Eli
I make it until just after two in the morning before I accept that sleep is not happening.
This would probably be easier if I had anybody else to ask. Not about diapers or formula or pediatricians, because apparently every bastard in this house has an opinion on those now. I mean about this.
About looking at your best friend one day and realizing admiration has somehow slid into something hotter.
About wanting someone you’ve known so long that their voice should feel like furniture and instead it feels like being touched.
About whether this means I’ve been lying to myself for years or whether it’s possible to be one thing and then not, or maybe never have been that thing in the clean way I thought.
There is exactly one person in this house I can ask without spontaneously combusting from shame. I sit up before I can argue myself out of it.
The room is cool enough now that the floorboards chill the bottoms of my feet when I stand.
I check Mila automatically before I do anything else, because that’s instinct now.
Her little mouth is open, one hand tucked by her cheek, and she looks deeply unimpressed by life even in sleep.
I pull the blanket a little higher over her belly, then grab the baby monitor off the nightstand and slip out into the hall in sweatpants and an old T-shirt.
A low lamp near the landing throws soft light down the hall, enough to see by without waking anyone.
I stand there for a second with my hand on my neck, wondering if this is insane.
It probably is. Walking to your captain at two because you need sexuality advice feels deeply fucking insane.
But the alternative is lying back down and replaying Julian’s body in the locker room until dawn, and I’d rather die.
Luca’s room is halfway down the hall. His light is still on under the door, which doesn’t surprise me.
He’s either working, texting Sage, or staring at film because he’s secretly eighty-seven years old inside that quarterback body.
I knock softly, already half hoping he’s asleep so I can tell myself I tried and retreat with some dignity left.
Instead, his voice comes immediately. “Yeah?”
I open the door a crack and lean in. “You awake?”
Luca looks up from where he’s sitting cross-legged on his bed with his laptop open and a notebook beside him. The second he sees me, his expression changes from mild distraction to alert interest.
“You look like a haunted Victorian child,” he says. “Come in.”
I shut the door behind me and stand there for a second longer than I should, suddenly very aware that I did not actually plan what words I was going to use once I got in here.
Luca closes his laptop, sets it aside, and leans back against the headboard with the kind of calm that is either reassuring or infuriating depending on your mood.
“What happened?” he asks.
I drag a hand through my hair and exhale hard. “Nothing happened.”
“That’s never how someone starts when they’re about to say something normal.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
I glare at him, but it has no real force behind it. I’m too tired and too far gone for that. Luca watches me for another beat, then pats the foot of the bed. “Sit down before you start pacing and wear a hole in my floor.”
I do, mostly because my legs feel weirdly shaky all of a sudden. The mattress dips under my weight, and I brace my forearms on my thighs, staring at my own hands because looking him in the face while I say this feels impossible.
For a second, neither of us speaks.
Then Luca says, very calmly, “Is this about Mila, your parents, or Julian?”
My head jerks up so fast I nearly sprain something. “Why the fuck would you put Julian in that list?”
He raises one blond brow. “So, it’s Julian.”
“No,” I say too fast.
Luca stares at me with a raised eyebrow. I stare back at him for maybe two seconds before my whole face heats, and I look away again. “Fuck you,” I mutter.
His mouth twitches. “That’s not a no.”
I scrub both hands over my face and let out a groan that sounds half strangled, half furious. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“You absolutely should’ve, because now I’m entertained and useful.” He shifts a little, folding one leg under himself. “Start over and try not to sound like you’re being interrogated by the FBI.”
I laugh despite myself, but it comes out rough and embarrassed. “I don’t even know how to say this.”
“Try words. They’ve held up pretty well historically.”
“You’re being a dick on purpose.”
“Yes,” he says cheerfully. “Because if I let you spiral too early, you’ll bolt.”
That’s annoyingly accurate, which means I don’t have a comeback. I sit there with my pulse doing stupid things and the room too warm around me. I finally just blurt, “I think I might be feeling something for Jules.”
The silence after that is not shocked enough, and that pisses me off.
Luca does not blink, choke, widen his eyes, or clutch his chest. He just leans back a little farther and says, “Yeah.”
I stare at him and sputter, “Yeah?”
He shrugs. “Yeah.”
“That’s your whole reaction?”
“What did you want? Fireworks? A priest? A fruit basket?”
I actually laugh at that, then stop because none of this is funny. “Luca.”
He exhales through his nose, and the amusement softens out of him, though it doesn’t disappear completely. “Okay. Fine. Serious answer. No, I’m not shocked.”
I feel myself go cold and hot at the same time. “Why not?”
“Because I have eyes,” he says. “And because you have never, not once in the entire time I’ve known you, looked at Julian like he was just some guy.”
I open my mouth, then shut it again.
“You didn’t always look at him like this exactly,” he goes on before I can find a lie decent enough to use, gesturing vaguely between us as if the shape of my crisis is visible in the room.
“But you’ve never been fully straight about him either—anyone with eyes could see the way you look at Jules.
You admire him too much and orbit him without realizing it.
When you’re pissed at him, it looks personal in a way that doesn’t happen with anybody else.
When he’s hurting, you feel it before he says anything.
I honestly assumed you’d work it out eventually. ”
I stare at him in open betrayal. “You assumed I’d… what?”
“Work it out.” He tilts his head. “I didn’t know when. I definitely didn’t know it would be after your daughter arrived and the whole house got drafted into a duck cult, but life’s weird.”
I run a hand through my hair and pull. “That is insane.”
“No,” Luca says. “You just don’t like hearing it.”
I get up and pace once to the window because sitting still while he calmly rewrites my whole internal narrative feels impossible. “I am not orbiting him.”
“You literally came to my room after midnight because you can’t stop thinking about him.”
“That is unrelated.”
Luca lets out one short laugh. “Sure.”
I turn and point at him. “Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Acting like this is obvious.”
He leans both palms back on the mattress and looks at me with the kind of patient annoyance he usually reserves for receivers who miss route changes.
“Eli, you want me to lie to you and say this came out of nowhere? Because I can, but it’ll be a shitty lie, and you’ll know it.”
I drag a hand down my face. “Jesus Christ.”
“No, different guy.”
That gets another involuntary laugh out of me, and I hate that it helps. Then the humor drops away again, because I didn’t come here for jokes even if I apparently need them to keep from crawling out of my own skin.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” I say quietly and stop pacing, then lean against the dresser, folding my arms over my chest. “I keep trying to tell myself it’s just because of everything that happened.
He’s there all the time. He helps with Mila and is the one person who can calm me down when I’m losing it.
We’ve been through too much together. So maybe I’m just…
attached, or whatever. Maybe it’s gratitude. Maybe it’s stress.”
Luca watches me for a second before saying, “Do you want my real answer?”
“I came here, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” he says. “And my real answer is that stress doesn’t usually make a guy start undressing his best friend with his eyes.”
My face goes hot so fast it almost hurts. “W-what?”
He actually has the nerve to look sympathetic. “Oh, come on.”
“You noticed?” I squeak.
Luca rolls his eyes. “I’m a football captain who kept a drug addiction secret for years. Of course I noticed you eye-fucking Jules in the locker room.”
My whole body fills with mortification. “Fuck.”
“It wasn’t subtle.”
I close my eyes. “I’m going to throw myself out the window.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to sit back down and let the Bi Godmother guide you through this.”
I open my eyes and look at him. “The what?”
He spreads one hand over his chest in mock solemnity. “Ryan calls me the Bi Godmother. Apparently, every sexually confused man in this house eventually wanders into my room like I’m supposed to be wise.”
I blink at him. “Has this happened before?”
He grins. “Enough that I’m considering a punch card.”
I laugh again, and this time it helps enough that I push off the dresser and sit back down. The embarrassment is still there, hot and horrible, but the panic has eased just enough that I can think around it.
Luca studies me for a moment, then asks more gently, “What exactly are you feeling?”
That’s the question I’ve been avoiding in my own head because answering it makes this less abstract. I stare at my hands again.
“I don’t know,” I say at first, then force myself to do better. “Admiration, yeah. That part’s obvious. He’s kind and… steady. He just shows up for those he cares about, and I know that sounds emotional, and it is, but it’s not only that anymore.”
“How do you know?”
I laugh once, humorless. “Because I looked at him holding my daughter and my body reacted in a way it never has before.”