Angel put his hand over mine on the pillow. “Tell me, babe.”
I leaned my head back against the headboard. “It’s so stupid. Too stupid to say out loud.”
“Luca, remember that time we fell in love filming a movie about a time-traveling duke obsessed with chili cheese fries? Stuff other people might call stupid is fun and romantic to us.”
“Well, this won’t be,” I said and looked away. The stack of magazines next to my bed had already been field-dressed—the promising pages torn out and stuck inside the scrapbook I used to keep track of inspiration and trends. The whole pile mocked me.
I took a breath. “Here it goes, I guess: I got offered an internship at Prada right before I left school. They wanted to expand their bridal platform and the designer leading the initiative liked my work at our school’s year-end showcase, probably because I was the only one who did bridal wear. But the internship was unpaid and I couldn’t afford to get to where they wanted me anyway, much less pay for rent and living expenses for six months—and they were probably only half-offering because no one else gave a shit about bridal wear at the show and they needed an easy intern pick to go back to headquarters with. Or maybe as a favor to my professor. I don’t know.”
“Luca,” chides Angel. “You’re telling me that Prada—the Prada that even my father, Teddy Ray Fletcher, has heard of—offered you an internship and you’re acting like it was some kind of fake pity ask? I don’t think Prada does that.”
“I guess not,” I said glumly. “They were really nice when I emailed back and told them I couldn’t do it. They said I could reapply if my circumstances ever changed.”
“Luca!”
I shoved the pillow to my face for a minute and let out a muffled groan. “It killed me to say no,” I said as I lowered the pillow. “But what could I do? I couldn’t afford to live in Milan! Hell, I couldn’t even afford to get to Milan! Just saying the word Milan charges my bank account an overdraft fee.”
I slumped back against the headboard. Angel was preternaturally still next to me.
“Milan?”
I managed a sad but nobly resigned nod. “That’s where Prada wanted me. And even if they still wanted me, it’s not like things have changed. I could maybe afford a plane ticket now, but I can’t afford not to work for half a year. I can’t ever afford that, not unless I become a kept man.”
“Do you . . .” Angel’s voice was careful. Careful enough that I turned to look at him. “Do you have a problem being a kept man?”
I was almost offended. “Me? With my bone structure and how much I love a long brunch? Obviously not!”
Angel closed his mouth. Shifted. Lifted his hands and then lowered them.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Don’t be mad.”
I froze. Don’t be mad?
My three least favorite words! After, of course, bowl of olives and to be continued!
“I promise nothing,” I said regally.
Angel looked like he expected no less. “Okay, here it goes,” he said and jammed his fingers into his loose, messy curls and closed his eyes. The words came out in a rush. “I just got a job offer from my dream studio last week, and it’s based in Milan, and they’re paying me so much money—I mean, not like ‘buy a boat’ money, but more money than either of us have ever made—and I’ll be able to get an apartment and pay to live like an adult and I’ve been trying to find the right way to tell you because of how I left last time and I want this to be different but also it’s exactly where I want to be and exactly what I want to be doing and they want me there in a month, the end.”
He didn’t move after he finished, as if braced for something bad, but I threw my arms around him, half-clambering into his lap and kissing the backs of his hands until he dropped them from his head and allowed me to kiss his mouth.
“Congratulations, congratulations, my genius Angel, I knew you’d wind up somewhere amazing,” I squealed, peppering his face with kisses. “I’m so happy for you!” It was true even if the words stung just a touch.
His arms circled me and it was inside his embrace that the full weight of his revelation sunk in.
I wasn’t upset that he hadn’t told me until now—actually, I was glad he’d told me with still a month left to go. But that meant that in a month, I wouldn’t be able to kiss him or sit in his lap. In a month, I wouldn’t feel his arms around me, or smell the lingering Mr. Bubble on his skin, or get to hear the shivery way his voice got low and bossy when he was in the mood.
I wouldn’t have him, and I would have wasted this entire summer being mad at him instead of pouncing on him the minute he got back from Paris, and there was nothing I could do about it. I wouldn’t ever ask him not to follow his passion, to stay in this town just because I was trapped here too—but already the feeling of missing him was unbearable. I pressed my face into the side of his so he couldn’t look at me.
He seemed to feel the change in me immediately. “Luca,” he said, trying to turn his head to look at me and then laughing a little when I wouldn’t let him. “Luca! Listen for a minute! I want you to come with me.”
There was a silence that spanned everything—our breaths, our heartbeats, the world outside. I pulled in a shaking inhale as I leaned back enough to look at him.
“What?”
His eyes were bright, and even through his glasses, I could see them so closely, so clearly. Copper near the pupils, with crypts and threads of dark brown, a hue and texture I’d never be able to match even with the most expensive silks or damasks or vicuña wools.
“I mean it,” he said earnestly. “I want you to come with me. Live with me. You wouldn’t really be a kept man, because you could do your internship at Prada, but you wouldn’t have to worry about paying for anything, because I could take care of it all.”
I was just staring now, no idea what to say.
“We could be together, both of us following our dreams,” Angel said excitedly. “This is perfect. Say you’ll come with me, babe. Please.”
There was something unpleasant hooked into my guts now, behind my chest. Inside my bones, making them ache and hum. I couldn’t—I wouldn’t even know where to begin—
“I can’t afford it,” I said, and Angel laughed.
“Did you not hear what I just said? I can pay for us to live over there! And we can figure out plane tickets. My mom has so many miles, it’s not even funny.”
“But Uncle Ray-Ray’s,” I said. My voice sounded hollow and numb—I felt hollow and numb. “I can’t leave them without a costume designer.”
“They’ll be just fine,” said Angel. “They’ll find another Luca.”
“But my apartment, I can’t let my lease lapse—Carol will rent this place out in a heartbeat! Do you know how hard it is to find a full kitchen and a place with washer and dryer hookups for this price?”
“Well, ideally,” Angel said softly, “we’d still be living together, wherever we were.”
The softness in his voice should have been a warning, but I was too far gone to heed it. “And I can’t just leave my entire life and all my friends—”