Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
“I hear that. I’m scared of hospitals. Needles freak me out. Not tattoo needles. Mostly just the medical kind. I’m really lucky that I’ve been healthy, and my family has been too. Really, really lucky.”
“I’m not afraid of it, but I dread it. Is that the same thing?”
“No. My fears are mostly irrational because it hasn’t happened to me. Dread is well grounded.”
“My mom also made me speak to several therapists. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it helped me some.”
“You’re very open with this,” I point out.
He grins. “NDA, remember?”
Oh, I haven’t forgotten about the gagging comment.
I couldn’t forget it if I lived for another hundred years, and then a zombie apocalypse took me out, and I got another twenty rotten years, and then someone donated my zombie ass skeleton to science once the whole outbreak was cured, and I was preserved in a museum for another two centuries.
“I guess it might have helped me more than some,” he continues. “As a man, it’s rough. It’s hard to learn how to open up and spill out what’s churning around in my head. There was one therapist who let me say whatever I was thinking, so I gave it to them straight. All the ugly, the loathing, the hateful, the fearful. They just sat and took it all and told me it was perfectly fine to feel those things, and that if I wanted to get past all that, I could.”
“That’s very kind.”
“Kind of their job.”
“No, I mean finding a place where you can just be you is so rare.” There are several huge windows at the very end of the massive kitchen, and Luca’s eyes stray there and remain there. His side profile is so devastatingly gorgeous. It’s the good side of his face, but even if it weren’t, I’d still find him beautiful. “It’s hard for everyone to be who they truly are.”
“I’m not there yet, and I don’t know if I’ve ever known that. There are so many different versions of me, all at the same time. Or there was. The chef, the business owner, the spoiled rich kid, the son, the grandson, the friend.”
I came here for one reason. All of this was to fix what was broken between Luca and my dad, so I have to do that. I’m not here for a good time. Luca doesn’t even know who I really am, so how can we be friends or truly get to know each other?
“The partner?” I suggest with no small amount of guilt. Guilt doesn’t even begin to cover it.
I can tell that I’ve surprised him. “You read about that?”
“Yeah. There wasn’t much, just something about how you got your start at this little bakery in the middle of nowhere a long time ago.”
This is a different kind of gagging. As in, I’m being gagged by the words because they’re hard and awful. I want his side of what happened, but I hate that I basically have to lead him into a trap to do it. This is the most dishonest I’ve felt over the past few weeks. My stomach churns and twists.
“I had this one friend.” His hands clench in his lap. He studies them hard, his head and shoulders hunched over, his hair falling into his face. He’s the picture of someone who just took an arrow straight to the back. “The one I told you about last night, where I kept trying to call him, but I kept hanging up.”
“You should let the call go through. He’d probably want to hear from you.”
His head snaps up. There’s nothing cruel in his dark eyes. If anything, there’s as much guilt there as what I feel. Great. We’re both consumed with it. “He’d have every right to gloat about this being what I deserve.”
I gasp.
He studies me without flinching. He truly believes that.
“Never,” I breathe. “He would never do that.”
“How do you know?”
I shake my head. “I just have a feeling.”
“I can’t go back there now. I’d probably scare his kids. Err… wait. I don’t know. I’m assuming he had them. I’ve forced myself not to look him up online. I’m not a masochist. I always felt horrible about how things ended. I thought it was always understood that my stay there would be temporary. I never lied about that. When I had to leave, I caused a lot of hurt, and even though I wasn’t entirely responsible, over the years, I’ve still felt like I was.”
He’s been carrying around this burden for as many years as my dad has.
My heart aches.
If anything good can come of this, I hope it can. That all of this can be untangled, the lies and the deceptions forgiven, and that Luca and my family can find the peace that’s eluded them for two decades.
He looks absolutely miserable. I don’t know if he’s just not bothering with walls and screens anymore, but the pain etched into his face is plain to see.