Page 25 of Cherry on Top

“Uh, no?”

“Are you kidding me?” Rocco chimed in. “He won’t shut up about your latest mural. That galaxy one in Seattle? He talked about it nonstop, even to customers, for days.”

“Oh. Oh.”

Oliver shot him a gentle smile. “He’s a complicated guy,” he admitted. “I tell him all the time that he should tell you, but you know your cousin. He’s so contained.”

“Not as much as he used to be, before you convinced him to be a real boy,” Enzo joked.

It was funny, because back when that had actually happened, he’d been so pissed off. And now it was impossible to be angry about it, because Luca and Oliver made each other better.

It was the kind of relationship Enzo measured his own by, and when every single one had come up short, he’d begun to think that maybe the kind of white-picket-fence forever love that his cousin and Oliver shared wasn’t for him. He’d meant what he told Will earlier; maybe real life was full of disappointing love. And it had been easier, too, to give up on relationships because sometimes it felt like he spent every month in a different city.

“Yeah, I was really surprised when I came here,” Rocco agreed. “I only knew him, a few years back, when he lived in Napa. And then I showed up a month or so back and imagine my shock when he was laughing and joking and teasing.”

“The miracle of love,” Oliver said mysteriously. He turned to Enzo. “I’ve got bread rising. But you’re good out here, minus the cappuccinos?”

“Can I just hang out here? Do you mind?”

He realized that maybe Oliver wouldn’t want him spending his morning—and maybe even his afternoon—taking one of his handful of tables.

“No, no,” Oliver waved. “Feel free to stay. You’re always welcome here, you know? Besides . . .” He shot him a knowing grin. “It’s a small town, isn’t it? Not a whole lot of choices.”

Ilaria was always telling him, whenever his feelings about Indigo Bay had come up, that he needed to remember that he’d changed. You, more than anyone else, need to remember that, she’d added. ’Cause it’s like you go back there and the minute you cross the town line, you forget, too.

“Definitely smaller than I’m used to, now,” he admitted.

“I bet, and God knows, when I first came home, it was an adjustment,” Oliver said, and Enzo believed that he really understood. “Come on,” he said to Rocco, “let’s work on some of your pastry skills and leave your cousin to his artistic endeavors.”

Chapter Six

Instead of telling her where he was going and why he was going there, Enzo told his mother he’d made plans with Rocco—it was a little white lie but the way he saw it, a necessary one, because he didn’t need to encourage her to build her castle in the sky any taller than it already was.

He walked down the darkening street, noticing a number of people carrying ice cream cones and cups emblazoned with the Cherry’s bright pink logo as he headed closer to his destination.

When he reached the corner the ice cream parlor sat at, with its big blank wall, he stood there for a long minute, staring at it. Imagining various different images splashed across it.

And even though he didn’t really want to do it, in fact telling his mind that he didn’t want to envision the story told by his paintbrush, he did anyway.

He could see it, clear as day, bright and undeniable, the outcropping hill rising on one side, Eliza standing on top of it, her dark hair streaming behind her in the wind as she faced the open ocean, waiting for the man she loved. There was a boat too, drifting on the waves at the far end, and the tiny figure of a man staring down the storm as he tried, desperately, to get home.

Enzo took a deep breath.

He still didn’t want to paint this, but he couldn’t deny it was an arresting image.

Rounding the corner, he pulled open the door to Cherry’s, not surprised to see it half-full, but most of the people already sitting at tables, and only one person in line currently. He slipped in behind them, eyeing Will behind the counter, his big body moving gracefully from one task to another, scooping ice cream and mixing milkshakes and swirling dollops of bright white whipped cream on top of dishes, all topped with . . .what else but cherries?

The white T-shirt and bright pink apron he was wearing were mostly clean, a single stripe of chocolate across his pectoral muscle, and a smear of something almost as pink as the apron across its front.

He was smiling at something his employee had said, and his eyes were so blue, his teeth so white, against his tanned face, and something inside Enzo clenched.

He hadn’t come back here to start anything with anyone. Certainly not the kind-eyed man with all the muscles and the ice cream shop.

He’d come home because his mother had made him such a good offer he hadn’t been able to resist.

But he’d never imagined that the man would be as alluring as the blank wall he owned.

The woman in front of Enzo finished ordering and he watched as Will easily slid in front of the register instead of his employee who’d been there before.

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