Page 46 of I Love You, I Hate You
Gentle question: so you’re pissed at one guy and decided to go all in on another? That’s not maybe a little reactive?
@Noraephronwasagenius
It is 100% reactive and I don’t give a shit. I’ve had a decent guy in front of me all along, and I was too busy thinking with my vagina to give him a real shot. So Vagina Brain is on timeout, Real Brain is taking over.
@MadisonHughes95
We support you, boo
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@Lukethebarnyardcat
Getting ready!
@Noraephronwasagenius
Chapter Eighteen
Owen had never been more nervous in his life. Even taking the bar exam paled in comparison to this, the thought of meeting Nora in person.
He couldn’t believe his eyes when he opened up Twitter and saw her messages. She livedhere, not in Chicago, and she was a lawyer. For one heart-stopping second he wondered if she was Victoria, but the warmth and vulnerability exuding from her messages—and so soon after Victoria’s ice queen act in the parking garage—made that completely impossible. Her timing couldn’t have been better, either, as he had been dangerously close to pouring himself a vodka on the rocks and texting Victoria a few more choice insults that he hadn’t managed to get in.
But then Nora asked him to meet, and he could tell himself he didn’t give a shit what Victoria did with her empty, miserable life. His thoughts had strayed towards her more often than he’d like in the last few days, but now he had this date to drag himself back into a happier mindset. Sometimes he wondered what Nora looked like—he was betting on a blonde, although for no particular reason—but mostly he wondered how it would feel to be able to talk to her in person. A few months into their friendship they had stayed up almost all night, talking about everything and nothing until he fell asleep and dropped his phone straight on his face. He hoped it would be the same, and he had deliberately rescheduled plans with his sisters from Saturday to Sunday so he could spend the night with Nora if it came to that. Not sex, necessarily, but he wanted to be sure he had absolutely nothing standing in the way of his time with her.
He paced back and forth just around the corner from the coffee shop, too terrified to walk in. Snow dusted his hair and shoulders. What if she hated him? What if he didn’t live up to the sparkling wit he could manage online? What if the magic just wasn’t there, and he lost his closest confidante? He tapped the roses he’d purchased against his thigh, heedless of the obstruction he was causing to the people trying to walk past him on the sidewalk.Maybe the roses are too much. Maybe she won’t remember that we talked about how much she liked them. It’s not stalking to remember something someone said to you, right? It’s thoughtful, not creepy. Maybe. She’s going to have a pink rose on her table so it’s like, a theme, right?
Owen had a habit of getting a little clingy in relationships, as no fewer than two ex-girlfriends had noted. He could go a little over the top in trying to show his affection, and he wondered if he should dial it back. But then again, Nora knew him inside and out. She knew him at his most vulnerable, and he had to just believe that she would accept him.
He looked up, ran his hand through his hair, and squared his shoulders. But at the door to the coffee shop, his courage failed him again. He walked back halfway down the block, shook his head, and turned around.This is fucking ridiculous. Wait much longer and she might walk out.He crept back towards the building and paused at the edge of the coffee shop’s bay window.
Christmas decorations were out in full force now, despite it being barely November. Garland surrounded the edge of the window, and inside was a border of fake, sprayed-on frost. A faux pine tree took up the center of the shop, and just to its left he spotted a pink rose on the corner of a table. His heart stuttered.
She’s here. Oh god, she’s here. Of course she’s here, idiot, this was her plan. You’re the one who keeps chickening out.He needed to stop stalling and just go in; no need to make a scene. Victoria’s barbs from the parking garage had lodged deep under his skin. He was acutely aware of his more attention-seeking qualities these days, and he didn’t want to do anything to prove her right. But Victoria had no place here tonight. Tonight was about Nora; sweet, funny, insightful, kind, intelligent Nora. Victoria and her cold heart were a thing of the past. Nora was his present.
He squinted and craned his neck. He couldn’t see the owner of the pink rose thanks to another patron—a middle-aged woman with a sensible haircut—who seemed to be conversing with whoever was sitting at the table. The other patron shrugged and shifted her weight.Move, lady. Please. Just let me see her and then I can walk in, he thought, but then he got his wish and his heart promptly plummeted down through his feet and splattered on the sidewalk.
It was Victoria. He’d barely gotten a glimpse of her arm and profile before he spun away from the window to hide, but he’d recognize that long dark hair and sharp, elegant posture anywhere. Sitting at the table with an unmistakable pink rose was none other than the woman he’d yelled unforgivable charges at just four days ago.
Nora was Victoria. Victoria wasNora.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was a weird coincidence, and Victoria was there with a pink rose on her table in a random coincidence. He inched over, careful to stay behind the tree so she wouldn’t see him, and scanned the rest of the coffee shop. No other roses, and only one other woman roughly his age and she was there with two other men, all three of them grouped around a laptop. She clearly wasn’t waiting for him.
Which left Victoria. There was no other option. This was really happening. The door to the coffee shop opened and she sat up straight, her head whipping towards the tinkling bell. The woman talking to her moved away, presumably to her seat, and Victoria noticeably wilted when the new customers proved to be a college-aged couple. He watched disappointment etch itself in her brow, and she looked down at her phone as if checking the time. He was not quite ten minutes late yet, but if she was waiting on someone, that would be enough to put her on edge.
Reality set in. The woman he adored and the woman he hated and the woman he sometimes fucked were all the same woman, who wasalsohis main opponent in the biggest case of his career. He turned away from the coffee shop and leaned against the solid brick wall of the building next door. How was this possible? How could the woman he opened himself up to every night and most days also beVictoria? Victoria was fun in the sack and, fine, maybe they had been getting closer lately and maybe he thought he was falling for her, but she had proved just this week that it wasn’t that deep for her. She saw him as a good lay and that was it, while Nora made him feel understood. And yet they were the same, and his brain could not process that fact. Would not process it, even. He roundly rejected it, because it just simply wasn’t possible.
His phone buzzed with a notification.
@Noraephronwasagenius
I know it’s only been ten minutes but I’m a little jittery here. Everything okay? Traffic? Car trouble?
Owen fought the urge to throw his phone into oncoming traffic.Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.He had to make a decision. Nora was waiting on him.Victoriawas waiting on him. He could walk in there and see how it went, try and figure out how the hell he’d gone and fallen for a version of her that Victoria never bothered to let him see. He could walk in and yell those last few insults in her face, because the petty, competitive side of him was furious he’d let Victoria get the last word, but that would probably leave her wondering where the hell Luke was, and he just didn’t know if he could bring himself to admit to her face that it was him.
A new, horrible thought occurred to him. What if, knowing that he was Luke, her opinion of Luke changed forever? What if she hated him-as-Owen enough to start hating him-as-Luke? Even worse, what if she was disappointed? What if he walked through that door and her face fell? He would probably never fully recover from that, quite frankly. He wasn’t exactly taking this news well, and he had the ability to hide his face from her while he processed it. Nora-Victoria would have no such luxury, and he knew both women well enough to know he would be able to pinpoint the exact second reality set in.
And disappointment was inevitable. With the way he and Victoria had left things, there was no way she wouldn’t be upset. That was probably a best-case scenario, even. She’d probably be upset, and hurt, and a dozen other emotions that were swirling through his chest right now. He would have to see them all play out on her delicate, finely molded features. He would see her face fall and then contort into inevitable rage and betrayal, even though he hadn’t lied to her. Hell, she was the one who lied to him, and that realization stopped him cold. He had straight out asked her if she had a Twitter account the night she made a joke that sounded like Nora, and she had said no. If she’d admitted the truth then, maybe he wouldn’t be in this position. They would have been on the same page so much earlier, and so much could have been avoided.