Page 64 of Cherry on Top

He didn’t want to say, But he’s the guy. How could he not be, when I’ve never wanted to spend so much time with someone just pretending to like them?

Maybe he didn’t need to, though, because the look on Luca’s face made it clear he understood anyway.

“You want to have what you can, while you can have it.” Luca nodded absently, his eyes distant, like he was remembering a time when he’d felt the same. “I get that. So you want to take him out on Monday. You want me to get you into the restaurant.”

“You and Oliver run the nicest place on the coast. But it’s booked up months in advance.” Enzo made a face. “You guys need more tables.”

“Then we’d be busier than we are, already, and that’d be no good, because I actually like seeing my husband,” Luca said with amusement.

“Come on, Luca. Fit me in.”

“You’ll never be able to go back from this,” Luca warned.

Enzo understood that he meant in multiple kinds of ways. If Giana heard that Enzo had begged Luca to fit him and Will in for a romantic date, she’d believe this was it.

And maybe if he took Will on a romantic date, he’d end up believing the exact same goddamn thing.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t already in deep. It had been two days since their skinny dip in the ocean, and it felt like Will was constantly in his thoughts.

He sketched something and wondered, what will Will think of it?

He painted on Will’s wall and thought about him looking at it every single day as he walked by it.

He ate something and wanted to know what Will’s face would look like if he tried it too.

He turned on a ridiculous, over-the-top romantic movie on TV and wondered if he could convince Will to re-enact any of the scenes with him.

He was haunting Cherry’s, spending too much time in there, just surreptitiously watching the man.

It was becoming a real problem.

“I know,” Enzo said, agreeing with Luca’s assessment. Agreeing and wanting to move forward anyway.

“Alright,” Luca said with a nod. “I’m proud of you, you know?”

Enzo cracked a smile. “I thought this was supposed to be the baseball bat talk.”

Luca laughed. “Don’t you think I’d be giving him that? You’re my cousin.”

But the cousin you didn’t really like and didn’t want, forever.

“I . . .uh . . .”

Luca did a double take. “You did think that I would.” He paused and set down the ice cream scoop. Turned to Enzo, put both hands on his shoulders, and gave his most earnest, most soulful Moretti look. Luca didn’t often use it. Of course he didn’t usually need to. His hard-ass Moretti look worked better.

But not right now.

“You’re a great guy, Enzo. You’ve grown up into a great man. If you didn’t know I’m proud of you, I’m sorry. I’m not very good at showing it. Oliver tells me I need to be better. We didn’t start out on a very auspicious foot, I’ll admit, but you saw you needed to change, and you changed. You fought for every single change I see in you now. How could I not be proud of that?”

Enzo was speechless.

He didn’t have a father. He didn’t have brothers. He’d never had any family besides his mother, really, especially because the rest of the Morettis were all on the west coast. Even though he’d been brought into their fold during his time in San Francisco, he still hadn’t been one-hundred-percent convinced that Luca even liked him, even though they’d mended their differences ages ago.

But this was more than like. Luca loved him, like he loved his father and his brothers and his cousins.

Like Enzo was one of the people Luca worried for and watched out for. And even when Enzo hated it, he could still appreciate that Luca did it out of loyalty and responsibility and yes, pure, unadulterated affection.

“Oh. Oh.”

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