Page 66 of City of Love

“A virgin Bloody Mary,” I say. “Because this was supposedly the bar where the Bloody Mary was invented. And I love tomato juice, so I thought it would be good.”

“Ew, yeah—you drink V8 all the time. Gross. But right, okay. So you ordered it nonalcoholic, but he gave you the alcoholic version instead?”

“Yes,” I say with a groan. “It wasn’t his fault,” I add. “It was loud in there. I think he just misheard. But the point is, I had two of them, and then Noel was teasing me about being scared to go up and kiss someone, and so I told him…”

I trail off, remembering vaguely what I said, and my cheeks heat.

“You told him…?” Jade says.

“I told him something about how I was a good kisser, and then I laid one on him. Right there at our seats.”

“Okay, well, that’s not as bad as it could be,” she says, her voice taking on an optimistic, rallying sort of tone. “I thought maybe you’d declared your love or something—you can’t take that back. But if you did it to prove a point, you should be able to brush it off.”

I bite my lip, playing with the hem of my sleep shirt. “You think?” I say.

“Definitely,” she says, and the conviction in her voice begins to calm me. “Besides, take the win; you kissed the guy you like! You’re a fearless queen.”

“Drunk Lydia is the fearless queen,” I say with another sigh.

“Either way, you did it! Now tell me about the actual kiss. Was it amazing? Because Noel looks like he would be a good kisser.”

“It was…pretty great,” I admit, a reluctant smile starting. “And I want to remember he seemed pretty into it. But it was only like three seconds or something, so it’s hard to say.”

“You should do it again,” Jade says, and I can hear the grin in her voice. “Sober this time. Longer than three seconds.”

I flop back on the bed. “We’ll see,” I say. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to kiss him again, but I would need to be sure he felt the same way. The Lydia of last night might have been brave enough to throw caution to the wind, but the Lydia of right now is very keen on not being rejected to her face.

My phone buzzes, letting me know I’ve got a text, and I pull it away from my ear just enough to see that the text is from Marcus.

“Hey, Jade, I have to go,” I say, a sick feeling sinking to the pit of my stomach. “Sorry for calling so late.”

“It’s okay,” she says. “I wasn’t in bed yet.”

I nod. “Well, thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye!” she chirps, and she hangs up.

I take a moment to just breathe before I open Marcus’s text. I’ll open it and then delete it. I might tell Noel, but I might not. I guess it would be a good way to distract him from the whole kiss debacle…

Okay. All right. It’s just a text. They’re just words. No matter how it feels, they can’t actually hurt me. Marcus’s words make me angry, they scare me, but at this moment in time, I’m safe.

With that in mind, I bite the bullet and just open the text.

But it’s not words. It’s a picture—of a part of Marcus I never wanted to see.

I shriek and throw the phone, suddenly wanting it as far away from me as possible. I don’t even want to touch it to delete the message.

None of his behavior is appropriate or in any way okay, but this? This is too much. He’s gone too far.

I thought I could handle this situation on my own, but I’m starting to wonder if I was wrong. Reporting him scares the innards out of me—which logically I know doesn’t make sense, but it’s just how I feel—but I have to dosomething.

I am a fearless queen, I tell myself, thinking of what Jade said. I don’t feel fearless, but that’s what courage is, isn’t it? Doing the right thing even when you’re scared?

“Lydia?”

I jump as I hear Noel’s voice accompanied by a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I call, sitting up. I’m suddenly not worried about the kiss last night; this is Noel. My Noel. And I just want him to hug me and tell me that karma will catch up to Marcus someday.

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