The Story of Lansing Lotte (47 page)

“Looks like a party up there.”

I turned to look back over my shoulder and scaled the building’s exterior. There was no way to tell a party raged on the upper floor of the historical complex.

The man swayed a bit as I returned my gaze to him. When he looked over at me, his eyes were glassy in the darkness. A deep brown of liquid danger radiated from them; I should have been afraid. I would have been afraid, if I hadn’t recognized the face, despite the longer hair to his neck and the heavier scruff on his jaw. Arturo King was outside the building and he looked stoned.

I was trying to fidget for my phone in my pocket, wondering if I could text without looking. My mind raced with the mundane. Swipe to turn on. Enter pass code. Click on messenger app. It wasn’t going to work. I had all good intentions to notify Lansing, regardless of my feelings toward him at the moment, but I wasn’t about to pull out my phone and frighten an already spooked–looking Arturo.

He narrowed his eyes as he glared at me from head to toes. In another place, under different circumstances, I might have felt undressed by that look. I might have wanted to rip my own clothes off and let him have me, but I didn’t feel that way toward Arturo King. No, my body and my heart belonged to a man above us in the building, holding onto that man’s fiancée.

“I know you,” he slurred softly. I wondered, for the briefest of moments, why I was the only one not stoned or drunk. I could have used a stiff drink.

“I’m Lila,” I said, stepping toward him, reaching out my hand to shake his. If I thought he looked spooked a moment ago, he was downright frightened suddenly. He took a step back from my approach. I thought it odd, and noticed that both his hands remained in his jacket. He hadn’t even attempted to respond to me. He simply stared at my outstretched hand. I saw him swallow hard, closing his eyes momentarily, before opening them and looking at me. He swayed backward again and I reached for him.

“Are you okay?” I asked, but he flinched away from me.

I didn’t know him, but I recognized pain when I saw it. I had seen him on the street, full of hurt and questions watching Lansing and Guinevere exit that coffee house together. But the pain, there was something more, something deeper. It was the pain of a man deeply hurt. It was as if I had physically violated him by wanting to shake his hand. His eyes met mine and I knew he was trying to tell me something, but I didn’t know what it was.

My taxi pulled up and I made a move to walk around Arturo. His body followed mine, but he didn’t move from his spot on the sidewalk. I had just opened the door to the yellow car when he spoke again.

“I apologize. It was nice to meet you, Lila. I’ve seen you all over the city. Your father was a great man.”

I turned to look at him and his expression softened. He looked at me with sympathy, as if he somehow understood me instead of the other way around. I glanced back up at the building windows then looked at Arturo King. My heart sank into my stomach. Perhaps without actually meeting one another, we did understand each other.

I was pressed back to back into another person who crumbled, “Get the fuck off me.”

Shifting slowly to lay flat on my back, my head throbbed with the motion. I turned to find myself lying next to Tristan Lyons. If I had the energy, I would have sat bolt upright, demanding to know how he and I were in bed together, but I couldn’t move. I felt like I’d been plowed over with a garbage truck. My body was sluggish, my mouth a cottony mess, and the pain in my temples unbearable.

“What the fuck happened?” I sighed as it hurt to talk.

“You drank too much,” Tristan muttered into the pillow he laid face first against. His back was still to me as he had shifted onto his stomach. I noticed that he was shirtless and under the covers, while I was fully clothed and on top of them.

“How did I end up here?” I whispered, trying to focus on his ceiling and make the world stop moving.

“I tried to prevent you from a huge mistake,” Tristan mumbled again into the pillow under his face.

“What did I do?” my voice groaned, like I’d smoked a whole box of cigarettes. My mouth even tasted like I might have.

“You were hitting on Guinevere.”

My head rolled further on the pillow with a snail’s speed.

“No,” I groaned with hesitation.

“No,” Tristan replied in seriousness. “But you might have, if I didn’t see the look from that girl.”

“What girl?”

“The one who left you here.”

“Lila?” I tried to sit up, but my body resisted and I fell back.

“Is that her name? I couldn’t understand it as you moaned and muttered it all night long,” Tristan snorted.

“You just said I hit on Guinevere.”

“You didn’t hit on Guinie. You two had a fight. Something about the girl whose name I couldn’t get out of you coherently.”

“Fuck. What did I do?” I moaned, closing my eyes.

“Did you sleep with Guinie?” Tristan asked, his voice a little clearer.

I lay perfectly still, afraid to answer.

“Fuck,” Tristan muttered under his breath. My silence must have answered his question.

“Who else knows?” he asked next.

“Lila,” I whispered.

“Double fuck.”

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I groaned again, as I tried to roll my head on the pillow and swing my feet off the bed.

“No rush, dude. Lila isn’t going anywhere. I saw the way she looked at you. It’s the way they all look at you. Faithful for life.”

He was wrong. Lila was different, and I knew it.

When I was finally able to sit upright, I found my phone on the floor under my sweater, which looked like I wrestled it off. Unlocking the password, my phone sprang to life with several texts in a row from Lila:

Can you call me?

This is serious.

We need to talk. But this is important.

Please Lansing. I can’t tell you over a text.

Lansing. Please.

I need to speak with you. Now.

The texts were frantic and continued with a few more, all within an hour’s time. The hour I’m sure I was fighting with Guinevere. When I got to the last text, there were no more from her until the morning. That one was from Will Galehaut.

Your Grace? You’re an ass.

I knew I’d have some explaining to do. I just didn’t know what to explain first.

It was hours before I could move. I tried to text Lila, but she didn’t respond to any of them. Then I started leaving messages, which went unanswered. I finally made it home to shower, after drinking some strong coffee and forcing myself to eat at Tristan’s place. I hadn’t been that hung over since the end of summer, the morning after Arturo’s accident. I dressed into fresh clothes and suddenly noticed that my guitar had been returned to the stand in my bedroom. My eyebrows pinched as I looked around my room to find a pile of my clothes from Lila’s apartment neatly folded on my dresser. I finally saw the photo frame Lila made for me propped up against the wall beside the dresser.

What the…?

Lila no longer had a key. She had returned it to Galehaut the day she moved out. The day I’d kicked her out. I had a sudden sickening feeling in my stomach and it wasn’t the bile still churning from the alcohol in my system.

I raced through the hall and took the new elevator down to Lila’s floor. Exiting the lift, I found Galehaut with the superintendent of the building walking toward the stairwell.

“Will?”

“Your Grace?”

I trotted down the remainder of the hallway, while Will stood holding the door to the stairs.

“What’s going on?” I asked, knowing Will knew what I wanted to know: what was happening with Lila.

I’d never seen Will give me such a look before. It spoke volumes to his concern for me.

“You messed up big this time, Your Grace. Bigger than Elaine and the baby. Bigger than Layne and her death. Bigger than sleeping with your best friend’s girl.”

That was all he said to me. His eyes showed his pity. He felt sorry for me.

“If you’re gonna be a bitch in heat, I’m glad she walked away. She’s too good for that kind of treatment, Lansing. Even you are smart enough to know that.”

With those words, Galehaut entered the stairwell to follow the building manager, leaving me with even greater concern for what was going to happen next.

I stood before Lila’s door, waiting. I knew she was in there, but I also knew that my key didn’t work. The key I had coerced Will into giving me didn’t fit the new lock installed. I knocked, and waited, before I heard the soft patter of her feet, and then the double click of the deadbolt. The door opened slowly and before me stood my angel. Lila was a vision for my aching head and sore eyes. Her sandy blonde hair hung long and loose around her shoulders, as she stood before me in a long sleeved shirt and sleep shorts. She held one hand on the door jam and the other on the open door. Her stance told me I wasn’t welcome.

“Hey,” I started weakly.

“Hey,” she replied softly.

“I’m so…”

“Don’t,” she interrupted. I looked down at her, but she had closed her brown eyes. She wasn’t shutting down. She was closed off to me.

“Don’t apologize,” she said quietly.

We stared at each other for a moment. From her expression, I knew what she wanted to say to me. She didn’t want to see me again. I literally fell on my knees before her. In the hall, I knelt, staring up at her, pleading with her. Her mouth fell open slightly in surprise then she shut it and took a deep breath.

“Don’t do this, Lila. You’ve been with me through everything.”

“That’s true. I’ve been there for you. But I want someone there for me, Lansing. I can’t do this.”

“I need you.”

I reached for her. She didn’t exactly resist when my arms snaked around her upper thighs and my head pressed against her stomach. I tugged her to me and she hesitated before she ran her hands through my hair.

“I know,” she whispered. “I know, but I need someone too. Someone, who will be there for me. For Fleur.”

“I’m here for you,” I said into her stomach, rubbing my forehead back and forth, pleading with her in my head.

“No, Lansing. You aren’t. You have a lot going on. I get it, but I…I don’t want it.”

I looked up at her as her hands continued to rub through my longish bangs. Her eyes were closed, shielding her from me.

“Mr. Lansing?” The sweet voice of Fleur broke my stare of Lila’s beautiful face. I peered around Lila’s waist to see Fleur. She braced her arm against her chest in a bright pink cast.

I broke loose from Lila and addressed Fleur.

“What happened?”

“She broke her arm. Fleur wanted to show Herman her new outfit from you. She had on the plastic shoes and was spinning around in the lobby, when she hit a wet spot from the snow on the tile floor. She slipped and fell.”

“Is this why you texted me?” I reached for Lila’s hips, my favorite part on her body. “I’m so sorry,” I said, attempting to pull her close to me and breathe her in again. She was my lifeline.  I needed her. She needed me, and I was willing to give it to her. Whatever she wanted.

After waking next to Tristan, I’d learned that Guinie and I had fought about sleeping together. Guinie wanted to talk about what happened, while I wanted it to stay in the past. I wanted to leave a lot of things in the past. I had already taken a few too many shots to calm my nerves as I thought about my future, which stared me in the face when Josh Tucker pulled Lila in for a hug.

I had a sickening vision of Lila with Josh.
With
him with him. I imagined Josh coming to the realization that he had a daughter, an amazing daughter, and he would want her. He would want Fleur. Then, he would want Lila as they were a packaged deal. My blood boiled when he touched her, but my adrenaline skyrocketed to the roof when he said her sister was better. Dead or alive, I wouldn’t have believed it. I was never going to meet Sara Lovelourne, but I knew without a doubt that Lila was the better sister. She was selfless, she was kind, and I wanted her to be mine.

Guinie fucked me up when she started talking about us together. When she went in for a hug, I thought it was to show she understood it was over. I thought all I ever wanted was Guinevere, but I realized again, that what I really wanted was a chance at love. Love I thought I’d lost out on when I didn’t get Guinie, all those years ago. Love, I realized, was right under my nose as Galehaut liked to say.

Guinie and I needed to let each other go, like she had wanted months ago. We were only going to hurt each other, but more importantly, we were going to hurt Arturo and Lila, if we didn’t. I was ready for that, until I noticed that Lila had left. I thought she followed Josh out of the apartment. I had convinced myself that she went to comfort him when she didn’t follow me, and I drank. Too much.