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“What happened?” Scarlet asks.
“It’s just… when I saw her, I immediately wanted to be with her, get to know her, just be around her, I guess.” It’s hard talking about this when they’re all staring at me with stunned curiosity in their eyes. “Is that so hard to believe? Playboy Luca actually has feelings?”
“Relax,” Elio says.
I shoot him a look, but I can only get so grim when my cute niece is sitting right beside him in my sister-in-law’s arms.
“So what’s the issue?” Dad asks.
“She’s scared of me,” I growl. “Scared of the mafia prince, scared of this life and the darkness in me. So I need to push down whatever this is, ignore it, and move on.”
Except I promised Colt that I’d give it another try. I don’t want to lie to him.
“But?” Scarlet says.
“Who said there was a but?”
She smiles. “You didn’t have to say, Luca.”
“But I want to text her, at least. See how she’s doing.”
“Then text her,” Scarlet says passionately. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that when you feel the itch to text, you have to listen to it.”
She and Elio share another dreamy-eyed look.
I take out my cell phone again. Last night, when I took out my phone, three dots appeared on the screen. She was typing me a message. I stared for minutes as the dots appeared and disappeared, but then she gave up.
“Harder than shouting some nonsense over music, eh?” Dad says.
Dad’s been going in on me lately about the playboy stuff, my old depressing life. I think it has something to do with the fact Mom cheated. He hates promiscuity of any kind. Not that I was promiscuous, exactly. I haven’t been with as many women as they seem to think.
“Just speak from the heart,” Scarlet says. “That’s what Elio did.”
“He didn’t have a heart before he met you,” I reply jokingly, or not.
“Just be genuine,” she goes on, unfazed. “What are her interests?”
“History,” I tell her. “She seems pretty obsessed with it.”
Scarlet narrows her eyes, then says, “Wait, Ruby… and she’s a history nerd?”
“I’m not sure she’d like the word nerd,” I say, getting protective even with my sister-in-law. I can’t help myself. “But yeah.”
“What’s her surname?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her, which makes me feel like a complete moron. I can’t stop thinking about her, and I don’t even know her name.
“Describe her,” Scarlet says.
“She’s short, with soft wavy hair with bangs. She wears her hair over half of her face like she’s trying to hide how beautiful she is, but there’s no need. I swear, she glows.” I cut myself off when I realize everybody is staring at me as though I’ve grown a second head.
“That sounds like Ruby Fitzgerald. I went to school with her.”
“Small world,” I mutter, thinking of Paulie… Fitzgerald. It seems the world is even smaller than the school connection. If I was right about the figure I saw standing at her door, her dad has a link to us. I wonder if she knows.
“She was always reading,” Scarlet says, “and she wore her hair the same way. I wonder if she’s the same one.”
“Were you friends?” I ask.
Scarlet swallows and then looks down at Molly with an expression that’s difficult to read. “I didn’t have any friends in school.”
I wonder if there’s more to the story there, but if that’s the case, then maybe Elio had a point when he said this is fate. He made a flippant comment about Ruby and Scarlet, both meaning red, but what if there’s more there? What if the world or destiny or whatever-the-fuck is throwing us together?
“Where are you going?” Mom asks when I stand up.
“To send a text,” I say. “I can’t do it with you all staring at me.”
Mom beams like I’ve just announced I’m going to propose. Before I even think about any commitment, I need to work out how to stop her from being afraid of me.
CHAPTER 11
Ruby
I sit at my laptop, trying to focus on a journal article about foot health in the late Roman Empire—seriously, some of these articles get very specific—but I can’t concentrate. Maybe it’s the subject matter. Or perhaps it’s because since Luca and I sent our last texts to each other, I’ve opened the thread at least a dozen times to type a new message only to delete it.
When I said I was scared, I wrote last night, I didn’t mean that we had to stop. Isn’t that what relationships are about? Overcoming difficulties?
This wouldn’t have been a rhetorical question. I would’ve actually needed him to explain it to me since I’ve never had a relationship. I don’t know anything about it. Then I erased the words, wondering if it would make me sound needy. The only person I could speak to about this—Lexi—doesn’t even know about it or the photo. So what am I going to do?
