Chapter 15

15

Keye I've obviously hit a nerve, though, and while I didn't say anything that wasn't true, I don't like how quickly the night has soured. That I've done that. Will do that, if I dig my heels in and keep biting at him about the cost.

I snatch up a fork and carve a big chunk out of the carrot cake. A whiff of walnut teases my nose, complementing the smell of coffee in the air. "So did you buy the entire bakery, or are there some left for when it's my turn to buy the next round?"

Lloyd eyes me warily, searching for the barb in my words, but finally a smile crosses his face. I watch the tension lift from his shoulders and I feel a little lighter, too. He collects his own fork, along with a chunk of the chocolate cake.

"Bold of you to assume there'll be a next round," he declares, with a little too much gusto. "I don't know about you, but I think I'll be too full after this lot to manage more cake."

"Next time, then."

His full-wattage smile dims, but in a way that softens it into something more real. Almost tangible. It spreads through my chest, warm and fuzzy, and I realize what I just said.

"Next time," he murmurs.

Conversation lapses as we sample the cakes and sip our drinks; I keep expecting the silence to get awkward, brace myself for it, but…it doesn't. We're cocooned by everybody else's chatter, the music wrapping around us like a blanket, cradling our little bubble into something calm and comfortable instead of accenting it. Lloyd reclines after a while, lounging more comfortably in his chair. I shift to lean one elbow on the table, my left arm resting against the wall, and turn slightly to face the stage better.

My knee jostles against Lloyd's as I move, and I get the same jolt of electricity as I did outside when our arms touched. I determinedly don't look at him, forcing away the curious thought of whether he felt it, too.

We're halfway through our drinks when we both reach for the lemon cake, forks clashing as we each try to get the generous scoop of icing on top, the tines snagging. Laughing, Lloyd takes my fork and untangles them—and then snags the bit with theicing.

I mock glower at him. "And here I thought you were the very model of chivalry, Fletcher."

He shrugs, teasing, "Maybe if this were a date, I'd let you have it. But it's not. Right?"

"Right." I shift in my seat, wriggling up a little straighter. "Obviously."

He helps himself to some cheesecake next. "I was kind of surprised to hear from you, though. Thought you said you had plans?"

I shrug. "Guess I felt guilty that if you didn't have plans, you'd just end up lurking around the office all weekend. I couldn't leave you to such a sad and miserable fate."

"Ah. So this is pity cake."

"Exactly." But I glance at him, comparing the polished guy across the table to the rumpled, distracted one I found on the twelfth floor last week. He did look especially cute in those glasses, too…. "What, um…what were you doing last week?"

He twists his mug around, tracing the curve of its handle with a fingertip. It's hypnotic. "Just, you know. Same as you. Working on some stuff. Lost track of time."

"Uh-huh. And the real answer?"

Something crosses his face, distant and deep down all at once. As though in recalling the answer, he found it buried away in some secret part of himself. The slant of his lips turns reluctant, disappointed. It's a lot, considering the answer is probably "looking at diagrams from the labs."

It disappears just as quickly as I register it. I blink and discover myself on the receiving end of a playful smirk and sardonic look as he leans over the table toward me.

"Ah, now I know why you wanted to meet me. Corporate espionage—isn't that what they call it? Trying to uncover company secrets to sell to our enemies, Annalise?"

"Enemies," I repeat, rolling my eyes. "Jeez. You realize you sound like a bad movie villain when you say things like that, right? You sell scooters. "

"We're revolutionizing the industry. Careful, bad-mouth us too much and I'll have to have ‘my people' deal with you."

"Color me terrified," I deadpan, but crack a smile when he laughs. Considering we talk a lot about ongoing projects at Arrowmile whenever he drops by my desk, Lloyd is being weirdly secretive. Which makes me think that whatever he's doing, it's more serious than filling time by hanging out at his dad's company while he takes a break from college. Unless…"Was it about college? Were you looking for a new course or something, because you don't like yours?"

Lloyd looks at me in open surprise, blinking rapidly and green eyes going large. At first I think he's surprised I remembered, but then he looks away and says quietly, "I can't say that's an option for me."

"What? But—but you don't like your degree, right? Law and economics? You said it wasn't really your thing."

"I've only done one year. It's…I might change my mind."

"Well, yeah, but you seemed pretty sure, that—" That night you kissed me. "That first time you talked about it. Why don't you just switch and do something else? Or leave? It's not like you don't obviously have a place at Arrowmile if you wanted it, so—"

"It's not that simple, Annalise," Lloyd tells me sharply.

And this version of him, I think, is a complete stranger. I get glimpses of the boy I kissed by the river when I see him in the office. There, he's a parody of the guy I met, those parts of him rearranged into someone else, but still there, somewhere.

But right now, I don't recognize him at all. His voice is low, with an undercurrent in it that's like a warning, and he hunches over his mug, cupping it with both hands. This boy who's always so much larger than life makes himself smaller right in front of my eyes, and there's a wild part of me that wants to grab his hand and yank him back.

"I don't get it," I press. "I mean, I know it's scary starting over or doing something new—I was terrified about starting this internship—but you could still change your mind. People go back to college and retrain to do something totally new when they're, like, forty, so you could do it at—what, nineteen? Twenty? It's not a big deal. I bet all you'd have to do is talk to the student services at your college or whatever and—"

" Anna. Just drop it, okay? It's…Look, whatever I said that night, I was—I was talking out of my arse."

That was maybe the only time I've seen you that you weren't talking out of your arse.

But I don't say that. I can't say anything at all. Retorts turn to ash on my tongue and my lungs become tight as I breathe in the pain of it— his pain, which seeps across the table, palpable. He hunches even more, scowling, but not at me, and maybe not entirely at himself either. A breath shudders out of him.

And my brain stalls as all I can think is that he called me Anna.

All those times I've bugged him about calling me Anna instead of Annalise, and now he finally does, it feels wrong. Twisted.

I miss the way he says my name.

I don't know this version of Lloyd—the tightness of his jaw or the angst in his eyes, the anguish that cuts his words into sharp, cruel edges.

Deciding to back away from the topic of college, I say more gently, "The others were asking if Will was going to be at the party next week. I don't know if Dylan or Monty got around to asking you; they never messaged the rest of us to say either way. He's kind of upstaging you, you know—the mystery man, all elusive. Everybody's wondering about him."

Lloyd's face eases into one I'm more used to. The corners of his lips tug up a little, and a laugh chuffs out of the thin, pressed lines of his mouth. " Mystery man. He'll like that. Think they'll be disappointed when they find out he's just kind of shy?"

"Nah. So he'll be at the party?"

Lloyds nods, shakes himself out, wriggling his shoulders like he can force them into a more relaxed position, before slumping back in his chair again. His leg knocks against mine again. I tuck my feet underneath my chair, out of the way.

"Yeah. Dad kind of expects him to show his face, so…But it'll be fun. It always is." He smiles, and this time, it's more sincere; it sticks. "You heard there's basically an open bar, right? So one year—we must've been fifteen, I reckon—Will and I are there, like always, and we sneak off during the presentations about the quarterly report and whatever and found this crate of beers they'd ordered. It was back at the office, then—the old office, it was way smaller. They basically just bought in booze and pizzas for everybody. Anyway, Will and I got completely crushed. I reckon we only had about four cans each, but, you know. We were kids who'd never really had a drink before." He laughs, eyes glittering in the soft yellow glow of the tea light on our table. "Will threw up. He was trying to mop it up before anybody could find out, and because I was drunk, I thought the best way to help would be to cause a distraction."

"Of course you did. Don't tell me you pulled the fire alarm or something?"

" That would've been smarter. No, I go up to where the head of HR is talking to everyone about some new mental well-being initiative they're rolling out, take the microphone off her, and start teaching everybody yoga."

"I'm—I'm sorry, what? Why?"

"In my defense," he says, still laughing, his cheeks pink, "she'd been saying something about the benefits of simple exercise like walking or stretching, and I just ran with that. My mom used to do a lot of yoga and Pilates and stuff, so I just copied some of the poses I saw her do. The best part was, everybody just went along with it. I'm pretty sure it was obvious I was drunk, but…" He shrugs, not looking the least bit ashamed or regretful.

Of course they went along with it. He's the golden boy, beloved by all. I bet, even then, he had everybody wrapped around his little finger. Maybe especially then, when he was a bit younger.

"How'd it go?"

He snorts. "Got everybody out of their seats and having a bit of a laugh. Plus, nobody ever found out Will was sick everywhere, so I'd call it a raging success."

"Your dad didn't even find out?"

"Ah. Well, yeah." He shrugs again, and takes a breath before smiling. "We've learned to handle our alcohol better since then at least, so don't expect any yoga-related shenanigans at the party next week—but you can let the others know they'll see Willthere."

"I'll do that. Hey, do you want another drink? We've still got a lot of cake to finish up…."

And I'm not ready for this night to end just yet.

Lloyd beams, handing me his empty cup to clear some space at our table, ready for another round. "We've got time. This place doesn't close till, like, two. Same again?"

"Same again."