Page 18 of Cusp: A Renzo + Lucia Companion

NINE

Diego

“My place is closer.”

Diego hadn’t thought much about Luv’s offer as the night bled into the very early morning, and the buzz that he’d been feeding for hours finally reached its peak. On one side of the elevator that lifted them to a higher floor, Diego grinned as Luv used the tip of her shoe to scoot his skateboard back and forth on the tiled floor.

“Ever tried it?” he asked.

Her blue eyes widened—a trait of hers that he’d noticed more and more often the longer he spent time with her. Everything was always right in the girl’s eyes. Very little was hidden there. The window to anything she was thinking or feeling at any given time.

“Never,” she admitted.

“I bet you could pull something off—an ollie, at least.”

Luv didn’t miss a beat, replying, “Probably.”

That had Diego laughing because it wasn’t at all the answer he expected. Usually, chicks looked at a skateboard like it was the last thing they wanted to touch. They didn’t typically have an issue with saying there was no way in hell they could get on one and ride like he did. Luv was so confident in her answer that she could do something; he didn’t have a choice but to believe her.

Glancing up, Diego watched the numbers overtop the elevator doors light up one after another as they climbed higher. The lightness in his chest—compliments of the remnants of his smoke from earlier—and in his mind had him more relaxed than he’d been in weeks.

This was what I wanted, he thought.

That morning when he woke up in the unfamiliar hotel room, the only thing that had been on his mind was to find some fun. To do anything except think about the things waiting for him back in New York. All the choices he had yet to make and how his future might look because of it.

He didn’t want to think about any of it. So, he didn’t.

Instead, Diego did what he did best. He got on his board, found a park, vlogged, snapped some photos, and made friends. He hadn’t expected the time to fly like it did, and he certainly hadn’t thought he would find Luv waiting for him outside the skatepark at the end of the day, but none of it had been a bad thing.

She took him across the city, and they found the music he wanted. Then, drinks and lights and fun. He didn’t think he would end his day—or rather, start the next day—by heading to her place with the promise of a couch to sleep on because the drive would be shorter than going back to the hotel, but he didn’t mind.

This was a good way to end it.

Diego dragged in a breath, smiling when Luv’s gaze landed on him, and she raised a brow in silent question. What she was asking, he didn’t know. The gesture still had him opening his mouth to tell the girl things he just wanted to get off his chest.

She was there.

So, why not tell her?

“Maybe it’s because I’m really faded,” Diego said, chuckling, “but this was the best day I’ve had in a while. I just want to do this for as long as I can … have fun, you know? Everybody else wants me to grow up, and I’m not sure I’m ready for what that means to them. Because it doesn’t mean the same things to me.”

Luv pursed her lips, and it made the tip of her small nose lift in the cutest way.

Cute?

Diego blinked.

Luv didn’t seem to notice his distraction when she said, “Just because people want you to do something doesn’t actually mean you have to do it, though, does it?”

He thought about that.

Because he hadn’t before.

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “It’s not like what they want is bad. It’s just—”

“Not what you want.” She shrugged. “And isn’t that what really matters?”

Without very much context to Diego’s current situation regarding LA, his sister, and all the rest, Luv had given him a frank answer to what had felt like a complex problem. It wouldn’t make it any easier, sure, but it really did boil down to that one thing.