Page 9
Today, when I met Appa outside the office by her car, she immediately informed me she wanted to walk around and get fresh air before it got hot in true Appa form. She wanted to snag some cherries and apricots if they were ready, too, and I was happy to tag along and see how she was doing. Ember, their toddler, ran straight for her Nonna’s house, leaving Appa to manage Luca, or Vegas, as I like to call him. I helped unbuckle him from his car seat, and at a couple of months old, he was very Valenti. Warm and heavy in my arms. She let me hold him while she got her baby wrap on, and I could hardly believe a stupid piece of fabric would support him.
Just then, she draws me out of my thoughts. “What aren’t you telling me, Enz?” she asks again, tossing more cherries into the basket.
I blink to focus my eyes back on the present. “I, uh.” I pause and clear my throat. “I met someone yesterday.”
Appa’s arms stop reaching midair as she looks back. “Really?” One of her big signature smiles graces her face then. “Who is she?”
“She’s just here for the summer. It’s not even worth getting worked up about,” I say.
But I already know Tilly’s track stats from both high school and college, including her fastest mile and her major at UC-Sac, what the license plate number on her shitty car was, and her phone number and email addresses, including her university email. I also knew plenty about her deadbeat entrepreneur turned sellout father’s various business endeavors and where her mom and stepfather lived in Sacramento. Just the basics. It’s all a matter of a Google search. And I learned that Tilly’s mom and stepdad refinanced their house a few years ago. Which was more of a public records search. To be fair, Tilly could find the same information about me if she looked…and knew my last name.
Twenty-four hours later, I can’t get her alluringly confident yet shy voice out of my head. It still hums in my ears. And the citrus scent she left on my passenger seat lingered this morning.
I don’t tell Appa any of that, though. She’d call me crazy. As much as I love Robby, he’s the romantic one. I need to know everything about Tilly before I get too invested, but so far, she checks all the boxes. Something no other girl ever has. I don’t even care that we’re a decade apart in age; she’s fucking perfect.
When Tilly becomes mine, her dad won’t have shit to say because he’s married to some twenty-eight-year-old from Reno—a year younger than Appa, and I know her dad is much more than eleven years older than Tilly’s ‘stepmother’.
“You never know, Enzo. She might stay here for you,” Appa adds.
If I have my way, she will, and I always get my way.
“She’s supposed to go to San Diego for grad school in August.” That was one of the many things she said while I drove her to the mechanic’s shop yesterday, but I haven’t forgotten a word.
Appa pauses again and looks me in the eye, lifting an eyebrow. “Grad school? How old is she?”
I let out a nervous laugh. “Twenty-one. She just graduated from college.”
Appa’s jaw drops open. “E, that’s—”
“I know, about eleven years. But she’s perfect.” I glance down at the bright green grass. “So goddamn perfect,” I add under my breath.
Appa turns to face me and shakes her head, making her golden curls sway at the sides of her head. “You can’t stop her from following her dreams. If grad school is what she wants, you have to respect it.”
Appa’s feminist side means well, but in the context of Tilly, it makes my palm twitch. If Tilly said something like that to me, I’d have her bent over my knee in an instant. Appa might have a point, but I saw the way Tilly looked at me. The same way all women, old or young, look at me. Adrianna, our only female cousin on Dad’s side who lives in San Diego, once told me I was a chick magnet, and her friends were thirsting for my number after I went to her college graduation party a few years ago. But none of them got it.
“And I will,” I lie.
“So, what’s she like?” Appa asks.
Mm, sexy.
“Tall like a supermodel, strong thighs from her track days—”
Appa interrupts me. “Wait, you did not just talk about her thighs?” she asks with a laugh.
“She was wearing tiny biker shorts. They were hard to miss, and she was tan as hell.” Do I sound defensive? Undoubtedly. “She barely knows her rich dad who lives up here, but she’s from Sacramento.”
“What makes her so different?”
Long brown hair flowing to her waist, muscular thighs, hazel-green eyes… The way I made her nervous, given away by her shifting gaze. The tiny heart tattoo on the front of her shoulder that I want to suck on.
“Ask Robby what made you different,” I brush off.
I never understood his obsession with Appa before they were together, or his need to move back to LA after he spent the summer here following his college graduation, but Tilly put that all into perspective as soon as she got out of her car yesterday. I understood it now…the irrational need for a girl, and I was afraid for her that I’d be worse than Robby ever was with Appa.
I have to claim her…make her mine forever.
“Wow, bold statement, homie,” Appa teases, but she turns serious. “But I don’t want to see you get hurt. As much as you should settle down, because how the hell are you still single?” I laugh through my nose. “You might have to accept it could just be a summer fling. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
