Now my eyes burned again and if I finished that statement I’d need to gasp for air.
Lina started blinking, her eyes getting watery in return.
“Don’t you dare cry, too,” I told her with a broken laugh.
“Jesus, Rosie. I had no idea.” She shook her head. “But I guess… I guess it makes sense in a way.”
I frowned. “What does?”
“You know I suspected you guys were probably hooking up from the moment I saw you together.” My mouth opened, but she stopped me with a hand. “Maybe that was why I was a little hard on the idea. Even when Aaron told me a hundred times that you probably weren’t just having sex.” She shrugged. “I didn’t believe him until he finally told me what Lucas had done for you on that rooftop. Did you know Aaron helped him with the photos and the cake? Without me knowing? It was in that moment that I knew. And after that, it was really hard not to notice how Lucas was… different.”
“Different?” I breathed out.
“It was the way he moved around you, the way he watched you.”
My face must have filled with raw pain because Lina paled.
“Sorry, that’s really not helping,” she said quickly. “Okay, so is book two done? Ready?”
It was, for the most part. That was how much Lucas had changed everything. “Yes.”
“Will you let me read it?”
“I’ll send it to you tonight, when I get home.”
“I’m so proud of you, Rosie.” She scooted closer, placing a kiss on my cheek. When she returned to her position, she looked at me for a moment, amusement entering her expression. “I can’t believe you ran after him at the airport like a total romance hero.”
I groaned, not because I regretted it—I’d do it again—but because I knew that years from today, Lina was never going to let me forget this.
“Not my brightest idea.”
We smiled at each other, but just as quickly, our lips fell.
“Did he at least give you a good reason?” my best friend asked.
The question seemed to spin in my head, and even after thinking for a long time I didn’t seem to find an answer. So I told her the best next thing I could find, “Before we went on that first date, he promised me he would never fall in love in with me.” I shifted so I could rest my head on her shoulder. “So maybe… maybe I shouldn’t have forgotten that.”
Lina didn’t say anything, and I didn’t, either.
We just lay on the bed, in silence, until Dad walked in and asked, “Waffles? Olly is setting the table.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Lucas
My phone rang again, displaying the name of the person I had been avoiding for the last three weeks. And just like it had done every day for the last twenty-one days, it stopped and a text lit up my screen.
Lina: gallina.
Chickenshit.
I agreed.
Not that it would make me pick up.
One, because my cousin was right: I was a coward. The biggest one she’d ever met, like she’d texted me yesterday. So why bother denying it?
And two, because I wasn’t excited to discuss the way Lina wanted to make a necklace with my balls. I didn’t want to hear that she’d murder me, make sure I suffered, and keep Taco for herself. I didn’t want to hear her say that I never deserved Rosie.
Because I knew she thought all of that and I also knew she was right.
I hadn’t deserved Rosie, and I’d have helped Lina with the kicking had I been in the mood to get my ass up from Abuela’s couch. Although at this rate, Abuela would ship me off any day now. Probably even give Lina a hand and smack me up the head.
“Como un alma en pena,” Abuela had said yesterday, “pululando por la vida.”
Like a soul in sorrow, roaming around.
She wasn’t wrong.
Dragging both hands through my hair, I tried to push all that out of my head. But then, my phone lit with another notification, and just like every time it did, I immediately picked it up from the table. Just in case in was her.
Lina: Call me, it’s important. Something happened.
Desperately, my fingers flew over the screen of the device, and in less than two seconds I was doing what I hadn’t brought myself to do in weeks.
“What’s wrong?” I barked into the phone when Lina picked up. “What happened? Is Rosie okay?”
There was only silence.
“Lina, don’t play with me.” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. “Tell me what happened.”
A cackle came through the line. “I knew that was the only thing that would make you call me back.” A huff. “I should have done that days ago, but I guess I was trying to be nice.”