“I don’t think it’s just leaving when you’re going to follow a dream. And to be with someone you love,” Angel said. “Or was that whole my heart is backstitched to yours thing just a slick thing to say to the naked man in your bathtub?”
That was when I realized his arms weren’t around me anymore.
“Angel,” I said, but I didn’t know what else to say. Because obviously, I couldn’t move to Milan with him! Obviously I couldn’t just go scratch at Prada’s door and hope they’d still take me! That wasn’t how life worked! You didn’t just get to have a sexy Italian sojourn with the hot guy you were in love with!
And—and—what if it wasn’t really me? What if I got to Milan and I wasn’t as sophisticated or worldly as I’d always thought? What if I got to Prada and I was actually terrible at designing wedding dresses or making espresso or delivering parcels?
What if Angel and I moved in together and then everything fell apart?
No. No, it was better not to push, not to seek. Better to let something—a dream, a relationship, a version of yourself—die quickly than watch it slowly fail.
“I think you should get off my lap now,” said Angel after I still hadn’t spoken. “I need to get ready for work.”
“Angel,” I said again, pointlessly, as I slid off his lap. He threw the sheet off him and then stood up, showing off his perfectly molded ass and the delicious stretch of his back. A stretch that was visibly tense. He strode to the footboard of the bed, grabbed his briefs and yanked them on with short, jerky movements.
I tried again. “I just—I need more time.”
“You could follow your dream and you could do it with me,” Angel said. He turned to face me, hurt written all over his face. “What else is there to think about?”
And by the time he’d finished dressing and swiped his car keys off the table, I still hadn’t found an answer.
Chapter Ten
I sat in Sunny’s director’s chair at the rented mansion, clutching an iced latte against my chest and trying not to cry. I used to think I’d be so good at being heartbroken—a beautiful, tragic figure, dabbing repeatedly at his eyes but valiantly refusing all comfort—but this last year had proved me dead wrong. I did not wear heartbreak well. My nose got red and I couldn’t focus on work and I watched the most heinously horny dating shows the internet had to offer. And this time was no different.
It had been two days since Angel had left my apartment, and he hadn’t spoken to me since. Not via text, not via email, not even when we passed each other on the set of the movie.
Well, except for one message after I texted him asking if we could talk:
I promise we’ll talk, but I need a few days to think. I’m sorry.
“What does that even mean?” I lamented to Sunny. She was standing at a table next to me, eyes fixed on a laptop as she reviewed footage, not giving any indication that she was listening. Which was probably fair, since I’d rehashed The Fight and The Text with her several times daily since everything had unraveled. “A few days to think? Think about what?”
“Probably about the fact that you confessed your mutual love, you opened up about your One True Luca Dream, and then when he offered you a chance at said dream, you balked?”
She still hadn’t looked away from the screen, but I didn’t let her inattention diminish the withering glare I gave her. “Whose side are you on?”
“I would like to remind you that I am friends with you and Angel both, and therefore your concept of sides is not applicable to me.” She clicked the pause button, eyeing an anal scene on an opera balcony with a critical look. “Also as your friend, I’m required to tell you when I think you’re doing something I think you’ll regret.”
“But I’m not doing anything,” I said, sniffling. I took a drink of my latte to hide the sniffle, but Sunny heard anyway.
She turned with an arched eyebrow.
“Really,” I told her. “It’s him who wants to go and change everything! Wants me to . . .” I cast around, trying to find the right words to make her understand. “He wants me to be someone I’m not!”
Sunny threw up her hands. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she demanded. “You want to do porn costumes for the rest of your life? Do Hope Channel movies and pretend you don’t know what anal beads are whenever you’re in Christmas Notch? You’ve wanted to make wedding dresses for as long as I’ve known you, you have a chance to build a bridal presence at one of the world’s most recognizable designers, and you can do it while getting boned down by the one artist in this town who isn’t a pretentious dickhole. That’s not Angel trying to make you someone you’re not. That’s Angel trying to help you be whoever you want to be.”
“Non, mademoiselle, that is Angel springing something absolutely fucknuts on me with no warning. Live together? In another country! We’ve only just gotten back together! And my life here—”
I paused, unable to properly defend my life here, because . . . well, Sunny was kind of right. I loved my Uncle Ray-Ray’s family, and I had a weird amount of fun making Duke the Halls and would go back to Christmas Notch to dress people in bland sweaters in a heartbeat, but did I really want to be here in five years? Ten years? Did I want to be living in someone’s backyard with stacks of sun-faded bridal magazines?
I shook it off. “Look, even if my life here isn’t everything, and even if Prada would still take me—a huge flipping if, by the way—Angel still shouldn’t have just sprung this on me! Living together is a huge step!”
Sunny shrugged and turned her attention back to the opera anal. “Luca, you left everything to come to LA. You dropped out of fashion school when it didn’t feel right anymore. You’re a person of huge steps. Or at least you used to be.”
I frowned. It wasn’t mean—or untrue—but I didn’t like how it felt to hear. Was that really how people saw me now? Someone scared of making big steps?
“Maybe I’ve gotten older and wiser,” I said, taking a wise sip of my latte which I’d wisely ordered with a nut milk that wouldn’t make me gassy later.
“You’re twenty-four, broski. If there was ever a time for moving to Italy for an impossible dream on a hot artist’s dime, this is it. And if everything falls apart, then you can come back and crash on my couch here in sunny California. Ooh, do you think Sunny’s California would be a good LLC name? I think I need to be an LLC.”
“Why not? I saw Blake’s paycheck stub and his LLC name is Your Mom LLC.”
“What does Vanya think about all this, by the way?”
I watched as Sunny bookmarked a spot in the anal opera scene and then clicked over to Mackenzie getting railed at a horse race. “We talked yesterday while she was on a break at her breathwork retreat. I think the alternate nostril breathing is turning her into a real snotwaffle right now, because she had some . . . unwelcome words.”
I took a long pull of my latte so that I would stop talking. But Sunny wasn’t about to let me get away with that.
“And what unwelcome words would those be?” she asked as she swiveled her head to look at me. Sunny revered Vanya, as did most people who met her. One time Sunny overheard Vanya say that she liked to wear an amethyst around her neck to support her third eye, and the next day, Sunny showed up to work with an amethyst tattoo on her left palm, which has since faded almost completely away.