Will frowns. “Oh?” he asks. “Who’s that?”
“Nick Harlow.”
Will flinches at the name before he can quiet the impulse. “Nick Harlow,” he manages, “is not my friend.”
Lilly raises one eyebrow. “Well, no,” she says sweetly. “I guess he wouldn’t be.”
“I mean it, Lilly.” He tries to keep his voice even, his fingers flexing once at his sides. “He’s not a good guy.”
That makes her laugh. “Meaning what, exactly?”
Will opens his mouth, closes it again. “Meaning,” he tries, struggling to think of how to explain it to her, here in the lobby atMajor Fantasticwhile her sisters don’t bother to pretend not to watch. “Meaning—” He breaks off.
Lilly smirks. “Yeah,” she says, reaching out and chucking the underside of his chin with one polished fingernail. “That’s what I thought.”
Will reaches for her as if by instinct, grabs her hand out of the air. There’s a jolt between them, sharp and electric; he’s pretty sure she feels it, too, judging by the way her whole body stills for a moment like a fox in the woods. “Let’s go somewhere,” he murmurs, before he can stop himself. “I mean it, Lilly. Fuck the movie. Let me take you somewhere.”
He’s not sure which one of them is more shocked. “What the fuck, Will?” she asks—laughing a little, her lush red mouth making a perfect O. “You don’t evenlikeme that much.”
“I don’t,” he agrees miserably, running a hand over his beard. “I don’t! You’re entitled. You talk too much. You’re, like, a full click too confident in your own cleverness—”
“And you’re a sanctimonious snob nobody has ever even heard of!” Lilly interrupts, temper flaring in her eyes as she yanks her hand back. “I cannot believe you, truly. Two seconds ago you’reasking me to bail out of here and go to bed with you, and now you’re telling me I talk too much?”
“I still want you to bail out of here and go to bed with me,” he says, too far gone to bother denying it, “and I don’t even know why. I mean, look at us, Lilly. You don’t like me, either. There are literally not two people on the planet less romantically compatible.”
“Post Malone and Phyllis Schlafly,” Lilly counters, like possibly she can’t help herself. “Nancy Reagan and Lil Nas X. My parents, conceivably.”
“Your parents,” Will groans, suddenly remembering. “God, your entire family is like something out of a nineteenth-century German farce. And, like, yeah, fine, conceivably you’re a marginally more serious person than your sisters—”
Lilly rounds on him, baring her teeth. “Fuck you,” she says. “I am exactly as unserious as my sisters.”
“No, no,” Will amends quickly, holding both hands up. “You don’t understand. I’m saying it as—”
“I know exactly how you’re saying it!” She pulls away for real then—color rising in her face, her dark hair wild. “Nick was right about you, Will, you know that? You’re an asshole.”
“Nick told you that?” Will blinks, stung and stupid, though he guesses he shouldn’t be surprised. “What else did Nick tell you?”
Lilly shakes her head as the overhead lights flicker. “Forget it,” she says—already turning away from him, the smell of mandarins faint in her wake. “I’m going to find my seat.”
“Lilly,” he says again; it comes out likeWait, but Lilly doesn’t, disappearing into the crowd without another word.
Chapter Fourteen
Lilly
Will was wrong about the movie, actually: in fact it features four exploding spaceships, plus an intergalactic car bomb and an extended slow-motion sequence of Charlie catching half a dozen fireballs to prevent them from hitting an orphanage. Also, it is three hours long. By the time they make it back to the house, all Lilly wants to do is shuffle upstairs, peel her dress off, and crawl directly into bed: Her head hurts. Her feet are killing her. And her neck and shoulders are crunchy and aching with a weird, black anxiety she can’t shake. She has no idea what Will was after with her tonight, sidling up to her in the lobby with his dopey jokes and interested expression. She was expecting it to make her feel good to be a jerk to him, and it did for a minute, but then he fixed her with that wounded, baffled look, like a dog who’d been locked outside in a rainstorm, and just like that Lilly wasn’t having fun anymore.Leave it to Will Darcy to be one of those people who can dish it out but can’t take it, she thinks darkly, except for the part where that didn’t actually seem to be what was happening.
Ugh, she hates him. She hates him!
But also, he did not look completely terrible in that suit.
She fully intends to climb under the covers with an episode ofGolden Girlsand forget this night ever happened, but when shedetours into the kitchen to pull an eye mask out of the freezer she spies Colin out on the patio. He declined Charlie’s invitation to the premiere tonight, standing in the upstairs hallway outside the dressing room and subjecting them all to a lengthy monologue about the scourge of superhero franchises and the flattening of the cinema landscape as they slithered into their shapewear on the other side of the door. From the looks of things, he’s still going at it, clutching a tumbler of whiskey and gesturing wildly at—
“Charlotte?” Lilly asks, sliding the door open and stepping out into the warm blue night. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi to you, too,” Charlotte says with a laugh. She’s curled in a lounge chair with her legs tucked underneath her, her red hair loose and lovely; she’s holding a glass of white wine in one hand. “I drove over to borrow my mom’s oldSilver Palate Cookbook—”
“And I was practicing my crow pose on the front lawn,” Colin pipes up.
