitment—but mostly, the admission that I craved all of those things, lusted after them like all of the other “sheeple” I’d fought so valiantly to oppose.
“Reed This,” she read. “Sex really does say.”
Accusing eyes shot to mine, and I shrugged. It had seemed like a good title to me at the time.
“Either Lola Sexton is getting smarter, or I really am in love with her,” she read, her eyes peeking over the edge of her glasses with icy intensity. “The smart approach she took to intimacy with her readers buttered me up, and her wise words on welcoming life changes and embracing your natural strengths sealed my fate.”
She ripped her glasses off of her face and tossed the column down on her desk.
“What the hell is this?”
“My column,” I told her needlessly.
“I mean,” —she emphasized— “this watered-down, love-sick version of the guy we hired? Where’s the insight, the battle, the so valiantly argued flip of the coin?”