Chapter 5
five
. . .
Holly
The moment we walked into the restaurant, a petite woman with silver-streaked dark hair turned her head toward the door and zeroed in on us. “Luke!” She bustled over, wiping her hands on the apron tied around her waist, her sharp eyes darting to me. “And you brought someone. Finally.”
Luke’s neck, cheeks, and ears went pink. “Rosa, this is my … friend, Holly Bascombe. Holly, this is Rosa.”
“Holly Bascombe,” Rosa repeated before snapping her fingers. “Ah, yes. The florist. Your parents are Carol and Tom, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Good people.” She glanced between Luke and me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. If pressed, I’d have to say it was assessing, like she was deciding where to file me in whatever mental system she used to keep track of people. “You look like you’ve had a day. Sit. I’ll bring you something.”
And just like that, she was steering us toward a corner booth, the kind with worn red leather seats and an unscented candle flickering in a mason jar.
Luke slid in across from me, his lips tipping to the side in a slight smirk. “I probably should have warned you first. Rosa can be a lot.”
“She seems nice,” I said. “And weirdly perceptive. It’s like she took one look at me and knew I needed carbs immediately.”
“She does that to me, too. It’s her love language.”
As if to prove his point, Rosa returned with an overflowing basket of bread. “You need to eat,” she said, looking at me. “And you—” She pointed at Luke. “You need to make sure she eats. She’s too thin.”
“I’m not—” I started, but Rosa cut me off with a definitive shake of her head.
“Too thin,” she repeated firmly. “I’ll bring lasagna. The good kind.”
She swept away before either of us could respond.
I huffed out a soft laugh and leaned forward, whispering, “Is there a bad kind of lasagna?”
“Not here,” Luke said, smiling. “Everything Rosa makes is ‘the good kind,’ but she has definite opinions about Guisseppi’s.”
A server appeared and set a glass of red wine in front of each of us.
“Did we order these?”
He shook his head and chuckled. “I never actually order anything here. I just consume whatever Rosa puts in front of me.”
“Exactly how often do you come here?” I asked, lifting the glass to take a sip. “Daily? Hourly? Are you on some kind of carb-based loyalty program?”
“At least once a week.” He shrugged, his expression turning a little sheepish. “Rosa’s convinced I don’t eat enough when left to my own devices, so if I didn’t, she might actually show up at my house.”
“That’s … oddly sweet.”
“She’s like my Italian fairy grandmother, if I were Italian. And if fairies existed.”
The image of this shy, brilliant man being adopted by a no-nonsense little old lady shouldn’t have hit me the way it did, but there it was—something low and achy settling under my ribs.
“You’re lucky to have her,” I said quietly. “And maybe she’s lucky to have you, too.”
His eyes warmed. “I never thought about it like that.”
A small smile played at his lips as his gaze lingered on my face, and for a moment, the rest of the restaurant faded—the other diners, the clatter of dishes, even my anxiety about my car. There was just Luke, looking at me like I was the only other person in the room.
Then someone a few tables over laughed loudly, and the spell broke. The room came back into focus—the smell of garlic and tomatoes, the soft opera music drifting from hidden speakers, the warmth of the wine spreading through my chest.
I knew the moment should feel awkward. That I should look away. Should make a joke to break this weird, weighted tension between us.
But I didn’t want to.
Because sitting here with this quiet, thoughtful man who got flustered over compliments and let himself be mothered by a woman who wasn’t even related to him felt easy in a way nothing had in months. Maybe longer.
I found myself leaning in just as Rosa returned with two enormous plates of lasagna, each portion big enough to easily feed three people.
She set them down with a satisfied nod. “Eat,” she commanded, then disappeared again.
I picked up my fork and cut into the lasagna. The first bite was a transcendent layer of noodle, meat sauce, bechamel, and—this was the real kicker—broccoli raab, all perfectly balanced into one perfect combination.
“Oh my God,” I mumbled around a mouthful. “This is incredible.”
Luke looked pleased. “Told you.”
We ate in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and I felt myself relaxing further. There was something about the truly excellent food and the warm atmosphere that made everything feel a little bit more manageable.
“Can I ask you something?” Luke said after a while.
“Sure.”
“What made you want to be a florist?”
I picked up my glass, using the moment to think. Across the table, Luke had placed his elbows on either side of his plate, his fingers laced together, as he watched me with that steady attention that should have made me self-conscious but somehow didn’t.
“My mom, mostly. She loved flowers—always had fresh ones in the house, even in winter. And I loved watching her arrange them, how she’d pair colors and textures in ways that shouldn’t have worked but did.”
I took a sip of my wine, further gathering my thoughts. “It was like art, but temporary. Every arrangement was perfect for a moment, and then it died, and while that should have been depressing, I actually found that really profound and beautiful.”
Luke unlaced his fingers and reached for his own wine glass, but his eyes never left my face. “Impermanence as part of the beauty,” he said, then took a drink.
“Exactly.” I set my glass down and traced a finger along the rim. “And I liked that flowers are part of special moments in a person’s life, you know? Weddings, funerals, birthdays, apologies. They’re a way humans mark important things.”
My finger stilled on the glass. “Though I’m taking a break from weddings for a while.”
Luke leaned back against the booth, his expression sympathetic. “Understandable.”
I straightened, pushing my shoulders back. “What about you?” I asked, needing to move past the wedding talk. “What made you want to build apps?”
Luke swirled his glass, staring down into the ruby liquid for a long moment before his gaze lifted to meet mine again.
“Honestly? I didn’t. Not at first, anyway.
I was a computer science guy working in robotics.
The dating app was kind of a fluke. This guy I knew was struggling with his own app, and I made some off-hand remark about how it shouldn’t be that hard.
He said if I thought I could do better, I should put my money where my mouth was.
So I did. Built it in a month, mostly as a fuck you. ”
I laughed. “Spite is a powerful motivator.”
“It is. And then it worked. Really worked. People started using it, and they were actually finding matches, and it snowballed from there.” His fingers tightened around his wine glass, his knuckles going slightly white before he deliberately relaxed his grip.
“I never meant for it to get as big as it did.” He set the glass back down on the table.
“Do you regret it?”
The question seemed to catch him off guard.
“No,” he said carefully. “I only regret what it turned me into. Or what people assumed I was because of it.” He looked down at his plate, then back at me, like he was weighing how honest to be.
“Everyone thought I must know everything about relationships. I didn’t, of course.
I know math and patterns. But the actual human part—the messy, complicated, irrational part—that still terrifies me. ”
“You’re doing better than you think.” I reached across the table and touched his hand briefly.
The contact lasted maybe two seconds—my fingertips against his knuckles—but the effect was immediate.
Luke’s eyes snapped to mine, wide and startled, his pupils dilating as his chest rose and fell faster. His throat worked as he swallowed, and color flooded his cheeks, spreading down his neck.
My lips parted, and heat bloomed in my stomach and lower, unexpected and intense.
We stared at each other across the table, both of us suddenly unable to speak.
Oh.
Oh.
I yanked my hand back, curling my fingers into my palm.
“Sorry,” I said automatically, though I wasn’t entirely sure what I was apologizing for.
He swallowed hard, and when he spoke, his voice was low and scratchy. “That’s what my cousin Nate keeps telling me.” He cleared his throat. “And now you. If I’m not careful, I might actually start to believe it.”
I wanted him to believe it. Needed him to, somehow.
Because this Luke—the one who admitted his fears and listened without trying to fix everything and looked at me like I mattered—this was someone I could actually fall for.
Maybe was already falling for, if I was being honest with myself.
After Eric, after this year, I should have been running for the nearest exit at the first hint of feelings.
But I wasn’t running.
No. I was sitting here in this warm restaurant, eating lasagna, and feeling something dangerously close to hope unfurl in my chest.
Hope that maybe I hadn’t been wrong to say yes to coffee earlier. That maybe this strange, awkward, brilliant man who bought flowers for nursing homes and let himself be mothered by Italian grandmothers was exactly what I needed.
Even if I hadn’t known I needed it.
Rosa appeared again, this time with tiramisu, which again, neither of us had ordered.
“For after,” she said. “No arguments.”
She was, once again, gone before we could respond.
For a woman who had to be at least seventy, Rosa moved with the speed and efficiency of someone half her age, weaving between tables, barking orders in Italian to the staff, and somehow keeping track of every single person in the restaurant.
It was simultaneously intimidating and deeply impressive.
“I think she’s trying to make sure we stay,” I managed, grateful for the interruption even as part of me resented it.