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“Of course.” I snagged the stack of sweaters I’d also apparently taken out. “I was just dropping by Lina’s place to… to…” To occupy her clearly not vacant apartment while she was on her honeymoon because my apartment was uninhabitable at the moment. “To water her plants. Check on the mailbox. You know, that kind of stuff.”
A beat of silence.
“That doesn’t look like just dropping by, Rosie.”
“Oh.” I waved a hand, pushing the sweaters into the open suitcase with my other one.God, why in the world had I unpacked so much stuff?“This? This is all nothing.”
Just me, trying to not inconvenience a guy I might have had a teeny-tiny little online crush on.
He sat down on the floor in front of me. As if we were just hanging out.
My mouth opened and closed a couple of times until I came up with something. “What are you doing?”
Smart, Rosie.
Lucas chuckled, the sound light and unconcerned and not at all how I was feeling. “I was going to ask you what you’re really doing here, in my cousin’s apartment. I would have asked sooner but we were… busy.” A shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t think I’m owed an explanation. All of this”—he spun a finger in the air—“is clearly Lina’s fault. You didn’t have any idea I was coming.”
“I really didn’t.”
“Does she know that you’re here, then?”
I let out a sigh. “No…” I trailed off, even though I did think Lucas was owed an explanation. “But not for lack of trying. I called her—and Aaron—to check if I could use my spare key and stay the night.” Or more like a few nights, plural. “But neither of them picked up. Their phones must be out of reception.”
His eyes roamed around my face, as if he was trying to piece something together. Then, he moved his hand, pulling a small object out from his pocket. “Speaking of keys,” he said, holding it between his fingers. “I wasn’t lying. I do have one.”
My lips parted with another apology, but Lucas stopped me with a shake of his head. “Lina left it at the pizzeria down the street. Alessandro’s? She left instructions for me to pick it up from there.”
That made… sense. Although it didn’t change the fact that she’d never mentioned to me that Lucas was visiting.
“Good man, this Sandro,” Lucas pointed out with a nod. “I must have looked seriously beat, because he even offered me food.” Lucas’s face brightened impossibly, reminding me of an Instagram post where he’s staring at a steak as if that piece of juicy meat had just hung the moon and stars for him. “Probably the best pizza I’ve had in a long while.”
“Sounds like Sandro,” I told him, thinking of the dark-haired, middle-aged man. “And I’m not surprised. We’ve been ordering pizza from Alessandro’s at least once a week ever since Lina moved here a few years ago.”
Probably the reason my best friend had felt safe enough to leave a set of keys with him.
“I was told as much,” Lucas said, a twinkle in his eye, making me wonder what Sandro had said about us. Hopefully not that we always ordered enough to feed a small army.
We stared at each other for a long moment. And although it wasn’t as awkward as a few minutes ago, it wasn’t exactly a comfortable silence, either. Not when my secret infatuation with this man that sat on the floor in front of me seemed to be swelling like a balloon, taking all the space between us. And certainly not when all these facts and details I had collected over more than a year and kept hidden in a sealed cabinet in my mind started pouring out.
Like how I knew Lucasactuallyloved pineapple on pizza just because it was still food—something I’d never understand. Or how I also knew that he had gotten that tiny scar on his chin by tripping over the leash of Taco—his beautiful Belgian shepherd—and falling on his face. Or how I had learned that he prefers sunrises over sunsets.
Dear God. The amount of information one could learn from someone’s socials when one looked long and frequently enough was terrifying.
“Rosie,” he said so sweetly that I felt a ball of shame climb up my throat.
What had I been thinking, stalking someone like that? “Yeah?” I croaked.
“What are you really doing here?”
I debated answering that question genuinely. Not because I didn’t want Lucas to know the truth, but because this encounter had been filled with enough dramatics, and adding my ill-fated day to it was too much.
“There was a little problem in my building.” I swallowed, settling for a half-truth. “Nothing important, but I thought it would be better to leave for the night.”
His brows arched. “And what was this little problem?”
“Plumbing issue.” I shrugged. “Nothing that can’t be fixed. I’ll be back in no time.”
A hum left him. “Is that why you packed all your stuff?” Hishead bobbed down, pointing at the bags and scattered items between us. “And all your… food, too? Just for a night?”
