I smirk, snorting through my nose, and sit down with my black coffee in a to-go cup.
“Well aware of that, Lou.”
“Seriously though, there’s something lighter about you, and it ain’t got nothing to do with your looks.” He pulls his cup of coffee closer. “What’ve you been up to? You getting out of the city much?”
I nod. “Just the other weekend. Hit up the lake house.”
“Good for you. You do some fishing, did you?”
“A little.” I take a sip of coffee and stare out the window to my left, watching a couple stroll by holding hands. They’re laughing. Completely blissful and carefree. And up until Aidy came into my life, I’d forgotten what that felt like.
Lou studies me, his bushy gray eyebrows rising and falling and his head tilting every angle.
“You . . . you, uh, meet someone, Ace?” he asks.
“What?” I glance away, brows meeting. “Nah.”
“Don’t you lie to me.”
It’s not that I’m ashamed of Aidy. Quite the opposite. I’m just not in the mood to be grilled by this big galoot.
“What’s her name?” Lou grills anyway.
I lift the Styrofoam cup to my lips to hide a smirk. “There’s no girl, Lou.”
“Ah, fine. I won’t bother you about this girl who supposedly doesn’t exist,” Lou says with a side wink, swatting his thick-knuckled hand at me. “That’s not why I wanted to meet you anyway. Just wanted to see how you were doing since I was in town, run some things by you.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Well, I’ve got some buddies who have this satellite radio show, and they’re looking for a host. It’s seasonal, and it’s mostly major league talk, but I think you’d be perfect for it, and damn, kid, I watched you on Smack Talk the other day. You’ve got a face for TV and a voice for radio. Ever think about heading that direction?”
“Nah.” I rotate my cup and then lift it, swirling the contents in the bottom. “That’s not me.”
“Well, you’ve gotta do something.” Lou’s voice is a little bit louder now. “You can’t sit around all the time wasting away. Write a book and go on a tour, coach a Little League team, hell, coach in the majors. You know, you could be an actor if you don’t like live television.”
Smirking, I shake my head. “I’ll leave the acting to Matteo.”
“Fair enough.” Lou exhales, eyes bugging out of his head as he blows a heavy, coffee-scented breath across the table. “Anyway, your future’s still bright, kid. Just wanted to come here and remind you of that.”
“Thanks, Lou.”
“Find a way to do what you love, even if you ain’t pitching balls no more,” he adds. “Follow your heart.” Lou stands, tipping back the last of his coffee. “I gotta go now, kid. You keep in touch. I want to meet this girl sometime, all right? Be good to her. Don’t screw it up because she makes you happy. I can tell. And if you say she doesn’t exist, you’re full of shit. I’ve known you a long time, Ace. I see clear through you.”
He pats me on the back, giving my good shoulder a squeeze, and yanks a dusty baseball cap from his back pocket, securing it on his head before he leaves.
Walking home a few minutes later, I think about texting Aidy. We spent Friday evening together, and she stayed over. Saturday she met with a few clients, and then we met at Finnegan’s for pizza with Wren and Enzo and Chauncey.
I should leave her alone for a day.
As much as I want to spend every waking second of every day with her, I don’t want to push her away. I don’t want to lose her. I’ve done that before. I’ve loved someone so intensely it scared them, it pushed them away.
I refuse to do that to her.
So we’ll take things slow, one deliciously enjoyable day at a time, and see what happens.
Thirty
Aidy
* * *
Twenty-two.
The number of times I’ve had sex with Ace since our first official date.
Eighteen.
The number of times I’ve stayed the night at his house since our first official date, so basically every other night.
Seven.
The number of real dates we’ve been on now. Real, get-all-dolled-up, dinner and a night on the town type of dates. Hand holding. Door holding. The works.
Three.
The number of times I’ve caught myself daydreaming about a future with this man, which is completely ridiculous because I’ve never been one to fantasize about the ring and the dress and the house and being tied to one man for the rest of my life.
One hundred.
The likelihood that I’m one hundred percent obsessed with Alessio ‘Ace’ Amato.
I ring his doorbell on a Friday night, takeout in hand. We have five more episodes of season three of our old West ghost show to watch, and we’ve had this Friday night in planned for a couple of weeks now.
Ace answers with a towel wrapped around his waist and a smile in his eyes. God forbid he smiles with his mouth once in a while.
“Hey,” he says, opening the door and leaning in to steal a kiss.
I think he’s my boyfriend now.
But I don’t know for sure.
We’ve been on several dates now. We screw like rabbits. And he doesn’t seem to get annoyed when I respond to all of his text messages within seconds because I’m too impatient to play games with him.
He knows I like him.
I tell him all the time, dropping hints every chance I get and doing sweet little things that I know he appreciates, like not complaining when he wants to watch some stupid action movie and trying really, really hard to learn more about baseball because despite the fact that he pretends like he’s over it, I know the love of the game is still there.
Plus I told him all about Wren’s surprise pregnancy and how the wedding got moved up, and he didn’t even flinch when I asked if he’d be my date to Wren and Chauncey’s friends-and-family reception at Luciana’s on Fifth.
Anyway, Ace does plenty of sweet things for me. He’s sent me flowers a few times, always a different arrangement, never predictable. And he bought me a toothbrush to keep at his place. I even have my own drawer in his dresser, and I keep some extra clothes and pajamas in there despite the fact that whenever I sleep over, pajamas are pretty much out of the equation. Just last week, Ace bought my favorite organic cinnamon toothpaste because his mint paste makes me gag.
And he tells me he likes me too.
But it’s always just that.
“I like you, Aidy,” he usually says. “You’re different.”
I try not to think about his love for the girl from the notebook compared to his lust for me. For all intents and purposes, maybe he didn’t write those things after all. It is possible that I’m wrong. And it is possible that I’m reading too much into things. A few nights ago, we were lying in bed, and I almost brought up the journal again. It was on the tip of my tongue. And then I breathed in his mossy scent and kissed his full lips as he buried his fingers in my hair, and I remembered how happy I was and how magical this whole thing is, and I didn’t want to throw it away all over something he’d probably deny anyway.