I should have kept quiet, but it’s like I’m bursting with jealousy and wanting. With this strange, intoxicating feeling of being on the outside of something and desperately,desperatelywanting to be on the inside of it.
I’m not usually a sentimental person.
When Uncle Vic and I met for drinks last night, I gave him a gift card to Dave and Busters, and he got me a gift card to a coffee chain. An even, fifty-dollar exchange. At the end of thenight, when he wished me a merry Christmas, I’d kept my face perfectly level.
And this morning, when I went to see Gran before coming with Luca, I handed her gift over—a crochet hook, since she can no longer knit—and smiled dutifully when she teared up, pulling me in for a hug.
Holidays have, in a way, always meant acting like nothing bothered me. There were a fewreallygood holidays with my dad. Once we went to a Christmas market in Germany and saw the ballet on Christmas Eve, and one year he got me an e-reader since I’d mentioned feeling sorry not to keep any books— we were constantly moving.
But most of the time, Christmas meant carefully looking like I didn’t care. Like I didn’t want anything.
Now, I feel that effort creeping in. To try and not let Luca know just how much today affected me. How much it hurt to see how well they all know one another, the inside jokes and laughs at each funny gift. The tears and hugs after the sentimental ones.
“Your family is really nice,” I say to the ceiling instead of him, because I’m not sure I can stand looking at him right now.
“Yeah, they are,” Luca says. When he turns over onto his side, it rocks the air mattress so I scoot closer to him, my body sliding into his. I don’t move away, and he doesn’t either.
“So you had a good day?” he asks.
I clear my throat, fishing for something to make this less intimate, less of whatever it is. “It was alright. Do you think they were convinced?”
“Very,” he whispers, and I think that’s just as much to do with his performance as mine. The way he’d doted on me all day, bringing me drinks, making my plate, making sure I had everything I needed whenever I needed it.
“Did you tell the truth?” The words are coming out of me before I can stop them, and I squeeze my eyes shut at how stupid this is. It doesn’t matter. And yet, I add, “About not looking in that folder?”
“Wren.” Luca’s voice is serious. “I swear on the Stanley Cup that I didn’t look at a thing in that folder.”
It should be cheesy and stupid—a hockey player swearing on the Stanley Cup—but it’s oddly sweet. Makes sense to me. That cup is the thing Luca cares about most in the world.
And the knowledge that he was telling the truth, me finally,finallybelieving it, makes a lump form in my throat. A lump that I can’t swallow around, and suddenly, I’m crying.
Inevercry. Actually, more accurately, I never cry unless I want to. So right now, with tears sliding down my cheeks, it feels worse than being naked. It feels raw and off-balance. Exposed.
Luca can tell—Iknowhe can, and I wait for him to awkwardly ask if I’m okay, or to somehow produce a box of tissues from nowhere. But he does neither of those things.
Instead, he reaches forward, one of his hands sliding around to the back of my head as he pulls me into him, cradling me against his chest like he knows without asking that it’s what I need.
I should push away from him. I should insist that I’m fine. I should get a fucking grip on myself and stop being so embarrassing.
But it feelsgoodto be held. It feels too good to be held by him, and to cry, to cling to him. Like I’m a scuba diver jumping off the boat into myself, and I can count on him at the surface, a hand on my cord, ready to pull me up the second things go wrong.
I cry long enough that my face starts to feel a little soft and sticky, and I get that sleepy, euphoric feeling.
I cry long enough that when the sadness ebbs, I actuallyfeelhis hands. One on my back, firm pressure, the other smoothing the hair out of my face, cupping the back of my neck.
And then I feel the rest of him. So fucking tall, so broad and solid. Somehow soft and strong at once. I’ve seen him slam other guys into the boards, seen him get clocked across the face. Watched him hit the puck with a velocity that would scramble your brains.
But here he is, in a pair of gray sweats, his hands on me so gently that it’s hard to believe he’s capable of such force.
That night in the alley was frantic, intoxicating, fuckingthrilling. It filled my brain with helium—made it hard to stop. When I pulled away from him, it was with the certainty that I had to hide how much I liked it.
But this isn’t like that. There’s no frantic pace, no flying hands, no tugging and pushing and heavy, feverish breath. No pressure of someone else watching, of what the picture might look like after the flash goes dark.
Instead, when I wipe my face on my shirt and look up at him, I find nothing but his steady gaze returned to me.
And when I move slowly forward, eyes darting down to his lips, Luca keeps his on me the entire time. Maybe he’s going to stop me. Maybe he’s going to point out that there’s no reason to do this here and now, in the basement, where nobody can see us. I close my eyes just in case he’s going to be the voice of reason.
But he doesn’t stop me, and my lips land on his. Soft, warm.
