Chapter Four #4
“Oh my God, I haven’t seen one of these in ages.” He picked up a fluffy square object purporting to be a stuffed animal with large plastic eyes that stared into Luca’s soul.
“Wee-tah kah-wee-loo!” it yelled after Breezy squeezed it, and Luca nearly jumped out of his own skin.
“What is this demon creature?”
“It’s a Furby,” Breezy said, as if this should have been obvious.
“You are not bringing it into our apartment.”
“Pleeeeease?” Breezy fluttered his eyelashes. It should have been horrifying. Instead, Luca found himself wanting to buy Breezy the stupid stuffed animal.
“Absolutely not.”
“All right. Then can we get bubble tea?”
“It is pure sugar. And you will spoil your appetite.”
Breezy grinned triumphantly. “So we are going to dinner.”
“Yes,” Luca said with a sigh. “There is a sushi place two blocks over I thought we could try.”
“This is so cool.” Breezy bounced on the balls of his feet. “We should do this more, check out the sights when we go somewhere. All we see is the hotel and the inside of the arena.”
“We can do that,” Luca found himself saying. “It was not hard to find something to do in Seattle. I am sure we can find something for all the other places we go.”
Breezy reverently returned the Furby to its shelf. “Have you ever been to Winnipeg?”
Luca grimaced. He was too sensitive right now to talk about his time in Juniors again. “Maybe Winnipeg has a nice movie theater where one can forget the rest of the place.”
He debated whether it would be overkill to be conveniently ill during the Winnipeg trip, but his thoughts were derailed when Breezy surprised him by wrapping him in a massive hug from behind.
One of Breezy’s arms wrapped around Luca’s waist, the other around his chest. His front pressed to Luca’s back, and he was tall enough he had to bend down a bit to say, “Seriously, thank you for this. You’re the best.”
His lips brushed Luca’s ear, and a shiver ran down Luca’s spine, both from the words and the sentiment.
There was an answer somewhere Luca ought to give, another apology for what he’d said on the plane, some sort of brush-off so Breezy would stop touching him.
But he couldn’t make words work. Not with Breezy touching him.
Breezy was a hugger by nature, someone who touched his friends often and casually. In other words, Luca’s polar opposite. To Luca, touch meant something.
Being wrapped up in Breezy’s arms meant everything.
“When are we getting dinner?”
Luca wrenched himself out of Breezy’s hold so he could think and speak again. “Seven. I made a reservation.”
“Awesome! So we have an hour to find Christmas gifts for our families.”
Of course Christmas gifts were Breezy’s first instinct in early October.
He dragged Luca through three jewelry shops, ostensibly on the hunt for the perfect earrings for his mother.
On the way, Luca picked up a stupidly expensive bracelet for his sister, while Breezy changed his mind when they passed a bookstore and bought his mom a boxed set of Julia Quinn’s novels.
Luca had to convince him not to get his dad a full wheel of cheese on the grounds of it being a nightmare to get on the plane and their apartment not having the proper conditions to keep it until December.
“I guess you’re right,” Breezy admitted reluctantly. “But then you have to take me to the cheese shop in Berkeley closer to Christmas.”
Luca rolled his eyes. “Fine. What does your brother like? Maybe we will have more luck finding him something.”
“Matty likes math and being right,” Breezy said and then laughed at himself.
They ended up leaving with gifts for Luca’s entire family and only Breezy’s mother.
Afterward, they had sushi so good Luca didn’t think it was overpriced for a change, and they shared some of the more exotic dishes neither of them had tried before.
“Man,” Breezy said, stretching and then patting his belly after his last bite of a spicy dragon fruit and tuna roll. “Doing this in every NHL city in North America is going to be so dope.”
“It is,” Luca agreed.
It was eight thirty, and they had plenty of time to make it back to the hotel before curfew.
Maybe enough time for a frozen yogurt. They could split it, although Breezy always got disgustingly sugary toppings.
But Luca could deal with a mild stomachache for one evening.
He would let Breezy get the chocolate dip that hardened and cracked.
He always got bits of it stuck on his lips, and Luca could kiss them off—
Wait.
No.
They weren’t on a date.
Luca had taken Chris out for an afternoon sightseeing trip and a nice dinner to make up for the lack of rental contract.
Any similarity to a date had to be incidental and only in Luca’s mind.
If Luca wanted to date someone, he wouldn’t plan something as amateurish as an hour of window shopping unless it made his date light up all over…
the way Breezy had when he held the stupid Furby.
With a dawning sense of horror, Luca realized he had committed to what amounted to taking Breezy out on a date in thirty-two different cities.
He was never getting over the man.