Chapter 32 #2
“There’s a lot of people here,” he whispers. Damien looks at me. I smile and bend down.
“There are. How about we get something to eat? Maybe a burger?” I ask.
Luca shakes his head.
“A corn dog?”
He shakes his head again.
“Turkey legs? Or noodles. There’s a Thai truck over–”
“I don’t want that,” he says, and I’m starting to worry this is a bad idea.
“Grilled cheese,” Damien chimes in, and Luca’s attention perks.
“There’s grilled cheese?” he asks.
“Yep,” Damien answers.
Luca looks around, and so do I.
“Yeah, where?” I whisper without moving my mouth.
But Damien’s eyes just sparkle with a hint of mischief. “Follow me.”
Damien takes my hand, I take Luca’s, and we wind through the crowd.
“You do realize,” I say as quietly as I can to Damien, “that if you say Luca can have something, you have to deliver. It’s the rule of hopeful five-year-olds.”
“What’s the matter, Mariposa? You think I won’t deliver?” Damien asks, and my cheeks flush. His lips curl in satisfaction. Something about him using a nickname, a nickname he usually only uses in the bedroom, feels like we are being naughty, and I can’t help but smile too.
Damien wasn’t lying. Right down the street, close to the Bellisimo, one of Damien’s other hotels, is a grilled cheese food truck.
“The Cheddar Truck?” Luca asks.
“The Cheddar Truck,” Damien echoes. “Best grilled cheese you’ll ever have.”
But Luca being Luca arches a skeptical eyebrow. “How do you know?”
Damien bends down towards him. “Because I own it,” he half whispers. Then he walks over to the truck and steps through the back door, leaving Luca and I for about five minutes to wait and wonder.
“Your boss makes sandwiches?” Luca asks after about three of those minutes.
“I guess so,” I answer.
“Is there anything he doesn’t do?” he asks, and I actually snort.
“I’m starting to ask that question myself, buddy.”
A moment later, Damien reappears with two wrapped sandwiches. He hands one to Luca, who tears the packaging off and then hesitates. He peels one corner of the crust back and narrows his eyes.
“Shit,” Damien mutters under his breath. “Should I have gone crustless?”
“No, he’ll eat the crust,” I whisper back.
“Oh, good.”
“He’s judging the sandwich as a whole,” I add, and then I laugh.
Luca takes a bite, and I swear Damien is holding his breath.
“Well?” I ask.
“It’s good,” he nods. Then he smiles. “Really good.”
I nudge Damien, who lets out the breath he was in fact holding. “And what’s that one?” I ask, nodding at the sandwich still in his hand.
“This is the Tartine,” he says as he unwraps it. “A bougie take on the OG. Fig, bacon and brie.”
He hands me half, and I take a bite. As expected, it’s out of this world, but then I give him a funny look. “Since when do you run a food truck?”
“It was a pipe dream when I was younger. After the popularity of the hotels skyrocketed, I wanted to do something fun. Well, that’s what people told me to do, and since I’m not the best at that–”
“At fun?” I ask.
“Yeah…I decided to open the food truck. Crazy enough, it’s done really well.”
“I didn’t know you liked grilled cheese,” Luca says, nearly finished with his.
“Neither did I,” I said with a smirk.
“Well, I guess both of you now officially know one of my best-kept secrets,” Damien says before leaning down towards Luca again. “I love grilled cheese.”
It earns him the smallest smile from Luca and a grin I can’t hide from me.
After we finish our sandwiches, we head towards the bouncy castles. Luckily, they have sprinklers in them to keep kids from overheating. “That looks fun, doesn’t it?” I ask Luca as I untie his shoes.
“There’s a lot of kids on the slides,” he says, and I glance over at them. “It’s not too bad, bud. See, if you wait in that little line, you can go down the slide and land in the water. You like water slides.”
Luca nods, but I can tell he’s not sure.
It’s been an age-old struggle to get him to socialize.
And while I know that forcing it isn’t the answer, I try to encourage it.
The slide isn’t bad, maybe only ten kids.
But I know that to him it’s not always about the number, but the movement of the activity.
“You’ll feel better if you cool down, bud,” I say, and he nods.
“And we will be right here. We aren’t going anywhere,” Damien adds, and I look up at him. My heart flutters a little.
“Okay.”
Luca finally takes our word for it and scampers off towards the bouncy house. “Is he always this shy?” Damien asks as we squint against the sun.
“I’m not sure shy is the right word for it,” I answer. “He just has a hard time around people. Social anxiety is what the pediatrician calls it. She says the more I put him in situations where he has to be around people, the more he’ll get used to it. But sometimes I feel like it just–”
“Makes things worse,” he says, and I nod.
“Yeah.”
“I get that.”
I study Damien as he blinks against the sun, his eyes narrowing as sweat drips from his brow. At the same time, I wipe my own forehead with the back of my wrist. Damien’s eyes dart down to me.
“Are you doing alright?” he asks.
I nod and take a sip of my water bottle, finishing it off.
“I can grab us some more waters while you wait for Luca,” he says.
“Thanks,” I smile back at him, and Damien threads through the crowd into the hotel.
For a moment, I just stand there. This version of him is so different.
Last night felt like a dream, and when I woke up, I was sure I would be back in my own bed, probably hungover.
But none of that happened. This is real, and I don’t know what to make of it.
Of him. All I know is I’m even more drawn to him now than before.
Commotion behind me jerks my attention back to the bouncy house. The line for the water slide has gotten longer, and kids are getting impatient. My eyes dart around, but I don’t see Luca. I take a few steps in that direction, searching frantically for him.
“Luca?” I call out. Meanwhile, I start walking faster. None of the kids are coming down the slide, and there’s a crowd of them at the top. If he’s in that mess, he’s most likely having a panic attack. “Luca!”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Damien suddenly appears next to me with several water bottles.
“I don’t know where Luca is, and the bouncy castle is a little chaotic,” I answer as I try to see around people. All of the other parents just look irritated.
“Someone’s holding up the line,” one of them grumbles.
“Out of the way,” Damien snaps before pulling me through the crowd to the foot of the slide. Then he points. “There. Luca is at the top.”
Sure enough, he’s sitting at the head of the slide, blocking the way for the other kids. He has his hands over his ears, and he’s rocking. Anytime any of the other kids come near him, he yells at them.
“Shit,” I say. Then I call out to him. “Luca! Luca, honey, come down the slide! You can get away from everyone else if you come down the slide. Baby? Baby, look at me. You need to come down the slide.”
But Luca can’t hear me. He’s too stuck in the chaos of the other kids taunting him and getting too close.
“Luca!” I shout. Then I turn to Damien. “He’s having a panic attack.
” With that, I head over to the stairs of the castle in an attempt to get through the line of kids.
But out of my periphery, I see Damien climbing up the slide.
I don’t know how he makes it with the water pouring down, but he does.
Three wide strides later, he’s at the top, crouching down in front of Luca.
I’m practically holding my breath as I watch him.
He’s close enough to shut the noise out but still giving him space.
Maybe he really does know…
Then he makes a motion between his eyes and Luca’s. A moment later, Luca nods. Slowly, he pulls his hands away from his ears and then hesitantly reaches for Damien. Damien turns him around, pulls him onto his lap, holding him as they both slide down.
I catch Luca at the bottom and lift him into my arms. Damien stands up and puts one hand on my back and the other on Luca.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Luca cries.
“Okay, baby, I’m sorry,” I hush him.
“I have an idea,” Damien says.
We go inside one of the hotels, and Damien leads us around the corner where the room opens up to a giant fish tank. The air is cold, and my nerves begin to calm. I give Luca a sip of water and brush the hair from his face.
“Can I look at the fish?” he asks, and I nod.
Damien and I sit at a table nearby while Luca’s mind gets lost in the fish tank.
“He’s always had anxiety,” I tell him. “I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault.”
“How could that be your fault?” Damien asks.
“Oh I don’t know. Being a single mom, always worried I wasn’t doing enough. Always scraping because I was alone trying to figure it out.”
“That isn’t your fault,” Damien says. “Just because his dad is MIA–”
“What?” I ask, looking over at him.
“The father,” Damien says. “He’s not in the picture.”
I swallow hard, suddenly having a difficult time meeting his eyes.
“He, uh…he doesn’t know. The father, I mean. That’s why he hasn’t been around.”
“Do you know who he is?” Damien asks.
I chew my lip for a moment, trying to decide how to answer that. “I have an idea, but it’s really, really complicated.”
I can feel Damien’s eyes on me as he studies me. When I don’t say anything else, he changes the subject back to Luca. “How does he do at school?”
“He’s quiet. He loves art and math. At recess, he plays alone a lot. Just kind of does his own thing.”
“Does he get bullied?” Damien asks while watching Luca.
“Sometimes,” I answer softly, and his jaw clenches.
“I can relate to that,” he says.
“You got bullied? By who?” I don’t know why it surprises me, but it does. I guess because I can’t imagine anyone bullying Damien. He doesn’t take shit from anyone.
“Kids. Teachers. My father. Everyone really,” he answers.
“I bet your mom had a hard time watching that,” I say, and Damien’s face hardens a little.
“My mom died when I was little,” he says, and my stomach bottoms out.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” I say quickly.
“You didn’t know. Most people don’t. I don’t like talking about it. I had no family other than my father, and he was less than kind. I grew up in survival mode. I was taught to be hard and shown that love only brings pain.”
I have no idea what to say about that, but it really does explain a lot.
“Have you considered putting him in another school?” he asks. “Maybe a private school for gifted kids?”
“I thought about it,” I answer. “But when I looked into it, there was no way I could afford it.”
“Well, you can now,” he says. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Luca waves over to us and smiles–at Damien. “I found another one!” he calls out.
“Another octopus?” Damien asks, standing up.
“Yes! Like at the restaurant. There’s one here too. Twice as big!”
Damien saunters over to Luca, and my heart tightens in my chest. His backside is soaking wet from the slide, but he doesn’t care.
Office Damien would care. Opal Room Damien would care.
But this Damien, this Damien that I only recently met, that I didn’t know existed, he doesn’t care that his expensive clothes are drenching from a water slide.
He doesn’t care that people are staring.
All he seems to care about is making sure Luca is okay.
He has no idea.
And it’s enough to break my heart.