Page 12 of Only Lovers in the Building

“Okay, cool,” she said. “What time?”

Noah rolled up to his feet and slipped on a rumpled cotton shirt. “Oh, you know, happy hour.”

Lily watched him stroll off and enter the building. Her gaze then skimmed the lines of the narrow building up to its tiered crown, a birthday cake with white icing and lemon-yellow piping. So cheery and quirky, nothing like her stern brick building in New York. She let out a breath and relaxed. She could be happy here.

Lily finished the novel by noon. Afterwards, she waded into the pool to keep from drowning in a sea of conflicting emotions. Max and Emma got their happy ending, but was it earned? She wasn’t convinced. Bobbing about on a pink raft, she applied analytic skills honed at law school to deconstruct the deceptively simple narrative.

Max and Emma are exes. They dated for a few months straight out of college.

Max breaks Emma’s heart when, on a business trip, he wakes up married in Vegas.

The pair reunites in Malibu, at the wedding.

Max is divorced. A changed man, he’s determined to win Emma back.

Spoiler: he does.

It was more nuanced than that, obviously, but Lily was stuck on one point. All Max had to do to regain Emma’s trust was admit to his mistake—in an emotionally fraught scene that brought Lily to tears, but still.

She climbed out of the pool and toweled off. Before heading out for lunch, she hopped on BookTap and crafted a quick book review.

@LegalLyon: 1/3 Chemistry eclipses common sense in The Sweetest Lie by Teresa Star. The only lie detected in this fiery romance is that people change. They don’t.

@LegalLyon: 2/3 Max is two margaritas away from waking up married in Cancun.

@LegalLyon: 3/3 In the end, this book still gave me all the feels. The chemistry between Max and Emma was off the charts. 4 stars.

She added a couple of hashtags, #bookreview #romance, and posted the thread.

After lunch, a quick trip to the grocery store, and a nap that stretched out far too long, Lily woke up with a kink in her neck and hair stuck to her cheek. Had she missed happy hour? She reached for her phone to check the time and . . . wow! BookTap alerts crowded the home screen. Apparently, her short review of The Sweetest Lie had taken off. Thrilled, she took the phone into the bathroom and scrolled through the comments as she went about the tedious work of detangling her hair.

@RoséAllDayyyy: LMAO!!! Love your take on this! Please review Blurred Lines next! Highly overrated IMO

@TheTrilogyGoddess: Exactly! Our girl is 2 tequila shots away from heartbreak!

@BookBae89: Ha! 4 stars?!!! You can’t be serious. It was MID at best. 2.5 stars.

Two and a half stars? Rude! Lily was insulted on the author’s behalf. What of the whip-smart dialogue and sexy banter that had made her blush? What of those lush descriptions of the California sunrise?

@Ben_Romero: You’re wrong. “Changing,” or evolving, is inherently human. Only those with limited insight into the complexities of the human psyche would fail to acknowledge this.

That caught her attention. Very limited . . . what? She read it again and again. Each time, her annoyance spiked. Who was this pretentious person? Were they calling her dumb? She noted the user’s blue check mark. This was a verified account, a BookTap VIP. Curious, she tapped on the handle.

Benedicto Romero

Literary Translation

Current Read: Miami, by Joan Didion

All opinions are my own.

Lily stared at her phone. The thumbnail photo was blurry, yet there were those keen eyes staring back at her. Unless her neighbor had a doppelgänger with the exact same first name, she could only reasonably conclude that Benedicto, the literary translator, and Ben, the bartender, were one and the same. Could it be?

She was about to find out.

Lily marched across the hall and knocked on Ben’s door. He was home, likely on the phone. She could hear him laughing. Irritated, she knocked again. He yanked the door open and, surprised to see her, smiled. She didn’t reciprocate.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.