Look - Zan Romanoff Page 0,63
kind of. She knows that’s what her friends at school would say if she asked them. It’s 2020, Lulu. You should date whoever you want, duh. Get it, girl.
Instead she feels terrified. Liking Owen was so easy. There was nothing to explain about her sweet, handsome boyfriend. What more normal thing could a teenage girl do with herself than have a crush on a boy?
Liking Cass asks Lulu to expose something about herself that people might not guess just by looking at her. It also exposes Cass, because if this is real, Lulu has to think about how to integrate Cass into Lulu’s aestheticized, structured, constantly captured real life. And she’s not sure she wants that—that she’s ready for Cass to be public property any more than she’s ready for The Hotel to open up and become a place anyone can visit.
Does that mean she’s ashamed of her? That she’s fetishizing her? That she’s protecting her?
The questions swirl around Lulu so persistently that she can almost imagine them taking on weight in the air around her, thickening the darkness with their presence. Once again, something is happening that she doesn’t have a strategy for. She doesn’t know how to navigate it and keep herself and the person she cares about safe.
The difference is that this time she wants to let it happen anyway.
All she knows is that no matter how long she lies there driving herself crazy about what she wants, what Cass wants, what would be best for either or both of them, she stays anchored by the weight of Cass’s hand on her belly.
And she doesn’t set an alarm. She doesn’t sneak off, she doesn’t take her questions with her and disappear, even though she wants to. She falls asleep eventually. When she wakes up her cheek is pillowed on the tangle of Cass’s hair. Here they are, in bed together, she thinks. Here they are, in the light of morning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE NEXT DAY Lulu gets an email from ryanriggshotels. She opens it to find one of the fanciest email invites she’s ever seen. Even the gold edging on the graphic looks luxe, somehow; gilt-flecked instead of cheap and cheesy. Ryan is throwing a New Year’s Eve party at The Hotel.
She texts Cass a screenshot with the message, Does this mean it’s open
I wish I knew, Cass responds.
He didn’t tell you? that’s shitty
He didn’t tell me about the party at all
Which
I’m sure seems like not a big deal but again we used to tell each other everything
Have you told him about us?
It’s fine if you did I’m just wondering if maybe like
He feels like you have secrets so now he does too
I didn’t
Tell him
I didn’t know what to say tbh
Lulu doesn’t know how to respond to that. She types and deletes, types and deletes. Then she FaceTimes Cass.
When she answers, Cass is sitting in her backyard, under a tree that dapples her face with leafy shadows and makes her expression hard to read. “Hey,” she says. “What’s up?”
“I didn’t know what to say.”
“You called . . . to say you didn’t know what to say.”
“Yes. No. I called— Usually when I don’t know what to say, I don’t say anything.”
“That doesn’t seem like such a crazy strategy.”
“It isn’t. But it can be. Sometimes I don’t know what to say, but that doesn’t mean I—” Lulu comes up short. For all the language she’s learned in the last few months, she still doesn’t know the words for this.
“It doesn’t mean you don’t—” Cass says.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t want to say something.”
There’s a long pause. “I think I get it,” Cass says.
“Whatever you told him would be fine with me.”
“You sure about that? What if I told him you were the curse incarnate, come to seduce me and kill me and make me The Hotel’s most gruesome legacy?”
Lulu laughs. “Ryan doesn’t really believe in curses,” she reminds Cass.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ON NEW YEAR’S Eve, Lulu tries on approximately a zillion outfits. It takes her two hours to get dressed, in part because she has to run back and forth between the half mirror in her bedroom and the full-length one in the bathroom down the hall. Then she has to do her makeup.
Naomi kicks her out of the bathroom twice to pee during this process. “This seems very exhausting,” she says on her way out the second time.
Usually Lulu would take this for a veiled insult and make a rude, dismissive face at Naomi, but if Naomi wants to hear