Once more, my stomach tangled in knots at the reminder of everything I was keeping from her. But just as I opened my mouth, a creaking sound from the entryway caught my attention.
I jolted around, my gaze stumbling upon a large form that I’d have to be blind not to recognize immediately.
Lucas. My roommate. Lina’s cousin.
He was back, and he was standing by the threshold of the door with his shoulders drawn up, and his eyes wider than usual. In fact, he was the image of someone that had been caught doing something bad. Something they shouldn’t have been doing. Something—
Oh God. Oh no.
Just like that, I knew. I knew with a certainty I had trouble processing what he’d been busted doing.
Snooping. Listening.
“Rosie?” my best friend called, her voice coming out the speaker that I’d set to the maximum possible volume when I’d picked up. “You still there?”
“Sorry,” I croaked, my eyes laser focused on his profile. “I’m here but I… I need to go now.”
Because I couldn’t rip my eyes off Lucas, I watched him move as my mind was flooded with chants of Why, Lord, why? Why did he have to overhear this one particular conversation?
Lucas walked in my direction, and my gaze—which was still doing its own thing—decided it was a good time to check him out. To marvel at the way his emerald-green hoodie hugged a chest I knew felt solid against my cheek. To get a little lost in the way a lock of chocolate hair fell over his forehead.
Sexy and disheveled snooper, he could at least have the decency not to look so… distracting.
“Fine, okay,” I heard Lina say, just as Lucas reached me. He sat down on the coffee table, right in front of me, and placed a blue and pink box I hadn’t noticed, right beside my phone. I swallowed, noting how his knees were half an inch away from brushing mine. Lina continued, “I’ll tell Abuela to light a candle and ask for a decent guy that can at least give you one or two orgasms because—”
“Thank you, Lina,” I quickly interrupted, jerking forward and grabbing my phone. I deactivated the speaker and brought it to my ear. “I’ll call you later, okay? I really need to go.”
“All right,” my best friend relented. “I’ll let you off the hook, but just because I love you and only if you promise me to remember that you can do anything.”
I could feel Lucas’s eyes burning holes on the side of my face, but I kept my gaze down. “Love you, too, Lina. Give Aaron a hug and enjoy the rest of the honeymoon, okay?”
Heart in my throat, I ended the call, trying my best not to look like I was scrambling to come up with a plan of action while my mind threw questions right and left. Lucas has heard about the orgasms. But what about the rest? God, how long has he been standing there?
“Hey,” I heard him say so softly that the word set off about a hundred alarms in my head. Yesterday, he’d had to hold me while I lost my ever-loving shit, and today this. “You’re not gonna say hi to me, Rosie?”
“Hi,” I answered, keeping my eyes down. Because if I looked up at him and found the barest trace of pity in his face, I’d be so… sad. Devastated, really. “So, that was Lina on the phone.”
“I noticed.”
My lips pursed. “I didn’t get the chance to tell her that we’re both staying here. Together. Until… you know, I can go back to my place.” I swallowed, keeping my eyes trained on the corner of the coffee table that he wasn’t occupying. If I wanted nothing to seem wrong, I had to act like it. “Anyway, how was your day? Did you go to the free exhibit in the New York Public Library I told you about? Did you like it? Was it as cool as it seemed on their website?”
“Yes,” he said, as if that one word answered all four of my questions. Then added, “I brought you something.”
He moved the blue and pink box toward me, and I did a double take when I noticed the logo on the lid. Something in my chest expanded just like a balloon being pumped with air, and it grew bigger the longer I gawked at that pink and blue cardboard container I recognized.
“You remembered,” I mumbled in a wobbly voice. “Cronuts. From Holy Cronut. Just like I mentioned yesterday.”
I hadn’t just mentioned it. I’d screamed it, right after I’d informed him that I was on my period, and right before I’d covered his sweatshirt in snot.
“I did,” he admitted, the balloon taking all the space in my rib cage. “I got my replacement credit card in the mailbox this morning, so I thought we could celebrate.” He pushed the box in my direction. “If you’ll share because, as I said, these are for you.”