So instead, I sit in the passenger seat, petting my cat and letting her soft purrs take me to my happy place.
Or as close as I can get to my happy place when I’ve had the most disastrous introduction to anyone’s friends ever, and I met Winston Randolph’s friends when I had a horrible, uneven sunburn and a pulled neck muscle and looked like a humpback with a skin condition, so I think I know disastrous introductions.
Plus, that was the night I figured out I’m allergic to alcohol.
Luca would probably think it was a funny story if he were someone else, but he’s not, so I sigh, keep it to myself, and then brighten as I realize it doesn’t matter what Luca thinks.
He’s my anti-boyfriend.
So this is going well.
Even if it feels like donkey poop.
There’s a lone light on in a single window on the first floor when he pulls into the driveway behind his car, which hopefully means Nonna is sleeping, but probably means she’s pretending to sleep so she can spy on us to make sure we’re doing this dating thing right.
My eyes land on Luca’s car again, lit by the streetlamp on the corner, and I spin toward him so fast that Dogzilla half-meows. “Oh! I completely forgot to tell you. I looked under your hood, and someone had disconnected your distributor cap. I put it back together, but I didn’t know where you kept your keys, and I didn’t figure it would look good if I hot-wired your car, so you’ll want to test it again in the morning.”
He slowly swivels his head to stare at me.
Lucky for him, I’m used to that look, and it’s easy to smile at him and offer an explanation of how I know so much about cars. “I do a lot of reading. And research. One time, when I was writing—”
“Thank you.”
My eyebrows shoot so high they take flight off my forehead and soar to the moon.
I am aware that he’s using the element of surprise to make me stop talking, but I didn’t expect him to do it with manners. Also, this probably isn’t the right time to tell him I suspect his car trouble was his Nonna’s doing.
But it makes sense—of course she’d want to keep him from running away from The Eye.
He thrusts his hands through that thick mane of hair that belongs on the cover of a romance novel, and a sigh leaks out of him like he’s letting go of all the demons and ghosts that have been haunting his family for more generations than he can count.
I feel like this moment calls for silence, even though now it’s past the don’t talk to him because he’s grumpy about the cat and the towel and the dog thing in front of his friends stage and into what would normally be my I must talk to cover the awkwardness stage.
After fourteen seconds that last fourteen decades, his lips part, and after another three years, words come out. “I don’t want to be one of those assholes who forgets where he came from.”
It takes me a minute to catch up to where he’s staring, and then, despite everything Jerry ever said about how Luca was too good for his old friends, it all clicks into place. “You didn’t have air conditioning growing up?”
A muscle in his jaw ticks, which is better than his entire face ticking. I must be growing on him.
Hopefully that won’t make his lessons in how to not fall in love harder.
Or if they do get harder, at least I’ll learn something, and I’ll be even stronger the next time I meet a new guy.
“I didn’t have much of anything growing up.”
“But didn’t your dad—”
His gaze sharpens and threatens to gut me from my nose to my hooha if I finish that sentence about his dad also playing pro sports, so I pinch my lips together.
“It’s not the house that makes the man. It’s the man that makes the man.”
Well.
That’s telling.
And not at all what I’d expect of him after everything Jerry always said. We have to invite Luca Rossi, because my mom would kill me if I didn’t, but that dude…he’s not the same guy I grew up with. Doesn’t have time for losers like me.
I’d assured Jerry that he wasn’t a loser.
Of course, all my writer friends online have been telling me for weeks now that any guy who’ll kiss his former best friend’s mother to get out of marrying me is a loser. And I’m also beginning to suspect that Jerry might not have been the most reliable narrator when it comes to matters of Luca Rossi, especially if the rumors Elsa keeps relaying from our mother that Jerry’s dating Morgan Rossi are true.
“It’s something you should know if Nonna asks,” Luca adds.
I realize he’s still talking about living in this house to stay humble, but before I can open my mouth to reply, or to ask questions, because I have lots of them now, he’s climbing out of the car and heading for the door.
I hustle out to follow him, almost knocking myself out as my towel gets caught wrong against the ceiling of my SUV, but I right myself without dropping the cat and catch up to him as he’s sliding his key into the lock.
Nonna’s nowhere in sight when we step inside.
There’s still a hint of smoke from the ziti fire hanging around us. The air feels like warm bathwater trying to tiptoe into my lungs, and the eerie shadow cast by the ladder against the side living room wall is making me think about haunted houses.
Specifically, of sneaking through haunted houses, waiting for the scary zombies and the dude with the chainsaw to jump out, and do you know what?
Luca’s house would make the best haunted house.
Which might not be the best thing to be thinking right now.
He takes the stairs directly in front of us two at a time, but my legs are short, so I go one at a time, which would be fine if the first stair didn’t give an ominous creak and bend beneath my foot as soon as I put all my weight on it.
Naturally, I freeze, because while I like writing about scary things, my scary things are usually funny—I mean, I write about sentient sticks of butter, and who can take that seriously?—and I don’t want to know what might be hiding under this stairwell if I fall through it.
Or what will happen to my slippers.
Pooks is already looking worse for wear after being impaled by the tail of the bobblehead dragon at Mackenzie’s apartment, which is probably Brooks’s apartment, but it felt like it had a woman’s touch, so I’m gonna call it Mackenzie’s place.
Plus, my feet are sweating with how warm it is in here, and that’s probably not good for my slippers either.
“Are you seriously standing there thinking that hard about how to walk up the stairs?” Luca whispers.
I jerk my head up to him, and the movement makes the stair beneath me give an even more ominous creak.
“Skip that step,” he hisses.
“My legs are short,” I hiss back.
“Do you want to live, or do you want the stairs to eat you?”
I blink at him, because did he invade my mind and beat me to a joke that I’d totally make if I weren’t the one in danger of being swallowed by the ancient, possessed staircase?
His entire face twitches again.
I leap to the next step, grateful to land on a more solid surface, and make a mental note to learn how to navigate this house without dying. It goes right after the mental note about writing down every single quirk of the house, because this house has to go in a book.