Chapter 4 #4
If anything good can come of this, I hope it can. That all of this can be untangled, the lies and the deceptions forgiven, and that Luca and my family can find the peace that’s eluded them for two decades.
He looks absolutely miserable. I don’t know if he’s just not bothering with walls and screens anymore, but the pain etched into his face is plain to see.
I could stand right here and press on about making a damn pie, or I could give up on the idea that any of this is about pie anymore or that it ever was.
Luca’s heartbreak and loneliness radiate across the room, hitting me like a storm that brews up out of nowhere and soaks me down to the skin within a matter of seconds.
I know we’re sort of strangers, and this whole thing is premised on a lie, but when I walk across to him, my concern is real, and my intentions are good. That probably doesn’t count for a whole shit of a lot as intentions are laughable when it comes right down to it.
I set a trembling hand on his shoulder. His head doesn’t snap up, and he doesn’t look at me. Instead, he brings one hand up and grinds his fingers against his eyes.
“Holy fuck,” he grinds out in the thickest, roughest tone. “Getting emotional is mortifying, but doing it with someone who is pity pie making with me, and we’re not even making a pie… it’s really bad, isn’t it?”
“Loneliness makes for strange companions. Who said that?”
“I don’t know, but they were right. Self-imposed or not.
” He blows out a breath and turns his head just at the right time so it skates all over my fingers, sending a shiver up my arm.
This close, he smells woodsy and salty, a little bit like cedar and wide open skies.
Did he swim this morning? Watch his birds?
Cook himself breakfast? Was he comforted by any of it?
His cheek is right there.
It’s the side of his face that doesn’t have any scar tissue. It’s not that I’m afraid to touch it, but I’m afraid he’ll jerk back in discomfort or even get angry.
I’m so close that I can imagine my hand lifting and touching his skin. It’s so real in my mind that my brain gives the command. My fingers brush his cheek, and my palm rests against his jaw. His eyes widen in shock before they flash with something close to relief.
I’m a tactile person. I’m close with my family.
Growing up, I was super close with my friends before we went our separate ways to different colleges.
We still talk all the time, but unfortunately, it’s always online, from a distance.
Maybe it’s the same for him, but if I couldn’t go out into the world and do the things I loved, if most of my life were taken away from me overnight, of course I’d be lonely.
He has his parents, and he has Adam, and I’m glad for that, but anyone who thinks loneliness isn’t powerful enough to be traumatic probably hasn’t experienced the killing power of it.
“This was never part of the plan,” I whisper, trying to hold myself back with every fiber of my being.
But every fiber is not nearly enough.
I don’t just feel a desperate need to comfort this man or hug him, though that would be beautiful and therapeutic for both of us, I’m sure.
I’m struck by the need to kiss him and kiss him and not stop until neither of us can breathe and every bone in our body has proven science wrong and changed to a liquid state.
He blinks at me with that poor-little-bunny-in-the-middle-of-the-road-on-a-dark-night look. “If you’re going from my mom’s perspective, I think it very much is.”
“Her plan is that we get married. Our plan is that we bake a pie. This is some off-the-rails shit if you go by either of those.”
My ovaries spontaneously burst with joy when he smiles at me. I don’t just want to cheek-hug him. Or kiss him. I want to hold him, cuddle him, and crawl into him with my whole body. Which, I guess, means the obvious.
It’s so happening, my vagina taunts.
Forget it, I tell her right back.
“Was baking a pie actually a metaphor for euphoric, traumatic, and transcendent casual sex?” he asks.
I’m too shocked to laugh, but if I weren’t, I’d burst out giggling right now.
The longer we’re frozen in this position with my hand on his cheek—his very soft, satiny cheek with just a hint of stubble, his body heat blaring right next to me, and his breathing picking up to match his pulse, both of which are pacing right alongside mine at a near frantic rate—the redder his ears get.
I notice the tips are practically scarlet.
It’s incredibly cute that he blushes with them and not his cheeks.
Alright, he also blushes on his cheeks. Just a little bit. Enough to get my whole body buzzing.
“To answer that, I think I have to understand if you meant traumatic release or a traumatic experience.”
“Oh. Sorry. Yes. Traumatic release,” he replies.
“I don’t know, but you should probably kiss me. I’m down to do that if you’d like to.”
He turns his face and sighs, but I gently guide him back.
He mutters, “I’d like to, but in life, there are things you do and things you just don’t do, and then there are responsibilities, right and wrong, painfully awkward and not worth painfully awkward.”
“I think we’d get through it. The good ol’ we’ve got this, except for once, it’s not a bunch of bollocks.”
“Bollocks?” he echoes.
“Your music has me in a British mood,” I tell him.
It’s so wild that we can talk about this, but maybe not knowing each other makes it easy.
We haven’t established a version of normal for ourselves yet.
We haven’t laid down hard boundaries that we can’t cross.
We’ve been blatantly ourselves with each other right from the start.
It’s so wonderfully, creatively, incredibly, and startlingly refreshing.
He has. But you, on the other hand? You’re lying to him.
I am, but I’ve told him more of my truths than I’ve ever told anyone. He’s a safe person to talk to. He has a good heart.
Tell him the truth, then, before you hurt him more than you’re already going to.
I open my mouth to do it. I don’t have the words, but hopefully, they’ll come. Maybe he’ll let me stammer through this and explain myself and understand why I was desperate enough to do this and why I can’t do it anymore now.
Because I love my dad.
Because I never expected to like the man who hurt my family.
Luca thinks I’m parting my lips for another reason entirely.
And that’s right when he kisses me.