“That’s not what I was going to—” I shake my head, getting back on track. “He told me that if I accidentally wore something green on air, it would make my boring show a lot better.”
“Seriously? That’s all it takes to get you to send your career into a tailspin? You’ll be lucky if you’re not the laughing stock of all meteorologists after this.”
“You know what? I don’t regret it. Patrick didn’t fire me. My career is fine. I’m sure not that many people were watching anyway.”
Anne follows me out of the bathroom.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the letter sooner? Were you planning to do this all weekend?”
I shush her because I don’t want anyone else to overhear and know this was planned. “It was a last-minute idea.”
“I can’t believe you. When did you read the letter? We just spent the whole weekend together, and the whole point of the trip was to find Luca. How could you just forget to mention that you received another letter from him?”
“I didn’t read it until last night. It came in Friday’s mail but I didn’t even notice it until yesterday.”
“What did it say?”
I hesitate. “Nothing. It was just like all the other letters.”
“What about the letters you were supposed to bring to Georgia? Does it have anything to do with you conveniently forgetting them?”
It’s annoying how good she is at reading me. I’m starting to think she’d make a good detective. Or maybe a good palm-reader. I wonder if a palm-reading detective is a thing.
“Can we just drop it for now?” I ask. “I’m sure you have some work to do.”
“Fine. Tell me about it at the café later?”
“I can’t. I have … plans.”
I don’t really have plans, but I hope that if I avoid the subject long enough, she’ll forget about it.
I manage to keep away from Anne for the rest of the morning. She doesn’t bring me any mail. I’m not surprised. I have a feeling Luca will be sending his letters to my apartment from now on. I go straight home after work and check my mail. Sure enough, there’s a new letter at the bottom of my mailbox. I wait until I’m upstairs to open it. He must have sent it over the weekend for it to arrive today.
Once I’m inside, I set my things down and rip the envelope open.
Dear Naomi,
Great job on the weather report this morning. Is it weird that it turned me on to see your head floating around the screen without a body? I can’t believe you did that. I guess this means that my last letter didn’t scare you away.
I got a call from an old friend the other day. If you go to Georgia again, tell Maxwell I said hi. Who knew you would go that far to find me? You must like me too, or something.
Love,
Luca
I can’t decide if my body is hot or cold. Of course that marine we met in Georgia would call Luca to tell him we were looking for him. It kind of annoys me that the man didn’t give me Luca’s number if he had it the whole time. But the whole point of trying to find him like this was so that it would be a surprise when I found his address and wrote back. Now he knows what I’m doing, and even worse: he’s flattered that I’m going to such great lengths to find him.
Like his last letter, I read it again, dissecting each line carefully. It takes a minute for it to occur to me that he must have written this letter today. I wonder how it’s possible that his letter made it all the way from San Diego to Miami in less than a day.
Then it hits me: he’s definitely not in San Diego anymore.
ChapterTwenty
THE BODILESS WEATHERGIRL
The realization that Luca could be a lot closer than I thought sends goosebumps over my skin. Now more than ever, I wish I could write back. I’m not sure what I would say to him if I could. I might ask him if he wants to meet up for coffee, just to see what he’s like in real life. There’s a lot that I want to ask him, like why didn’t he follow through with getting married, and how did he end up here in Miami – if this is really where he is – and did he mean any of what he said in the letter I read last night?
Most of all, I want to know why he disappeared off the face of the planet for two years. Where did he go, and why did our letters stop mattering to him?
