Chapter 10 Sweetly in the Shadows
Sweetly in the Shadows
LUCA’S SISTER used to be an absolute terror, all the energy, all the excitement, none of the common sense. Pregnancy seemed to have not only knocked her on her ass, it had made her more content about knowing her limitations.
At around nine o’clock, after she’d cleaned up dinner (since Isaac and Luca had shopped and prepped) she stood and stretched, then moved to the couch to kiss first Luca on the cheek and then Isaac.
He watched as Isaac smiled at her, accepting the kiss like he’d always had a sister, like spontaneous tokens of affection were something he’d known all his life when Luca was pretty sure that wasn’t true.
“When you coming tomorrow?” she asked on a yawn. “Maybe you could bring me coffee or a doughnut or something.”
“I’ll get you coffee if you want,” he said, because she’d been limiting herself to one iced coffee a day and her doctor said that was fine. “But I’m going to be staying over.”
“Mmm….” At first she nodded like this happened all the time, and then she blinked like she was trying to wake up. “Uhm… really?”
Isaac concentrated on his knitting, his already sun-kissed cheeks growing a little pinker.
“Uhm, really,” he said without looking up.
Allegra met Luca’s eyes, and he waggled his eyebrows, making her laugh.
“Good,” she said. “It’s about time. Isaac, I love living with you, but if you hurt my brother, I’ll hide your body in the backyard and nobody will suspect me.”
Isaac actually glanced up from his knitting, and to Luca’s surprise, he seemed to take her very seriously. “Your brother’s the greatest,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t want to hurt him in a thousand years.”
“Good,” she said. “No, seriously—good. Because I’ll never finish this blanket without you, and that would be a real shame.”
“God, you’re sarcastic,” Isaac told her. “Where have you been all my life?”
“Asleep in your downstairs bedroom,” she retorted, and then she bent and kissed Luca on the cheek again. “Be good to each other,” she said softly, and that was that.
She disappeared down the hall, and Luca cleared his throat with authority. Isaac glanced up from the crocheted square in his hand and gave a gentle smile.
“Let me finish this off, okay?”
Luca nodded. “Course.” He was feeling impatient, but he also knew what it was like to be in the middle of a project. If you didn’t come to a decent stopping place, that shit could bother you all night.
A few moments later, Isaac set the little square in the bag of them that was starting to overflow and came to sit next to Luca, leaning his head on Luca’s chest.
“Mmm….” Luca wrapped his arm securely around his shoulders. “That’s a lot of little tiny squares you and my sister have there. When do you start sewing them all together?”
Isaac chuckled. “Well, we’ve got twenty more to go, so, God willing and with your grandmother’s help, tomorrow.”
“Nice!” Luca paused, thinking about the pattern. “You’ve been keeping them in different bags, right? So, like, a palette?”
“Yeah,” Isaac said. “I scanned the drawing and enlarged it—especially for your nonna. But I figured I’d finish the squares tomorrow, and your sister and Sophia can start sewing them into strips. They need to keep the strips numbered so we can sew the strips together when they’re done.”
“Wow.” Luca was impressed. “You think that will work?”
Isaac grunted. “I think we’re going to have to rip out and replace at least ten squares, but I may be a little bit pessimistic, because high school student is my default. Your sister and Nonna are smarter than high school students.”
Luca muffled a chuckle behind his hand in deference to his sister, who was hopefully getting some shuteye.
“Well, I’ll give a little prayer to the knitting and crocheting gods that you guys can make this work.
” He paused, hit by something Isaac had said.
“Hey—do you ever hear from your kids over summer break? That Marcelle kid who designed the winning blanket—think he’d want in on that action? ”
Isaac pulled back from him and stared at him in surprise.
“What?” Luca felt his face flush. “What’d I say? Did I break some rule of teacher decorum or—”
Isaac captured his mouth then, fully, passionately, the kiss going until Luca fell back against the cushions of the couch, completely bemused.
“What was that?” he asked in wonder.
“For caring about my students,” Isaac murmured.
“For remembering Marcelle’s name. For thinking to ask him.
Yes—if you think your nonna wouldn’t mind.
I keep my student number phone at work, but Roxy has Marcelle and his friend Sheryl come over to babysit once a week now.
She could call him up. I think he’d love that. Thank you.”
Luca smiled weakly and searched his face, hating to bring the name up right now, but needing confirmation.
“Todd didn’t ask, did he? About your job. About your kids.”
“No,” Isaac said, but he kept eye contact.
He wouldn’t have that one day in early May when Luca had caught him staring at a pile of hated yarn.
“He…. I’ve been thinking about him. I think…
I think his whole world was stunted. Made small, you know?
He… like you.” Isaac looked away now, but maybe that’s because Luca had told him about his parents in a quiet moment, a moment of vulnerability.
“You said your parents cut you off. And that was awful. And his parents did too—but more than that. They told him God couldn’t love him.
And, you know, some people don’t like authority anyway.
” He gave a modest smile. “I was never a fan. But Todd needed that. He needed to know that good things happened if you followed the rules. So his whole life was like… like penance for breaking, you know, this one rule.”
Luca nodded slightly, still not getting it, but he didn’t want to interrupt.
“So,” Isaac continued, “he… he worked so hard on making his world exactly right. But you can’t do that with a big world. You have to keep it small. So he couldn’t control my high school, or my students. He couldn’t make me stop working there. So he just didn’t ask.”
And Luca got it then. Why the kiss. Why the big deal. “I… I will always make room in my world for you, Isaac,” he promised fervently. “If you feel squeezed out, you only have to say so.”
Isaac nodded worriedly. “And I’ll try so hard to make room in my world for you,” he said, smoothing his fingers nervously along Luca’s cheeks. “I’m anxious, you know? I feel like I’ve spent all this time fussing about me being me. I want to be able to care for you too.”
Luca chuckled, remembering Isaac’s effusive, polite thank-yous to Jimmy Bob, and how he’d sat in the shade the week before, drinking lemonade and listening to Luca and Jimmy Bob bitch about the pool they were installing and how they wished they’d given the job to somebody who made that their specialty.
“Why did he pick you?” Isaac asked, gulping lemonade gratefully.
“The last guy he paid to install his pool left half a hole in the ground and dumped cement in it,” Jimmy Bob said disgustedly. “Some people are just crooks. This guy’s friends had hired us for a different job—what was it, Luc?”
“We replaced his roof,” Luca said. “The one with all the gables, remember?”
“Oh God—yeah, how could I forget! Another job that people usually pick a specialist for. Anyway, we must have done a good job, because this rich guy only wants us. Luca here spent a month doing homework, reading up on shit, calling guys known for installing pools, asking their friends, before he’d even touch the job. ”
Luca shuddered. “He’s paying us a fortune, Jimmy. I mean, a fortune. But God, we can’t screw this up.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy Bob said, nodding at Isaac. “So we really appreciate how you’re not bitching at him about his weird hours for this one. He’s doing his best, you know?”
“Always,” Isaac had said, gazing at Luca in a way that made him feel like he could accomplish everything. “He’s always doing his best.”
Isaac was looking at him that way now. “I… I’m putting some trust in you,” he said.
“That you’ll tell me. If I’m not opening my world, my heart up enough for you.
You’re a good guy, Luca. You deserve someone who can absolutely give as much to you as you give already.
I know I’ve still got some work to do in my heart, but God, do I want to start living again in a bigger world. I want to live there with you.”
Oh, Luca wanted him. Any way he could get him, Luca wanted him.
“Check us out,” he murmured, cupping Isaac’s cheek in his palm. “All our talk about our misspent youth, and we’re having the relationship talk before the sex. I feel like this is prime adulting here—I’m not sure if our world gets any bigger than this.”
Isaac may have laughed then, but if he did, it was swallowed by Luca’s kiss.
Deep, hard, and curiously unfettered, everything about Isaac’s touch, his taste, spoke of want and yearning and a blood-pulsing joy that this time they didn’t have to stop.
It was like getting in a raft and knowing that cruising the rapids was the point. Exhilarating and exciting and maybe a little bit scary, but oh, the adventure would be worth it.
Luca felt that curious sense of immersion in the moment, in the body and the touch of this one particular person, that he’d rarely felt with a lover.
Almost always there was a sense of time, of place.
Was there a roommate listening? Could anybody see?
Was he touching this person right? Could he ignore that his nipple had been flicked twenty thousand times?
But with Isaac, in this living room he’d come to feel so comfortable in, in the arms of a man he’d come to regard as a necessary part of his day, he lost himself, as dreamy and as happy as Isaac’s damned cat.
It was Isaac who had to pull back, panting, and say, “Luca, we should… you know. Bedroom.”