25. Chapter Aria
I slept like a baby. I don’t know if it was the twenty plus dumplings I had last night, or how easygoing the night was with Damian by my side, as we laughed and talked about the most random things.
This is definitely not good for my heart, but yet, here we are.
After that food coma, I had the great idea to invite him to spend the whole Saturday with me. I cringe just thinking about it, because it definitely feels like a date and the worst part is that he has no idea. Maybe he was just being nice, tagging along, making sure I wasn’t by myself.
Or maybe he wants to spend time with you, and you need to stop overthinking so much.
It’s chilly today, same as it usually is in Chicago, so I opt to wear black leather pants with a black long sleeve shirt and a brown puffer jacket with my usual white Converse. I wake up extremely early to deal with my nest—aka, my hair—and straighten it, feeling a thousand times better now that it looks put together. I’ve considered a perm, but every time I’m about to make the appointment, something just makes me stop. It’s like, if I go through with it, my mother wins somehow. And I’m just too petty for that.
I walk out of the room to find Damian waiting for me in the living room, looking so well put together as always. That man has the kind of beauty that is raw, and anything but ordinary. He’s wearing a white turtleneck sweater, with black pants, boots, and a trench coat. Today, he has his lazy curls again, and the sight of him just does something to me. That man can rock his curls, always. But again, this is Damian who we’re talking about, he looks good no matter the look he has going on.
“Ready?” he asks, getting up from the couch.
I nod.
“Lead the way. What do you want to do first?” He asks.
“Are you hungry? I was thinking we can go to this tiny, cutesy coffee shop that’s near here. They have the best caramel iced latte, and they use nugget ice, which is the best type,” I say excitedly.
“Darling, it’s like thirty degrees outside,” he says, baffled. “Also, nugget ice? Ice is ice. It all tastes the same. ”
That nickname makes my knees buckle. It’s the way he says it with his deep hearty voice. The way he says it like he actually means it.
“So? I will not pass up the opportunity for their iced caramel latte. I rarely visit New York. Now, come on.” I urge with my hand. “Also, no. It doesn’t taste the same. Nugget ice is the best. You’re just gonna have to trust me on that.”
He shakes his head and laughs. “Okay, come on. Let’s go.”
We take the elevator and walk outside, where the driver from last night welcomes us.
I shake my head. “We’re not taking the car.”
He frowns. “What?”
“We’re walking. Everything’s near, plus, if we’re going far, we can take the subway.”
We look at each other for what seems the longest minute of my life, then he throws his head back, exposing his neck as he lets out his velvety, deep, sexy—okay, enough —laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I ask, confused.
He stops laughing abruptly. “Wait, you’re serious?” he says, squinting his eyes in suspicion.
“Yes, come on!” I complain.
“Okay, let’s compromise. We can walk, but if the places we’re going are far, we'll take the car. I am not getting in the subway.”
“Okay, princess,” I murmur.
He raises an eyebrow. “Did you just call me princess ?”
“Yes,” I say with a challenge in my eyes. “You’re acting like we’re going to die if we walk. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“It’s New York. Something's always happening, Aria,” he answers with a dry, bored tone.
I start walking toward the coffee shop. “Up to you if you want to follow me. I’ll keep going,” I yell without looking back.
He lets out a defeated sigh and quickly catches up to me. He is so stupidly tall, it shouldn’t be allowed, and that fucking body that was definitely tailored by God himself.
Can you just maybe stop thinking about the way he looks, or how handsome he is for one fucking minute?
Ah, only if that were possible.
I’m surprised he’s not dating anyone. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard anything about his love life. Then, I remember my first day at work, when he told me that his one and only love is art, and it always will be.
My heart is doing this thing where it tugs deep in my chest. Because my stupid, idiotic heart is ten steps ahead of the rest of my body and jumps to conclusions, creating false hopes. The thing is, it’s not like I can pinpoint when this started. He has just been more present, and he’s been sneaking into my heart slowly, but surely. The lines between professionalism and something more are blurring from my end. Is it a bad thing I hope the lines are blurring for him too?
We arrive at the coffee shop, and it’s surprisingly empty. We quickly order our coffees and pastries, and Damian pays for everything before I even have the chance to get my wallet out. Once we receive our order, we decide to sit at a table by a window that overlooks Central Park.
He’s looking out the window as he opens a straw and places it in my cup, then opens another one for himself. It’s the little things that he does that fill my stomach with a colony of butterflies.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into ordering an iced caramel latte,” He shakes his head in disbelief.
I let out a triumphant laugh. “You’ll thank me in a second.”
He rolls his eyes as he takes a sip of the latte, not making one single expression, so I have no idea whether he likes it or not. He drank about halfway, so I’m assuming he does. Setting the cup down, he takes his bagel and eats it like he has all the time in the world. As I watch him, all I can think of is how he can make something as simple as eating a bagel hot. Like, seriously? He needs to tone it down. I don’t understand how he doesn’t have women jumping up on him like cats.
I prompt him to say something. “Okay, the suspense is killing me. Did you like it?”
He shrugs. “ It’s alright.”
I groan. “You’re lying, but that’s fine. I’ll let it go.”
We eat the rest of our breakfast as we go over the plan for the day. I love doing it all, going to The Metropolitan Museum, Rockefeller, you name it. Luckily, since we’re officially in winter, the ice rink at Rockefeller is open and it’s definitely my top activity to do.
“So, what’s on the agenda for today?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Ice skating, drinking hot chocolates with extra marshmallows, The Met.”
His eyebrows furrow, confused. “Did you just say ice skating ?”
“Of course. You can’t come to New York close to the holidays and not ice skate. ”
“Aria, I am a thirty-five-year-old man. What makes you think I’m going to ice skate?” he drawls.
I point a finger at him, shaking my head. “You signed up for this. Don’t be backing out on me now.”
“Well, I signed up to spend time with you. I certainly didn’t count on these adventures ,” he counters, raising an eyebrow.
My heart flips knowing that he agreed to go with me simply because he wanted us to spend time together . And damn it… the butterflies in my stomach fly all over, making me feel queasy in the best way possible. My cheeks heat, and I’m grateful I overdid my blush today, because otherwise he would be able to notice. This is so confusing, we kissed once , then I decided to move on from it, act like nothing happened—which he happily ran with—and now this. Do I want to keep pretending nothing happened? Or do I actually want to make a move? It’s not like Damian will make a move again. It’s clear the ball is on my court.
And the temptation is there. The lines are getting blurred and all I want to do is cross that line. God knows I want to.
“Just say you don’t know how to skate. There’s no shame in that,” I taunt.
“Well…” He grimaces.
“You've never been? Not even when you were a kid?”
He shakes his head, then casually shrugs. “My father was too busy hating my guts and running a struggling business to care.”
Whoa.
The confession catches me by surprise, because he’s a very closed, reserved person. All I can do is nod in understanding, because I don’t want to scare him off by trying to have an open heart-to-heart session in the middle of a coffee shop, because knowing him, he’s just going to shut down. I’m dying to unravel all of his secrets and find out what drives him to be the way that he is.
“I’ll teach you. I’m pretty good.” I wink.
“Great, can’t wait for that,” he replies sarcastically.
Okay, if someone would have told me I was going to spend my day teaching Damian Romano, top bachelor of Chicago, self-made billionaire, and grumpy ass how to ice skate, I would have laughed and said, ‘ Yeah, no. You’re crazy. ’
We rented the skates for two sessions back to back, because I just knew the first one was going to be a mess, and I was right. The man has two left feet, and doesn’t know how to move correctly.
I sit down on the bench to take my skates off, and as I’m untying them I let out a groan. “Oh my God, I forgot how much this hurts.”
He sits next to me and laughs as he starts untying them and putting his shoes back on. “I can’t feel my feet anymore.”
“Well, you better feel them soon, because we have to skate again in half an hour. What should we do while we wait?”
As he’s tying his shoes, he replies, “Stay here. I’m going to go get us some of that famous hot chocolate you’ve been talking about.”
“I can go too. Just give me a sec,” I say as I start putting my shoes on .
He places his hand on mine, stopping me. The touch is brief, but just as electrifying as it has always been. “Your feet must be killing you too. I got it, Darling. Just rest.”
In other instances, I would keep insisting, but my feet hurt so much that I just nod and let him go by himself.
He comes back quickly with the sweet, hot cocoas—mine with extra marshmallows—and the gesture is small, but sweet nonetheless. He just remembers these small stupid details I tell him like it’s no big deal.
As we drink them, we start talking about things we’ve never done, or places we’ve never visited.
“I’ve never snowboarded before,” I say.
“I actually have. Me, Lorenzo, and Matteo go almost every year to Colorado.”
I hum. “Colorado. Sounds pretty.”
“You’ve never been?”
I shake my head. “I lived in Kentucky my whole life, studied there, and then moved to Chicago. I just started traveling recently.”
“I can probably talk Lorenzo and Matteo into inviting you girls to the trip next year. Well, at least you and Sophia. I doubt Isabella will want to be where Matteo is.”
“Rough history?” I ask, curious. Me and Isabella have never talked about her past, except the fact that she graduated top of her class at MIT.
“You could say that,” he responds vaguely .
The second skating session starts and we start right away before it starts getting any busier.
I skate backward as I instruct him. “Don’t forget to bend your knees, otherwise you will fall on your ass, and you’re going to hate your life tomorrow.”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this. The things I do to spend time with you, seriously,” he murmurs with a soft, hearty laugh that makes my skin prickle with goosebumps.
My cheeks blush at that confession, and my mind wanders off to God knows where after hearing that, and I bump into the railing, causing me to fall forward, almost hitting my head.
Damian stops with the railing, then tries to scrunch down to the best of his ability. “You okay?”
I groan as I get up. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Don’t forget to bend your knees,” he says, mimicking me.
I flip him off as we both start laughing.
We continue skating for one more hour, laughing my ass off every time he falls and refuses my help trying to get up, which results in us standing in the same place for five minutes as he figures it out. By the end of the session, he’s finally getting it, and we actually end up having a lot of fun.
We laugh a lot . Fun and simple, like it always is when he starts to bring his walls down little by little. Seeing his shoulders relax and that gorgeous smile has quickly become my undoing. Little by little, Damian has found his way into my heart, and I can’t even say I was blindsided, because deep down, my heart always knew.
And that knowledge scares me.