Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
“I’d like to spend the night with you tonight, and every night. After the pie competition, I was thinking I might like to move to New York.”
He’s not as surprised as I thought he’d be. He just blinks to clear the shock away, his mind already whirring through logistics.
“I can—”
“No, Luca. That’s nice, but I don’t want you to have to look after me. If I’m doing this, I want to do it independently.”
“Of what?” he wheezes, hurt briefly flashing across his face.
“I mean, I want to rent my own place and have a job. Moving in together would be a lot of pressure on us. I want to be there for you, but I want to give you space to breathe.”
“I hope you’ll let me help you find something,” he says.
“Find, yes. Maybe even find a job, but not hook me up with your connections or get me something I haven’t earned.”
His thumb strokes the back of my hand almost absently, but I know it’s not. “Your parents are going to be wildly worried.”
There are reasons why sleep didn’t come last night. As soon as I thought about Luca leaving here, my heart went into a state of mourning so deep that I just knew I couldn’t stay here. The long-distance thing would kill me. Not being able to be close to Luca, not being able to touch him or breathe him in… it was an awakening in all the parts of me that already knew. I was trying to be willfully blind in the name of it’s too freaking soon, but the truth is, I already know he’s my path.
What Mom and Dad said about the bakery last night made it easier to think of leaving here. Will they worry? Yes. Will I have to prepare them in advance and give them time to process? Also yes. Will they eventually come around and be happy for me in my autonomy, knowing that, all along, I was meant to find my own way in the world? I hope so.
“I thought I’d give them some notice now and maybe move at the end of summer.” Talking it out is hard. It makes this all so real. But I want to be real with this man. I want to be so many things, but this is a massive step. This is me talking about leaving my home, my family, my job, and my whole life, uprooting for him. It’s fast. And it’s a lot. It’s a huge level of commitment. We might be different from most people in that we’ve talked this out repeatedly. We’ve been so honest with each other. We’ve hurt and laughed, grown and changed, all in an exceptionally short time. We’ve done it out loud. We’ve done it as a team.
Who does that?
It brings to mind those photos online that begin with nobody, and then they leave it blank and fill it in with me, and it’s always something wild.
“I was hoping you’d stay until the pie competition in a few weeks, so the time we are apart wouldn’t be that huge.” I basically said as much, but I shouldn’t leave things up to guessing. That’s where real messes start. “My parents have always prepared me, in their own way, to be independent. I know it’s a big step, and they’re going to worry, but they’ll understand if I give them some time. I can still help them out. They can send me the bakery’s financials and accounts, and I can do them online. If my dad gets overwhelmed, he could always hire someone. He needs to make his peace with that. Maybe they’ll choose to retire soon, and they’ll be the ones to move closer to me.”
“I’d still feel better if you let me help you,” Luca says.
“I will. Just not financially. I don’t want money or things from you. I just want you.”
Luca can’t hide his amusement. He’s not pushy and accepts my wishes easily. I don’t know a single other man like him. “If we could take your sweetness and goodness and channel it into a new flavor of pie, we’d win for sure.”
I smack him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m not all that good. I’d say average at best. I have a dark side you know nothing about.”
Luca chuckles. “The goth side?”
“That was for playacting, but I do like dark art and gothic literature. I’m going to say that even though I had to spend a frustrating hour every single day doing my makeup, it grew on me.”
He braces his hand on my back, his tone changing. “Dark or light, you found the life I’d buried so much further than six feet down. You tugged it out of me.”
He’s so serious now. I should try to match the atmosphere, but I just can’t. I giggle like I’m fucking fourteen because he said tugged it out of me. “I did kind of do that last night, didn’t I?”