The True Love Experiment
: Chapter 17

I can’t even complain to Jess that this entire debacle just landed in my lap, since she was there when I very explicitly said I would take two ten-year-olds and a Sexy DILF Coach to a Wonderland concert. But the lines of people waiting to get into this venue are so horrendous I would love to have someone other than myself to blame. I check Instagram while we stand. I reply to reader DMs and dutifully avoid my inbox. But with every passing second the number of bodies around us grows. There are only eight entrances, and thirty thousand people trying to cram through at the same time. With no barricades or even any real signs about where a line begins or ends, the unending strings of people wind and weave, snaking around posts and crisscrossing with each other until we are essentially trusting that the person in front of us believes that the person in front of them is in the right place.

And going off the way his jaw looks tight, Connor is thinking the exact same thing. I’m sure he can see over most of the heads in the crowd, but I definitely cannot, and Stevie and Juno seem tiny in the middle of the giant mass of bodies, their eyes big and round with confusion. As the clock ticks down, there’s a vibrating undercurrent of panic, as if the crowd is sensing that Wonderland is about to take the stage and we are all potentially going to miss it.

I tug Connor’s sleeve, urging him down so I can tell him, “Put me on your shoulders.”

He leans in closer, not understanding. “I’m sorry, what?”

“So I can see where this line goes. I’m worried it’s a giant clump of people up there pushing their way in, and I am not letting our girls miss this.”

He doesn’t hesitate, crouching down into a squat, and with giggling Juno and Stevie steadying me, I climb on those broad, muscular shoulders. Connor stands seemingly without effort, sending me well over six feet into the air.

I let out a terrified squeak, clutching his jaw with both hands. “I take back every wish I ever made to be tall.”

Connor laughs. “Relax, I’ve got you.” He curls his hands around my bare shins, gently coaxing me to hook my legs back, tucking them under his arms. I’m now aware not only of the chaos ahead of us, but of the warm solidity of Connor’s neck between my legs and the unreal stability of his shoulders beneath me. I wonder if he feels the heat of me, too, and if he’s thinking what I’m thinking, which is how great it is to have his head between my legs.

I could obviously stay up here all night, but duty calls. “Okay, I’ve got it. You can put me down.”

He does, staring quizzically at me once we’re both standing again. “Helpful?”

“Very.” I put my hand atop Juno’s head and bend to meet her eyes. “I’ll be right back.”

And with that, I duck into the crowd.

Twenty minutes later, we are inside, holding beers in the small suite the venue executive who once asked to be called Doctor in bed booked for us, and watching a delighted Juno and Stevie dance on the glass-enclosed balcony to music being piped through the speakers before the show begins.

Connor is smiling at me like I’m a superhero, but really all it took was dragging the bewildered security team to the entry gate where an enormous cluster of people were cutting in line and wedging in ahead of everyone. Once they sorted that situation, concertgoers started filing in, happily organized.

“You could have been trampled,” he says now.

“Unlikely.” I sip my beer, wiping away the foam on my lip. “When I’m determined, I look much bigger. I bet I was at least six foot two walking through that crowd.”

“Aren’t you afraid of anything?”

I laugh when Juno and Stevie begin pretending to twerk. These tiny dummies. “No.” And then I reconsider, looking up at him. “Wait, yes. I’m afraid that at some point in the past I’ve accidentally FaceTimed someone while masturbating and they are too mortified and polite to ever tell me, so I will live out the rest of my life not knowing whether I actually did that but always suspecting that I have.”

Connor stares blankly down at me.

“What?” I ask. “Don’t you ever worry about that?”

He smiles, shaking his head as he tips his plastic cup to his mouth.

A rare flush of self-consciousness takes root. I know I’m a lot to take, and I suspect if Connor found me unbearable, he wouldn’t ever let on. He couldn’t. He’d grin and bear it, maybe just like he is right now. He has to put up with me because he wants this show to work, and he wants this show to work because if it doesn’t, he’s out of a job and likely has to move two hours away from his daughter, this tiny bundle of barely contained energy, dancing over there like a sparkler on New Year’s Eve.

“Sorry,” I mumble into my cup.

“For what?”

“The masturbation thing,” I whisper, and then add with a smile, “And the Kendall Roy joke at the soccer game. You are not nearly that broken.”

This makes him laugh. “Don’t be so sure. And now I’m wondering if I’ve ever accidentally FaceTimed someone during a wank.”

I look over at him, grateful at his attempt to ease the tension, but emotionally obliterated by the mental image that’s now being projected in HD in my brain.

Connor shrugs, taking another sip of his beer, and affection clutches at me as I register yet again how easy he is to be around and how much I genuinely like him.

The words are out before I’ve given them time to marinate: “Sorry about the other night, too.”

“The oth— Oh.” And now tense awareness falls like shrapnel from the sky. Connor contemplates something in the distance, squinting. “Yeah, no. You don’t have to apologize for that.”

“Yes, I do.”

I do everything I can to not fill the answering quiet with jokes or innuendo or even remarks about the weather. I just stew in the awkwardness of it, wanting him to know that I’m capable of gravitas and sincerity, even if I am outwardly terrible at both.

“I declined for several reasons,” he says finally, and my mortification bottoms out to dungeon levels.

“Please don’t feel obligated to list them.”

He turns to face me, expression sober. “But none were because I wasn’t interested. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear.”

“Oh.” I have to break eye contact from those hypnotic, fresh-leaf eyes. Suddenly my brain is nothing but the static white noise of a thousand sexy songs blaring over each other. Connor has no idea that he’s toying with barely controlled fire, that flirtation is my love language, and that I haven’t gotten laid in a very, very long time. Frankly, I was just being polite by apologizing.

“Tell me about Jess and River,” he says, blessing us both with an escape route. “How do you know them?”

“Jess and I have been friends forever. River used to come into our coffee shop every morning and they’d do this whole Pride and Prejudice flirt-but-not-flirt thing. It was entertaining but ultimately exhausting. I forced her to do the DNADuo. I’m telling you, if it wasn’t for me, she’d still be single. I should get a replaceer’s fee.”

“I wasn’t really paying attention to the technology yet when the company first launched,” he says, “but they had a very high match, right?”

“Diamond—a score of ninety-nine, in fact, still the highest score in company history. The executives actually paid her to get to know him. Honestly, I couldn’t have written a better happily ever after myself.”

I make the mistake of letting my eyes wander down the length of his body. He seems strangely fidgety, and when he pulls his sweater up and over his head, folding it on the back of his chair, my brain short-circuits for at least a second.

A new emotion invades my blood: soft fondness. I blink at his chest and the five grinning male faces there beneath WONDERLAND in the branded, swooping font. “You’re wearing a Wonderland T-shirt?”

“Stevie and I got some merch when you and Juno were stuck in that abysmal porta potty line earlier.”

I laugh-whisper, “Merch. You’ve got the lingo.”

He grins at my slack-jawed awe. “We are on a quest, right? A quest for joy? Do I not need to attain certain knowledge?”

For a beat, I’m speechless. I have a tight feeling in my chest, like twine around my lungs, seeing him in this T-shirt. And not just wearing it, but proudly wearing it. I’ve agreed with Jess about how hot it is that River is such a good dad to Juno, but it’s a truth I can’t look at straight on. I celebrate it for her obliquely, on the sidelines. I want a family, of course, but who knows what that will look like for me. The meet someone + love someone + be together long enough to want to have a kid together math isn’t really mathing for me. I assume my role is being the auntie everyone comes to when they need to learn how to do the perfect winged eyeliner, hide a hangover from a parent, or cry about their first broken heart. I think every child needs someone who adores them unconditionally but is not biologically obligated to. Being attracted to a proud dad is doing weird, painful things to my breathing.

It’s only attraction, I remind myself. Don’t make it into a big deal.

“I didn’t realize their merch sizes went up to giant,” I say, pushing my voice out past the cork of emotion in my throat. I make the mistake of reaching out to touch the shirt absently, curiosity guiding my movements, and realize how firm his body is underneath. “At least this one doesn’t look like it came from the kids’ department.” Holy bicep. I jerk my fingers away like he’s on fire.

“The sizes are confusing,” he admits.

I take a small step back, willing my skin to cool down. “I bought a shirt in women’s large a while ago thinking I’d have something to sleep in. It fits me like a wetsuit.”

He laughs. “I assumed that’s why this one was available. The woman said it was the last size to sell out. Most of their fan base—” He holds up a hand to stop me from correcting him. “No. I thought everyone would look like Stevie and Juno.” Connor motions for me to follow him to where the girls are standing at the edge of the suite, overlooking the crowd. We see a group of women fully decked out in Wonderland merch below us. The suite to our left has three thirtysomething couples, standing at the ledge like we are, laughing and sipping cocktails. The one to our right has a group of teenage girls and a lone dad scrolling on his phone. And throwing my gaze out farther I see a large group of women of all ages, a group of men in LED necklaces singing along to the preshow playlist, a pair of white-haired older women taking photos in front of the giant screens. “It looks like one of your signings,” Connor says.

“Just a little bigger,” I say, laughing.

“Only for now.” He looks over at me, his eyes dropping only briefly to my mouth. “Once the world sees you, Fizzy, they’re going to fall in love.”