She raises an eyebrow. “More pathetic than accidentally getting engaged to someone?”
“Touché.”
“Go on,” she prods.
I stare at the coffee table because it’s hard to look at her while I admit this. “Ben started making fun of me because I stopped dating junior year. He said it must have something to do with all those letters that I wrote to you. I don’t think he realized how right he was. He and I weren’t as close in high school, but we still had a few classes together, and he noticed that I was different. We didn’t talk at all after I left for boot camp. I ran into him about three years after I came back to San Diego. Penny was all over me. He told me later that it was good to see I had finally moved on and wasn’t all hung up on ‘that girl from fifth grade’ anymore.”
I gesture to the last letter I read on the coffee table, the one with the married-by-twenty-five pact. “I had just written that letter to you two days earlier. I told Ben that we were going to get married, that I had already proposed to you, and I was going to let you pick out the perfect ring. I guess Penny was walking past the room at just the right time. She never heard me say your name. She thought that I was talking about her.”
“But you hadn’t proposed to her. Why would she think you had, based on overhearing a conversation with Ben?”
I shrug. “Don’t know. I think she wanted so badly for it to be true that she made up a whole proposal in her head.”
“Surely she heard the sarcasm in your tone when you were talking to Ben, though.”
“I wasn’t being sarcastic.” When she narrows her eyes, I add, “Okay, maybe I just liked the idea of being married to you. I had every intention of convincing you to meet me. Getting married seemed like the next logical step.”
“Come on,” she says with a laugh. “You really thought that I was going to agree to marry you? I didn’t even know you.”
Her laugh does something to me. My heart beats a little faster, and I can feel the corners of my mouth stretching until I’m smiling. “Stranger things have happened. I never told Penny that I loved her, yet she thought that we were getting married.”
Naomi yawns. “Really? You never said those three little words? Even out of obligation?”
“Are you tired? It’s getting late.”
She shakes her head. “We’ve already read so much. We only have a couple years left. It shouldn’t take that long. And I want to know more about—” She cups her hand over her mouth, fighting another yawn. When she finishes her sentence, it comes out in an unintelligible mumble.
I laugh. She’s cute when she’s this tired. I want to reach over and hug her close to me, but I force myself to stay where I am. “What was that?”
“I want to know why you were so obsessed with me.”
“We can talk about that later. We need to finish these letters before you fall asleep.”
ChapterThirty-Seven
PAPER CUT
Naomi
Iwake up sandwiched between Luca and the back of the couch. My head is resting on his chest, and something hard is poking me in the stomach. I look down, and in the dark of the room, I see that Bruno is sleeping between us. His legs are stretched out as far as they will go. It’s the puppy’s back feet that are poking me.
I reach down to readjust Bruno so that he’s not kicking me anymore. The puppy yawns and rolls over, stretching his feet out to kick Luca this time. Luca grunts. I sit up, careful not to bump anyone. The stacks of letters are sitting the way we left them on the coffee table. I look around the dark room, searching for a clock.
I guess my movement wakes Luca, because when I look back down at him, his eyes are open.
“Hey,” he says.
“What time is it? I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
He taps his phone, lighting it up. “Almost two.”
“I should go home. I need to get ready for work.”
He sits up so that I can get off the couch more easily, but I don’t move just yet. We both watch as Bruno rolls from the middle to the back end of the couch in his sleep. I laugh, putting my hand over my mouth to try to keep myself quiet. Then I remember the puppy can’t hear me. Luca meets my eyes and we exchange a smile.
In the dim light, his eyelids look heavy and his pupils are dark. His hair is tousled, and his face is peppered with a five o’clock shadow. It’s really hard not to lean in a little closer to him, to remind myself of the way his stubble feels against my skin.
“It’s great that you made so much progress on his training,” he says, talking about the dog. “It will make it easier to find him a new home.”
