CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Lucas
My phone rang again, displaying the name of the person I had been avoiding for the last three weeks. And just like it had done every day for the last twenty-one days, it stopped and a text lit up my screen.
Lina: gallina.
Chickenshit.
I agreed.
Not that it would make me pick up.
One, because my cousin was right: I was a coward. The biggest one she’d ever met, like she’d texted me yesterday. So why bother denying it?
And two, because I wasn’t excited to discuss the way Lina wanted to make a necklace with my balls. I didn’t want to hear that she’d murder me, make sure I suffered, and keep Taco for herself. I didn’t want to hear her say that I never deserved Rosie.
Because I knew she thought all of that and I also knew she was right.
I hadn’t deserved Rosie, and I’d have helped Lina with the kicking had I been in the mood to get my ass up from Abuela’s couch. Although at this rate, Abuela would ship me off any day now. Probably even give Lina a hand and smack me up the head.
“Como un alma en pena,” Abuela had said yesterday, “pululando por la vida.”
Like a soul in sorrow, roaming around.
She wasn’t wrong.
Dragging both hands through my hair, I tried to push all that out of my head. But then, my phone lit with another notification, and just like every time it did, I immediately picked it up from the table. Just in case in was her.
Lina: Call me, it’s important. Something happened.
Desperately, my fingers flew over the screen of the device, and in less than two seconds I was doing what I hadn’t brought myself to do in weeks.
“What’s wrong?” I barked into the phone when Lina picked up. “What happened? Is Rosie okay?”
There was only silence.
“Lina, don’t play with me.” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. “Tell me what happened.”
A cackle came through the line. “I knew that was the only thing that would make you call me back.” A huff. “I should have done that days ago, but I guess I was trying to be nice.”
I grunted, slowly realizing I’d been played.
But my heart was still all over the place, and I was unable to calm myself down, to kill the idea that something might have happened to Rosie or ignore the fact that, with an ocean between us, there wouldn’t be a single thing I could have done. “Rosie’s okay?”
Lina snorted. “I’m not answering that.”
“Lina, te lo juro—” I hated my harsh tone. “Is she okay, or not?”
Lina’s exhale was long, loaded with what felt like sympathy. Laced with anger, too. “Just… calm down, will you? Nothing happened.”
Only when I heard the confirmation, did I breathe a little easier. Only slightly.
Then, she added, “At least nothing other than you happened.”
Swallowing, I tried really hard to keep myself from barking something I wouldn’t be able to take back. I was well aware of how much I’d hurt Rosie. Nothing I could say would change that. I hated myself enough for it. I’d never forget the look on her face or forgive myself for putting it there. For inflicting on her a single second of pain.
Probably feeling the swing in my mood, Taco came to my side and rested his head on my knee. I patted him behind his ears, obtaining a quick woof of appreciation.
“Is that Taco?” Lina asked, her tone changing, lighting up. “Can you give him a kiss from—”
“No.”
“Ugh. I don’t like you too much right now, Lucas.”
I shared the feeling. “What do you want, Lina? Besides almost giving me a heart attack and telling me something I already knew.”
“Well, at least you know you suck. That’s a good start. I thought you might be in denial, but at least it doesn’t sound like you are. Good, because—”
“Lina,” I growled. “I don’t have energy for whatever this is. That was why I didn’t call you back.”
Another long sigh came through the line. “I was hoping you wouldn’t, but you sound as miserable as she does. If not more.”
Something inside of me stirred, and I didn’t deserve to ask, or to know, but the words left my lips before I could stop them. “She’s…” I could barely finish, “miserable?”
“Well…” Lina trailed off, making me shift in my chair. “That’s a loaded question, primo. How are you doing?”
Miserable would be putting it lightly. The two things that had kept me going were Taco, who barely left my side, and Abuela, whose patience was obviously running thin. “I’m fine.”
“Oh yeah? You’re fine.” My cousin dropped her voice, mimicking mine. “Well, Rosie’s fine, too. And by the way, she hasn’t told me whatever is wrong with you. That’s who my best friend is, loyal to a fault.”
The memory of her beautiful face, looking at me with hope as she asked me to be with her, to come with me, flashed behind my eyes. And I… God, I wanted to break something. I struggled for air, too. I didn’t deserve her loyalty.
Taco nuzzled my leg, demanding my attention, so I resumed the scratching.
“Lo sé, chico,” I murmured. Then I told Lina, “Okay, if that’s all then…”
“Wow,” Lina spat. “Just wow. You really are a bigger idiot than I thought you were.”
“I don’t have time for this—”
“No,” she cut me off. And the change in her voice was clear as day. I was going to listen to whatever she had called me to say. And if I hung up, she’d find a way. “You know you deserve to hear you’re being an idiot. That’s why you haven’t had the balls to pick up or return my calls. Because you don’t want to hear the truth. Because if you did hear the truth, you might open your eyes and see things differently and you might end up having to really dig into that hard head of yours.”
My jaw clamped shut.
Relentless, she continued, “I told you, Lucas. I warned you. I said, If you hurt her, I’ll murder you. Rosie’s my best friend. She’s my family here in New York. She was all I had before Aaron.” A pause, and I could tell, she was trying to rein it in. “And I wasn’t joking. I should want to murder you. But I said all of that when I assumed you two were just secretly fucking each other’s brains out. For fun.”
“It wasn’t like that.” I grunted. “It never was.”
“I know,” she admitted. “I know that now. That’s the only reason why I might not try to kill you. Because now I know the whole story.”
I was almost scared to ask. “The whole story?”
“Yes, Lucas. The experiment you two had going on,” she said, and her tone shifted, like she could no longer hide her emotions. “Rosie told me about it. Told me everything. Every single thing you did for her. All the dates. The record store? Alessandro’s? The rooftop?”
My eyelids fell shut at the memories. “I… I didn’t mean for this to happen, Lina. I didn’t want to hurt her. I’d never…” My voice cracked. “She’s… so much more than… She’s Rosie.” My breathing turned labored, the tears I’d fought so hard to keep at bay rushing to my eyes, so the best I could manage was to repeat my words. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
My cousin remained silent for a long moment. So long that I thought that was all, that this was it, that she’d had her say and now I was left alone.
But then she sighed, and the sound was so sad that I almost severed the call myself. “Lucas…” She trailed off, and I could picture her shaking her head. “You couldn’t predict that you two would do all of this and she would fall head over heels in love with you?”
My world halted.
Just like when I’d spotted her in that terminal as she ran toward me. Or when I’d kissed her and I hadn’t even felt the water pouring down on us—hadn’t even cared. Or when she’d told me that she missed me when I ran to her apartment at one in the morning.
Only this time was different, because the gravity, the meaning, of what I was hearing was… too much.
She would fall head over heels in love with you?
My limbs felt numb.
My chest too tight.
I was no longer sure if I was sitting, standing, or lying on the floor. I couldn’t even tell if the phone had slipped off my hand until Lina’s voice somehow made it through the haze.
“You’re telling me,” Lina said, “that you took her to Zarato, managed to somehow convince the owner to let you use their greenhouse, hung lights, and installed a projector just so you could re-create the night she’d wished she’d met you, and you didn’t think this could happen?”
Lina’s words were barely registering in my head, merely getting in and out, my mind still processing—stuck on—what she’d said earlier.
“You’re telling me that you even went through the trouble of baking her my wedding cake—and yes, Aaron told me he helped you with that, and trust me, he’s paid for keeping that little secret—that you could dance with her, and kiss her under the freaking rain like a modern-day Mr. Darcy, and you still thought none of that would make her love you?”
Lina gave me an opening to say something, but I was too slow.
“Are you telling me that she chased you down in an airport—”
“Lina,” I finally managed to speak. Pleaded.
She just waited for me to continue.
I hardly got my breathing on track before saying something, and that was probably why the words left me in a hard gulp of air. “She loves me? She said that? Rosie said that she’s in love with me?”
Seconds stretched into an eternity. “Lucas, are you joking right now?”
“Answer me.”
“Jesus Christ,” she muttered. “Yes, Lucas. Of course, Rosie loves you. She’s in love with you.” She’s in love with you. She’s in love with me. “Why else would she chase you down at a freaking airport and offer to follow you anywhere? That was her grand gesture, and trust me, as big into romance as she is, she’s never done something like that. Not for anyone. Not ever. Rosie thinks everything through; she plans. And she blew up her rules for you.”
And I didn’t even say a word when she did. I broke her heart instead. “I can’t give her anything, Lina. Not a single thing.”
Because life wasn’t as easy as saying yes and being with her. Life wasn’t as simple as following your heart and hoping for the best.
What kind of a man would she have beside her every day? One that didn’t live up to her expectations. One that couldn’t give her anything. One without a future or a plan.
“She doesn’t want anything from you. She just wants you. Loves you. Don’t you understand?” Lina said after a beat.
I did and I didn’t.
Just me wasn’t enough. Perhaps that would be enough for now, but not in the long run. “Just me is not enough.”
“Oh, Lucas.” Lina sighed. “You really don’t see, do you?”
I didn’t have an answer for that because Lina didn’t even know the whole story. Unless Rosie had told her, which I doubted. She’d never do that, I fully trusted her. I—
“Rosie…” She trailed off, as if hesitating whether she should say. “She’ll kill me if she finds out I told you but… she wrote you a goddamn book.”
The ground under my feet shook again.
“She what?”
“Her book. I’d read her first one, obviously. And it was good. She’s—”
“I know,” I rasped. I’d read it, too. I had it memorized by now.
“But this one? This one story you somehow inspired with your little experiment?” A pause, and I felt the thrumming of my heart in my temples, banging in my ears. “Jesus, that freaking book punched the air straight out of my chest. I don’t remember ever smiling that big, crying that bad, or clutching my chest that hard. And I…”
Lina trailed off again, leaving that unfinished.
“And what?” I breathed out.
“I could see you in those pages, Lucas. It was you. I have no idea how she did it, how she turned something great into something breathtakingly beautiful, but she did. And it’s like a goddamn love letter. To you.”