Chapter 28
Olivia
Now
Carmello parks in the lot beside Celia’s Place but doesn’t turn off the engine. “Will you be difficult if I ask you to wait out here while I talk to the plumber?”
“I’m not one of your employees to keep safe, Carmello.
I currently own the building too. I’d like to know how much the estimated repairs will cost. Plus, we both know I’m a better negotiator than you.
” I try to keep a straight face while I joke, but a smirk begs at my mouth.
“Unless…there’s another reason you’d like me to stay back. ”
“You’re ridiculous.” He shakes his head and gets out of the car, leans his elbows against the open window to talk to me. The sun catches the copper in his skin. I want to get on my knees and lean over to lick everywhere it touches. “You know I still care about you.”
The admission has me kicking my feet and giggling on the inside, but I try to play it cool. “I wasn’t so sure. But I guess I’ll grant your request now that I know.”
“What a tender heart,” he says, and reaches into the car to cup my cheek.
The gesture was playful, but I find myself leaning into his touch. Craving the warmth of his large hand on my face. Feeling my skin heat beneath his fingertips.
I watch his throat while he swallows, and find myself whispering, “I would’ve stayed back anyway, because admittedly, my heart is a little tender.”
He strokes my skin with his thumb, and like our minds are connected, replies, “It scared you some? That the building had a bad gas leak? Fire safety protocols, and all that.”
“I uh…think it just caught me off guard,” I say.
“Yesterday was my first rough night in a while. Woke up drenched. Can’t remember the dream, but I know it was about wildfires.
My parents helped prepare me and a lot of other people for the potential of them, for the potential of all kinds of bad things happening to buildings and how to cope if you lose them.
But…this is Celia’s Place and nothing bad is ever supposed to happen to it. You know?”
Carmello releases a long breath, his heart synced with mine. When he lets me go and straightens out, I almost beg him not to leave. To keep touching me, if only for a little while.
“Yeah, O. I know exactly what you mean,” he says.
My therapist has been teaching me how to recognize when I’m not acknowledging or expressing my feelings.
But I still haven’t wrapped my mind around her techniques on how to not move on quickly after I do that.
“Well,” I say, wanting to change the subject, “since I’m staying in the car, do I have permission to snoop? I’ll be bored.”
He sucks his teeth, and I take that as a yes.
Once he’s in the restaurant, my eyes flick around his truck.
A gorgeous black-on-black Ford F-150 Platinum SuperCrew.
If I’m just a girl, he’s just a guy. When he turned eighteen, his dad bought him a Toyota Camry.
He called it his other baby and was at the car wash with it every other day.
And even though he’s a parent now, a business owner, when I run my finger along the dashboard it comes back clean.
The leather looks so well taken care of, and I imagine him using the little free time he has vacuuming every crumb from Teddy eating in the back seat.
If I paid for detailing twice a month, my car still wouldn’t look like this.
I open his middle console and at the sight of his lip balm and cologne, the memory of him sitting so close to me a minute ago comes back.
I quickly close that compartment because the ache I feel between my thighs is already unrelenting enough without remembering his scent.
Before last night, I had finally gotten a bit of control back while around him, but now I’m fantasizing about us finding a secluded parking lot and doing nasty things in his tinted truck.
I reach for his dashboard and the universe rewards me with a swift stop to the fantasy of straddling Carmello—anywhere.
The only thing inside is a manual, a book with his registration and insurance, and a photo booth print.
It’s from Roger Williams Park Zoo during one of their dinosaur events.
Teddy doesn’t look much younger than he is right now.
Maybe a year. With his mom and dad sandwiching him.
There’s nothing about the photos that feels romantic, but it’s comfortable…
intimate. Silly faces and big smiles. Vero told me that Daniela and Carmello co-parented closely, but I don’t think I pictured that they’d look like a traditional family.
I’m not sure what the feelings are that are swirling in my stomach.
But suddenly, my snooping feels sharp. I’m imagining that Carmello pulls this out and stares at it often, wishing Daniela was with him instead of her boyfriend.
I put the photo strip back and shut the glove compartment, then realign myself.
Even if Carmello cares about me again, it doesn’t mean he wants to be with me… or we’d fit as people even if he did.
“You look…disappointed by your snooping,” he says, and I startle at the sound of his voice. He’s frowning when I find him in the window. “Damn. I’m sorry for scaring you.”
I swallow and smooth down my hair. “It’s fine. What’d the plumber say?”
He exhales and opens the truck door. Drops down beside me. “He can’t give me the exact cost until after he’s done with the work, but the good news is he’s free today to take care of it. Said he’ll call me when it’s done tonight.”
“I guess you have a real day off too,” I say. “What will you do with it?”
He lets out a short laugh. “A real day off? I have paperwork to do, and I should save time by trying to figure out a few of the small dishes for the event night based on the cards that I already know exist in your decks. I can do both of those things at home, so there’s no excuse.”
“You’re strict,” I say, “but I guess you’re right. Bosses don’t always have the luxury of days off. I guess that means I’m coming with you to cook and figure out these cards.”
I’m joking, I think, but Carmello grips his steering wheel and says, “All right, then.”
My stomach does a somersault. He looks so serious but I ask him if he is anyway.
“I am,” he says, “but if you were just fucking with me and you don’t wanna come…
” He trails off when his eyes drop to my mouth and he sees me chewing on my lip.
I think we’re both aware of what might happen today if I go with him.
I compare the feeling of finding the photo strip in his dash to the energy between us while we sit here not even touching.
For weeks, we’ve been slow burning like the couples in one of my favorite K-dramas, but I know how it’ll go down if we’re alone at his place.
I weigh the risks and possible rewards. And I think Denise would say: Aren’t you curious?
The worst that could happen is the dick is even better and you gotta leave it behind.
You’ve done it once, you can do it again.
He watches as I buckle my seat belt. “I do,” I say, but he studies my face cautiously, so I know I have to sell it. “We’ll get work done, and I did say I wanted to see One Piece.”
“You did,” Carmello says. “But his walker took him to a doggy event at a park, so it’ll just be us.” Without a slobbering seventy-pound pit bull in the apartment, there will be nothing but me and Carmello to keep ourselves in check. It makes me as nervous as it does excited. “Is that all right?”
I try to keep my voice from trembling. “Hurry up and drive, Carmello. I need to pee.”
He laughs and reverses out of the parking lot. The song “What You Got” by Quail P starts playing on his Bluetooth, and I swear the sexual tension in this small space increases tenfold.