Anything You Can Do

by R.S. Grey

Finding myself coiled around Lucas Thatcher like a python would normally shock me, but at the moment there are other emotions fighting for my attention. Fear and anxiety both try to wrestle for first place, but lust wins.

Lucas Thatcher has never owned me as much as he does in this moment. He has won, and from his smirk, he knows it—but he’s not greedy. He’s going to share the prize. He’s going to make me feel as good as he does.

Sometimes lying to yourself can be helpful. Therapeutic, even. But there are some moments in life when the truth is so white-hot that you don’t even have the choice to ignore it. It demands to be heard.

So ask yourself, Daisy: do you regret what happened? I don’t.

“I need you to fall for me. I want you to hand your heart over willingly so I can break it. That way, you’ll leave and give me the practice.”

“I want to fuck with you. Make you fall in love with me.” He steps toward me. “So that when I break your heart, you’ll leave and give me the practice.”

“A fantasy is a thing imagined. This—you, Daisy Bell, touching yourself—that’s something I want to see.”

you don’t start fooling around with your lifelong rival just because you’re horny. It’s all fine and dandy to have a devil-may-care attitude, up until the point that the devil marches into your room, takes off your panties, and shows you just how much he really does care.

It’s Lucas. He’s the one that changed. The minute he moved back to Hamilton he was all, look at me with my muscles and my fitted pants.

I once saw him eating quinoa for lunch—QUINOA, a grain he hadn’t even known existed the last time I saw him.

I should have realized he was after something, and now, it makes sense. He wasn’t kidding when he told me he wanted me to fall in love so that after he’s broken my heart, I’ll move away and give him the practice. He really thinks...

It’s going to take more than one cobalt blue sweater and a handful of accidental orgasms to make me forget w...

One kiss won’t hurt me. Two won’t either. Lucas’ lips are like a sleeve of Oreos: you know you shouldn’t have them at all, but you can’t stop with just one taste.

Lucas Thatcher, you’re about to get yourself a new roommate.

“Not so fast. I still have to shower.” “Why? Because you just worked out? Because you’re still a little hot and sweaty, and you have this masculine musk going on?” He knows nothing. He is Jon Snow.

Beds and candles and stripteases are for people with time and boredom. What we have is hunger. We’re frantic, and it shows.

We are two ballerinas tiptoeing around one another.

While I was working out a way to shimmy through the bathroom window and escape into the night, Lucas was worried about my hydration and—dammit, the book is a psychological thriller, my favorite genre. Lucas, you manipulative, adorable asshole.

Business is business—isn’t that what they say? So why am I scared of hurting Lucas?

You’re too old to be running up to your room to hide from your problems, waiting for them to go away. If something is wrong, you have to work it out with him.”

I want to stay right here until he comes home, until he walks through the door and I convince him to hear me out, to try to see that somehow, during all our years of fighting, I’ve turned into a half-decent human being.

“Why do you think I’ve never had a serious girlfriend? Huh?” He pushes on. “Why do you think I always broke things off before I came home to Hamilton? It was for YOU! Because I wanted you. Every other relationship I’ve had has been a futile attempt to get over you. To move on.”

When I think back over the years, I’d always assumed our conflict would end with a bang, not silence. Now, we’re done, and the quiet is overwhelming. I waved the flag and Lucas left. 28 years have been wiped out in a single evening and worst of all, that exchange couldn’t even be classified as a fight. It was a one-sided desperate attempt to get Lucas to see reason.

“I guess you were right—the only people who don’t know Lucas loves Daisy are Lucas and Daisy,”

Over the years, I’ve written you 351 emails. The first was the week I left for college. I was miserable without you and too much of a coward to ever say it out loud, so I typed it up and saved it to my drafts folder.

11 years later, 351 emails have been added to that folder. Sometimes I treated the emails like a journal, but in reality, I just needed to feel the type of connection with you that one click of the mouse could provide.

This is the first one I’ve ever sent, and it will probably be the last. Let me tell you what ...

For 18 years, I loved you. Now, I’ve lov...

It sounds like quite the accomplishment, but it’s always been so easy for me to love you. Through all the pain, all the conflict, I’ve always known the truth. We cared about each other. Nobody fights o...

And so, I’ve always known that if you ever really wanted me to suffer, all you would have to ...

Now I see I was naïve. We were never on the same page. You think I wanted to fight with you because I hate you? Because I want to win? What does it even mean to “win” at this point? What are we fighting for? The job? Hometown hero? Over the years I’ve lost track, and I never really minded because for me, it was never about ...

Please come home so we can talk. You think you have everything figured out, but you’re wrong. I wasn’t ever going to take that job. Yes, I considered it—would you have respected me if I hadn’t? You know it has always been my dream to own my own practice.

For years, I worked for that goal, so when it was delivered to me on a silver platter, I had to take a second to think about it.

Would you believe that someone you’ve known your whole life is capable of change? I hope so, because I think that’s what is happening here. To us. Don’t you see? Your email ...

Please let there be a second....

I have no clue where Lucas is or how long he intends to ignore me, but I’m not going to give up. If I want to reach him, I’m going to have to try a little harder. And I will. Because for 28 years, Lucas tried hard for me.

Do you still have the other 351 emails? I’d like to read them. Even if you want nothing to do with me, the least you can do is send me those emails. Or are you going to make me write 350 more of these before you respond? It might take a while—I’m having to hit the keyboard with the end of that chopstick to type.

From: daisybell@duke.edu To: lucasthatcher@stanford.edu Subject: Re: Emails I’m not giving up. Daisy

“I LOVE YOU, LUCAS THATCHER!”

“I love you, which seems crazy because up until about four days ago, I really thought I hated you. But when you think about it, love and hate aren’t so very different, right? To love someone is to strive to be a better person for them, and isn’t that what our hateful little competition has been about the whole time?”

“I feel so stupid because it took me so long to see it, but I see it now. You’ve loved me from the very beginning and I think everyone knew it but me. I couldn’t see it because I was so selfish, caught up in my own silly need to win every battle with you, but this whole time, you’ve been patient. You’ve played the games with me because that’s what I needed, but your heart was never in it. You were never trying to take me down. You were in love with me.”

“And I know it took me a really long time to see that, like an embarrassing amount of time, but now I understand and I’m not going to let you walk away from us. That’s why I’m dressed like this! I have a boutonniere! A corsage! I want to go back in time and make things right!”

“Of course I love you, Daisy.” He tugs his hand through his hair, looks away, then back. “I mean, come on, I’ve loved you since I knew what love meant.”

Our entire lives have been a spectacle. We’ve made it so. Even now, a year after we took over McCormick Family Practice and ran MediQuik out of town, we can’t go a day without someone referencing our old war.

It seems that half the people in town “knew it all along” while the other half still can’t believe we love each other. They’re placing bets for when it’ll all blow up in our faces.

Sure, there are still days I want to kill Lucas (the man has a way of getting under my skin), but that passion I feel when we fight is the same passion I feel when Lucas brushes up behind me while I’m cooking dinner, when he w...

He is a provocative force and I still haven’t come to terms with my love for him. The magnitude of my feelings for my old rival scares me at times. I’ll lie in bed, pretending to read and watch him...

I wasted 28 years hating him; it only seems fair that we should get two or three times as long...

“When we get married let’s do it on a beach or something so our guests have something pretty to look at while they’re ignoring the vows.” “Yeah,” he agrees. “Or we could just do it in a movie theater?” “Smart. We’ll serve popcorn as hors d’oeuvres and play a Bourne movie in the background.”

“Yes. How’s this one? It turns out my arch nemesis—the man I’ve despised and competed against since birth—is in fact the love of my life.”