Page 96 of Lucas & Melissa Falling in Love
“Lissy,” she says. Then she stops, pauses a beat, and peals of laughter erupt. They come in unstoppable waves for several minutes. At my exasperated expense. I’m now cured of being ruffled. Nothing like a little humiliation to do that for a person.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that,” she pauses and wipes a tear off her cheek, shakes her head, “it’s just that you’re so naïve and inexperienced about some things.”
Appalled doesn’t cover how I feel about that judgment.
“Explain what you mean.” Pride has me speaking in cool, measured tones, returning to my former persona.
She takes my hands, takes mercy on me with her tender look, the one only she can carry off with her big warm baby blues.
“You’ve never been in love, you’ve never had a chance to feel that all-consuming passion before, so naturally it seems—”
“But I’mnotin love. I think I’m definitely in lust, though.” This is where I wanted to go with the conversation. I squeeze her hands because my best friend knows me and understands me.
“You’re not in love?” she says and there’s no doubt that she’s doubting me.
“I don’t think so. How could I possibly be in love? We haven’t known each other long enough. And there’s another thing, Mar, we have absolutely nothing in common.” I’m anxious to see what she thinks of my evidence on the lust vs. love debate.
“True, but those things don’t really matter as much—”
“Not if we’re talking about lust. I’m head over heels in lust with Lucas. I have no doubt.”
She shakes her head. “My theory is that the line between love and lust is very blurry. Maybe you can’t even have one without the other, just a little. Think about it. You may start with lust and then build to love. Or you may start with love and build the lust,” Margo says.
Trying not to wrinkle my brows, I think and draw a blank. She’s right about my inexperience with falling in love. Sometimes I wonder if I’m even capable. Maybe it’s a residual scar from my sketchy beginnings. There’s no way I’m going to share these thoughts with Margo, though I can see she’s getting ready to pry into my head.
“Lucas thinks it’s the love driving the lust but I think it’s lust driving themirageof love and I’m not sure I can trust it.”
Margo leans forward and says, “Go back and remember New Year’s Eve. When it came time to decide whether you would take your relationship with Will to the next level, to sleep with him. You couldn’t do it.” She pauses to give me a chance to agree with her and I nod.
“That’s when you realized you had to have Lucas. I thought that meant that you knew he wasthe one?”
She stares at me with her honest eyes, the cloud of blond curls haloing her gorgeous face. We’d joked in high school how we were bookends. She had the all-American blond cuteness with the bubbly, upbeat, mushy personality, and I had the dark glamorous looks with an edgier, witty personality. I’d honed the edge and put it to practical use. I was always the prepared and practical one where she’d always been the fun and creative one. We learned a lot from each other. We’d always been an inseparable team. I reach over and squeeze her hands in mine.
I felt almost as vulnerable as I did that day I called her when I was fourteen years old to tell her I was adopted. We cried together that night in my bedroom. My mother was a saint to let her sleep over on a school night in spite of my father’s protests.
“I didn’t know Lucas wasthe onethat night. How could I? We had only known each other for a week. He was a stranger. And I was right—there was so much I didn’t know about him.”
“It was all good.”
I loved her for leaping to Lucas’s defense. My mouth curved up in a half smile.
“You know George had him checked out, right?”
“What?”
“After you called us to say you were in Italy. Of course George knew who he was before that or he wouldn’t have let you leave with him. He’d seen Lucas’s photo in aCar & Drivermagazine featuring his family’s company. There was a photo of him as the so-called missing heir apparent to the dynasty.”
“What? And he—you didn’t tell me?”
“George didn’t realize it was him until he saw Lucas again on New Year’s Eve. He wasn’t sure and the next morning he showed me the magazine to confirm it.”
“And you didn’t call me immediately?”
“By then you were on your way to Italy and if you didn’t already know you would have found out quickly enough. George said he knew Lucas was going to tell you. Or we would have.”
“All that proves is that I’m a poor judge of character. I thought Lucas was a bum, a no-account art student with no ambition.”
“But your instincts were good. You felt he was so much more, you felt the connection between you, that same pride and ambition you have. You knew it was there deep down. That’s why you were in lust with him. That’s why you could be in love with him.” Margo sounds confident.
