Limerence (Famous Young Things #2)

Encore Epilogue

Nico

Felix Taylor-Brooke’s ass, for want of a better word, is fucking glorious.

You think I’d be used to seeing his body at this point, seeing him in barely any clothes with stretches of tight golden skin on display, but you’d be dead wrong. I’d seen pictures of him in speedos; on his Instagram, in Ibiza, draped over tattooed surfers whose names I bet he didn’t even remember now.

But this is different. Felix in the flesh is different. Too bright sometimes to look directly at, too warm, too sharp-witted, real, and impossibly beautiful. A happy Felix was something else altogether. He’s doing his best impression of a pool boy at the moment, scooping out some fallen fauna from its surface whilst wearing a pair of baby blue speedos so suggestive I think they might be illegal in Calabria. I suppose it’s just as well we’re on private property.

I carry the drinks, Aperol spritz for him and a beer for me, carefully over to the loungers and set them down on the little table between them next to his abandoned book.

“Are you going back in?” I ask.

“I’m considering it, I’m being boiled alive.”

“We could go inside.” I take a sip of cold Moretti. “It is the hottest time of the day.”

“How will I turn into a bronzed sun god if I’m inside. We weren’t all born with olive colouring and a natural glow.” He puts down the pole and comes back to the lounger, flouncing down next to me in a wave of coconut and clean, Felix musk. It’s heady. My favourite smell on Earth, probably. Aside from the smell of the oranges ripening over the wall of the rented property; I’d forgotten how much I missed that smell. How much I missed it here. Home. Italy. Being home with Felix is the closest I’ve ever been to total contentment.

I turn onto my side. “You look really good in the sun, by the way. Italy suits you.”

He looks at me through the shaded lenses of his Ray-Bans as he sips his spritz. “Is that a euphemism? Like, are you ‘Italy’ in this scenario?”

“No, Italy is Italy in this scenario.”

He nods. “Yeah, I really like it here. Should we buy a property?”

I laugh. “Just like that?”

“Why not? I have some money. Wait, are you poor? You’re not poor, are you?”

“I’m not rich.”

“Fuck, well that’s disappointing. At least you have a nice dick.” He smirks and takes another sip.

“Would you ever dance here?” I ask him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean at Romasco. Lena was on the phone again.”

He looks at me. “She still asking you to work for her?”

I nod. “She said she’d have a place for you, too.”

He snorts. “Where? In the lighting department? She hates me.”

“She’s intimidated by you.”

“Yeah, well, who isn’t.” He sighs and lays his head back on the lounger, body a glittering golden paradise. “Is that what you want? To work for Romasco?” His voice is carefully even.

“Not particularly.” I was happy doing very little at the moment, but I knew that couldn’t last. I’d been taking photos, learning how to develop them, cooking, learning Spanish. I wasn’t exactly bored, but I was… restless.

“I couldn’t leave Ben,” he says without looking at me. “I wouldn’t leave Ben.”

This, I understood. Since Iliad , they’d been close. Like father and son. I was certain Ben was grooming Felix to take over LBC when he decided to chase the sun and buy his own Italian property.

He turns to me. “Maybe you could take a job at LBC. Louis is going in June, and they need someone for the school who isn’t… well… a crazy old nutter. Fuck, Nico, that would be perfect.” He’s sitting up now, whole (gloriously distracting) body turned towards me. “You’d be great with them too, and they’d respect you. They’d learn so much from you. That is, if that’s what you want, to teach.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

He makes a quiet, frustrated sound. “Have you ever?”

“Yes, once. When I wanted you.” I give him a grin. Even in the bright September Calabrian sun, I see him blush.

“Cheese ball.”

“Mmm, cheese. Shall I get some?”



“If any of your brothers say anything at all, I will punch them,” he says, looking down the dirt road again.

“They won’t,” I assure him. “They’re more the strong, silent type. They might disapprove, but they’ll do it quietly.”

“Right. I suppose that makes sense.” He waves a hand in my general direction.

“It’s my sister who’s the loud one, though it’ll be tough to compete with that shirt you’re wearing, so we’ll probably be okay….”

He turns to me, eyes wide. “Is it too loud? Oh my god it is, it’s too gay. I knew it. I’ll go change. Why didn’t you tell me?” As he moves past me, I catch him by the arm.

“I like the shirt, leave it on.”

“I don’t care if you like it, I want your family to like it.” He means, like me.

“They’re not really big fashion people, baby. They won’t feel one way or another about the shirt.”

“They’re Italian, Nico,” he says before disappearing to change. I feel guilty about making the shirt joke until he returns wearing a very light, almost see-through beige shirt that looks so good against his skin, hair, and eyes that I’m too stunned to answer him when he asks, “Better?”

The sound of a car coming up the drive has him alert again, and he rushes toward the door.

“That them?” I ask as I go toward him.

“I guess so.”

I take his hand and tug him outside. “Okay, let’s do this.”

He stops, looks me in the eye, and gives me an encouraging smile. “I love you, okay. I love you so fucking much, Nico Savini. You’re perfect and I love you and no matter what happens in the next couple of hours that isn’t going to change, alright? Just wanted you to know that.”

I bend to kiss him, slow and deep, even as the sound of cars gets louder and closer. “Thank you,” I say against his mouth. “I love you too.”

“Okay. Let’s go introduce your hot young boyfriend to your family.” He grins.

Porzia is out of the car first, looking radiant in a long black summer dress. She comes toward me with a huge smile on her face, taking in me first and then Felix.

“Felix, I have been so looking forward to meeting you,” she says, opening her arms wide.

“You too,” he says as she hugs him tightly. “Thank you for coming all this way.”

She shakes her head. “What? You came from London, no? This is nothing.”

The car behind is my brothers and my father. Or so I think before Porzia settles a look on me. “Father could not make it today, he has some one there to value the land on the other side of the Pacione.” She looks sad, uncomfortable, and I hate that she’s having to lie to me.

“It’s okay, don’t worry. It’s good to see you, Por.” She throws her arms around me and squeezes me tight. “But I do have one surprise.”

Massimo is coming towards us now, holding Auro. Icaro and his wife, and Antonio and his are climbing out of their car. I don’t notice at first with so many bodies, but then I see her. Sofia climbs out of the back of Mass’s car with a huge grin on her face. As she comes toward me, she looks emotional but happy, happy to see me.

“Fuck,” I mutter as I go toward her. It’s been almost four years, but she fits into my arms the same way she did when we were on stage.

“I hope you don’t mind?” she says as I hug her. “I was in Florence, and then visiting Por, so we switched some things around.”

“Of course I don’t mind. Fuck, Sof, it’s so good to see you.” I set her down and grip her hand to pull her towards Felix. I don’t need to introduce them to each other, but I do anyway. His face flickers with surprise before he smiles his reserved, polite smile. It’s only then that I wonder how he might react to her being here. We were, as far as the world knew, a couple. But then I decide that if it evokes even the slightest pinch of jealousy from him, then I’d love to see it.

“Felix, you know Sofia.”

She lets go of my hand and reaches out to him. “Nice to see you again, Felix,” she says. “Sorry for gatecrashing.”

I step a little closer to him and he slides his hand into mine. “Not at all, it’s really good to see you again, too.” He turns his attention to my brothers. “Antonio, Icaro, so great to finally meet you. Everyone, please come in. Hope you’re all hungry, we’ve made so much food.”

Felix

H onestly, I think I’m handling it like a fucking champ. His ex-girlfriend, okay fake ex-girlfriend, sitting right there by his arm looking, well, stunning frankly. Thanks, I hate it.

I’ve been charming all afternoon. A fucking delight. I even managed to make conversation with his older brother about something called Cacciatore, which I think is a sheep or a fish. Unclear. But I was engaging despite being sure that the man has never had a single conversation in his entire life. Strong, silent type was bloody right. Did he talk to his wife? Like ever? He’s nice enough, and he hasn’t given me, or Nico, a single homophobic look—neither of them have—so I suppose it meant I didn’t have to hit any of them.

I’m annoyed his father didn’t come; Nico had been stressed and anxious about that most of all. So maybe it’s for the best that he didn’t. Porzia is, as expected, the most lively. She’s lovely, actually. She reminds me a little of Ava.

Ava who had been so determined to make me forgive her that she’d just about done it. She hadn’t moved back in after the Charlie situation, she’d moved in with Sun and then with her fiddler who had moved to London, and while we were friends, I’d never be able to trust her as entirely as I did before. But then, I didn’t trust anyone entirely anymore. Aside from Nico. And maybe if I was facing some biblical event in which Nico was absent, then Ben.

I didn’t go in as hard as my father in the belief that there was no such thing as friends, because Nico was my best friend, but I did think there was a lesson to be learned—and which had been learned—about trusting too hard. Hey, it’s called growing up.

I suppose ‘growing up’ is also about curbing the urge to fly across the dinner table and slap the hand of the woman who keeps touching my boyfriend. My boyfriend who I know isn’t into her. My boyfriend who hadn’t stopped touching me all day, in front of his family. I’m still a child when it comes to this, clearly.

Standing, I lift the empty pitcher of lemon water. “Can I get anyone anything from the kitchen?”

“I’ll have another beer,” says Nico. His brother chimes in too. Porzia is fine but little Auro would like his sippy cup refilled. I toddle off into the kitchen to take my time refilling everyone’s order. I’m not in there very long before I’m joined by Ms Sofia Wynter herself. All smiles and sun-kissed cheeks, blonde shimmering hair loose at her back.

“Thought I’d give you a hand,” she says.

I almost say: well I’m surprised you were able to take it off my boyfriend long enough in order to do that, sweetheart, but I’m trying to be a grown-up.

“Thanks.” I smile. “Can you grab the beers?”

“Absolutely.”

I slice the lemons in a completely normal and calm way on the board before going to fetch the ice. I’d assumed she’d take the beers outside, but Sofia doesn’t seem to have much initiative and is still standing by the fridge like she needs further instructions.

“He’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him,” she says, gazing out towards the patio where I can hear him laughing before shouting something in Italian.

“I guess that’s the retirement effect.”

“I don’t think so.”

When I look back at her, she’s smiling at me. “I think it’s the Felix effect.”

“That’s not a thing,” I snort. “Or, if it is, it doesn’t tend to make people happy, trust me.”

“Nico isn’t most people,” she says.

“No, no he isn’t,” I concur, tightly.

She takes a step toward me. “Felix, you don’t have anything to worry about with him, you know that right?” She looks like she can’t believe she’s having to say these words to me, an adult in a healthy, loving relationship.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, Felix, he’s insane about you. Has been for years. Why else would he have had a ‘Felix clause’ in his contract unless he was crazy about you?” She puts air quotes around ‘Felix clause’ presumably for the sole reason it’s the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said.

“Again, Sofia, no idea what you’re talking about.”

“He never told you?”

“Told him what?” Nico is in the doorway now, with salmon pink shorts and a white linen shirt, the skin of his exposed forearms deliciously tanned. He looks so fucking gorgeous.

“You never told him about the clause?” she asks him. “The one you had LBC put in the contract?”

His eyes flicker with warning.

“What is she talking about, Nico?”

He looks at me, eyes round and pitched with anxiety now. “Nothing, it doesn’t matter, baby. Let me help with that.” He comes toward me to lift the jug, carrying it to the fridge to fill with water.

“Oh, it very fucking much matters, Nico.” This is, surprisingly, not from my own mouth but Sofia’s. “What happened to everything out in the open, no more hiding? Why are you keeping things from him?”

“Sofia, stop,” he says, patiently. She looks at me, remorseful.

“I don’t want her to stop,” I say. “If you won’t then I want her to tell me what the ‘Felix clause’ is.”

She gives him another look, waits for him to finish refilling the jug, and then carries it with the beers back out to his family, leaving us alone. He still has his back to me and the longer it takes him to turn around the more dread drips, noxious and slow, into my gut.

“Nico.”

One of his long, deep, fortifying breaths. “There wasn’t… it wasn’t a Felix clause.”

“Then why does she think there was?”

He turns to face me then and I try to read his eyes, but I can’t. Mostly he looks resigned and tired, like all the happiness he had outside five minutes ago has been sucked from him. I blame Sofia Wynter myself.

He comes toward me. “Please, I don’t want you to think that this is some terrible thing, because it isn’t”

“I don’t think anything because I don’t know anything.”

He’s close now, and warm, and he smells so good. Like sun and love and home.

“Okay, so, I told you why I came to London, right? To LBC, I told you that, more than once.”

“Because you wanted to dance with me before you retired.”

“Right, yes, that. But also, not only that. I wanted to share a stage with you. I wanted there to be footage of it, of us together, something I could watch back when I was done. Something that would be forever that nobody could take away from me.”

I have a horrible sinking sensation in my stomach because this, this right here, is what he does. He says things like this, beautiful and infuriatingly heartfelt things, all the bloody time when I’m least expecting it, and I just know this is another. I know that it’s going to be another thing I’m going to think about every time I say or do something horrible because that’s who I am. Every time I upset him, I’ll think of this moment just to remind myself why I don’t deserve this man.

“So, I asked for a clause in my contract with LBC that said they’d do that. Cast me in a show with you. That’s the ‘Felix clause.’ That’s all it was.” He’s watching me, waiting for my reaction.

“So you knew the show would have two male leads?”

He shakes his head, fervently. “No, I didn’t know that. It wasn’t dependent on the show having two male leads, it was dependent on you being in it.”

I’m not following. “But if the show didn’t have two male leads? Then what?”

“Then you’d be lead,” he says simply.

I’m not sure why I’m having so much trouble with this. “So if you’d gotten lead, and I’d been in a lesser role then the clause was filled?”

He shakes his head again, slower this time. “No, because I wouldn’t be lead. I’m in a show with you as lead. That was what I asked for; that was the clause.”

This time it hits. It hits like Big fucking Ben on a quiet New Year’s morning.

“You signed away your shot at lead before you walked through the door at LBC?” I ask.

He straightens, then shrugs.

“Is that what you did?”

He nods.

“You were Nico fucking Savini ?!”

“I mean, I still am, last time I checked.” I scowl at this and he smiles. “Baby, I didn’t give a shit about lead, you know me enough to know that by now. I didn’t want my coming to LBC to mean anything detrimental to you, so I just made sure there was no chance of that happening. That’s all.”

“‘ That’s all, he says.’ You are, quite literally, the most bonkers fucking person I have ever met. Like, I have no idea what is wrong with you.”

“Do you still love me though?”

“No, I hate you.” I turn, filling up Auro’s sippy cup that I’ve been holding this entire time. He puts his arms around me from behind and kisses me tenderly on the neck. “The fucking Felix clause…” I mutter.

“Hey, I never called it that, Sof did.”

“Yeah, well she can piss off back to San Francisco.”

He laughs. “Princess, are you jealous of Sofia for some predictably Felix reason?”

I thrust my elbow backwards, but he jumps out of the way of it. “The Felix effect, The Felix clause. I think your fake ex-girlfriend is obsessed with me.”

“I mean, who isn’t.” I turn to find him grinning at me. “Icaro said you were ‘ very pretty. ’ And Antonio is looking forward to making you Cacciatore when we go visit.”

“Porzia hates me though, right?”

“No, no she doesn’t. But she did say your shirt was a little too… straight .”

I raise a foot to kick him, but he dances out of the way, eyes shining with happiness all over again. Fuck, I love him. Too much, really. A pathetic, overwhelming amount. It frightens me shitless.

And I have never been happier.

And you better believe that when we go to the ruins of Pompeii tomorrow, we will be holding hands. We’ll be taking cute as fuck couple photos that I’ll be uploading to Instagram the very second I’m in a Wi-Fi zone with the most sickeningly cute hashtags you can bloody imagine. Because that’s what people in love do, and while I obviously still hate him, I also happen to love him a whole lot more.

#couplegoals