“Oh. Uh. This is awkward.”
“What?”
“That’s what I took from your apartment.”
He frowns. “You took the letters?”
“They were addressed to me.” I shrug.
He tilts his head, the corner of his lip curving up. “I’m surprised I didn’t notice they were missing. When did you take them?”
“The day after you tried to give them to me. They were right next to all the other letters.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Why didn’t you say something before?”
“You weren’t in a very friendly mood that day, remember?”
He sighs. “I might have been overreacting to your comment about my bedroom skills.”
“Ha! I knew you were upset about that.” I don’t know why I feel so smug about it. While Luca kneels to put Bruno’s leash and harness back on, an idea occurs to me. “Do you want to read our letters?”
He looks up at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we could read them all together. I’ve reread some of them recently, but I only have the ones from you. What if we read them in order?”
“I have to take Bruno for a walk.”
“Oh. Forget it. I just thought that—”
“Let’s read them after my walk,” he interrupts.
I smile. “I’ll grab my box and I’ll meet you upstairs?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
ChapterThirty-Six
SWEET AND INNOCENT
Luca
When I come back upstairs, Naomi is already waiting at my door with a box in her arms. I don’t know why she didn’t just let herself in. She has a key to my apartment. I let us both inside. I feed the dog while she settles down on the couch. My furniture isn’t as nice as hers. I bought it all from a thrift shop when I moved here. It’s not raggedy, but nothing really matches.
I go into the bedroom and grab my box of letters. I return to the living room and sit down next to Naomi on the couch. I leave plenty of space between us so that she won’t feel like I’m crowding her.
She leans forward to open her box, which she left on the floor. She pulls out a stack of old letters. I recognize my old childish handwriting. It feels weird to see it. Sitting up straight again, she scoots a little closer to me. I tell myself not to read too much into it, but I can smell her hair from here and it makes me want to lean a little closer and just breathe her in. I know what the skin on her neck looks like when it’s covered in goosebumps after I’ve kissed her there. I want to see it again. She probably wouldn’t be sitting so close to me if she knew that this is all I can think about.
She pulls her feet up underneath her, then hands me the stack of letters.
“You can read these,” she says. “I’ll read the ones from me.”
I hand her the stack of letters from my box. They’re in reverse chronological order. After Penny dumped all my letters out of the box, I spent hours putting them back in order and distracting myself by reading them. I flip through the stack that she gave me. Hers are in the same order.
She pulls the first letter from the bottom of the stack that I gave her, and begins to read.
“Dear Luca. I am really excited to be your new pen pal. My teacher says that you—”
“Stop,” I interrupt.
