“No. I haven’t. I haven’t been in contact with him since I left Lisbon.”
“Ah. So it wasn’t just me.”
I give him a loaded look. “Hey. We’re both at fault.”
“What do you mean?” he asks, glancing at me sharply.
“I mean for not keeping in touch.”
He relaxes his shoulders. “Oh. Yes.”
I wonder if he feels guilty about what happened between us. I know Marco and I weren’t together, even if it had literally ended that same day. But he is his brother, and he did kiss me when we were together. We were complicated from the start.
“Does he know? Did you ever tell him? About us?”
Luciano swallows thickly, darkness coming over his eyes. He gives a barely perceptible shake of his head. “No. I had no reason to.”
At least we’re on the same page there.
Are we on the same page tonight? I can’t tell.
Our food comes at that moment, breaking up the tension that’s been swirling around, giving us both something else to focus on.
And, wow, the food is good.
“Oh my god,” I say as I shovel the pasta in my mouth, my eyes nearly rolling back in my head. I know I’m making orgasm faces to rival John Mayer right now, but I don’t care.
“Good?” Luciano asks, chuckling.
“Amazing.”
When we’re both done eating and I’m on my third glass of wine, I ask Luciano what his other dreams are.
“Other than being the captain of a Champions League team,” I clarify.
He stares at me for a moment, tapping his fingers along the edge of the table. “I guess I have the same dreams everyone else has.”
“You need to be more specific. You don’t know that I used to dream of running away and joining Cirque du Soleil. Thankfully, it was short-lived after I discovered that French Canadians are weird.”
“Okay, so perhaps I don’t have that dream,” he admits. His expression grows serious. “But…I dream of falling in love and settling down, I suppose.”
It feels hard to breathe all of a sudden. He’s just so fucking honest, always was.
“You haven’t found that yet?”
“Have you?”
The other day Elena asked me if I’d ever been in love before. I had to tell her no. That’s not what I did. I wasn’t built for that. It was something meant for other people who had their shit together, not for me with my mother and my father and my shattered path and the way I kept pinballing through life, bouncing from place to place with nowhere to land.
“No,” I tell him.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Just haven’t…”
I want to say I haven’t found the right guy, but that would be a lie.
Because I did find the right guy.
He’s sitting across from me, his eyes pining me in place, searching for the truth I would rather keep buried.
Luciano is the man I could fall in love with, if I only let myself.
But I know that just because he’s the right man for me, that doesn’t mean it’s meant to happen. Doesn’t mean it’s the right time. Doesn’t mean it won’t end with my heart broken and bleeding.
Fucking hell, things took a heavy turn.
I think he’s thinking the same, because he flags down the waiter and asks for the bill.
Then he turns to me and I fully expect him to call it a night, perhaps walk me to my hotel, and let that be that.
But he just looks at me with dark eyes and asks, “Do you want to grab another drink somewhere? I know just the place.”
I know that look in his eyes. I know it means it might be a late night for me.
I know it means that things might get complicated again.
And of course I say yes.
Fourteen
Ruby
The streets of Lisbon are alive tonight.
The yellow trams trundle and creak past us, packed with tourists, while holiday shoppers crowd the sidewalks, their arms laden with their purchases. Teenagers hang out in the shadows, drinking inconspicuous beers and smoking. Christmas lights and decorations flank the stores, bustling with business, despite how late it is.
On every corner there’s a man selling chestnuts, the delicious smell wafting through the air. I know from experience that roasted chestnuts don’t taste as good as they should, but it totally brings me into the holiday spirit. I’ll be spending Christmas with Elena and her family this year, and even though Christmas in Finland is among the best in the world (Santa lives there, after all), there’s a part of me that wants to spend it here, where the air is mild and the world seems so much more chaotic, gritty and alive.
I don’t know where we’re headed tonight, but I don’t care. It’s just nice to walk with Luciano at my side, his presence both comforting and exhilarating.
Sometimes he touches the small of my back, guiding me around a corner, and even through my leather jacket, I swear I feel his heat through my clothing. Other times his hand brushes against mine when we’re moving through crowds, and it takes everything in me to not reach out and grab it.
We stop by a square with black and white patterns on the tiles, watching a group of incredibly talented break dancers doing crazy moves to a loud beat. There’s a crowd around them, clapping along and cheering.
I stand beside Luciano, glancing up at him. He’s watching the dancers keenly, smiling, nodding his head to the music, and I can’t help but think about how much he’s changed. In some ways, he hasn’t changed at all. He’s what, thirty years old? Obviously older than me, but still young. And yet the responsibility of being a team captain seems to have made him so much more of a man. I can’t put my finger on it, but I think his drive to succeed has kicked into gear, yet instead of making him more serious, he’s become more loose and playful, more like that persona
