Page 70 of Sugar Baby Mine

“That’s way too much freedom,” I say, already gazing at the windows as we pass building after building. I’m liable to spend all his money on useless shit if he lets me, because dopamine is the best drug and shopping is a quick hit. And I’m more than willing to let him spend his money on me in freakingItaly. Like right now, I want to go into this blown glass shop because I can’t resist the rainbow of color inside.

So I pull Ben into the store and spend twenty minutes picking up every piece before I find a suncatcher that is a kaleidoscope of color with delicate flowers etched into the frame. I can only hope I’ll be able to find enough paper or bubble wrap to get this home in one piece.

“Can we get gelatobeforewe eat?” I ask as we step back out onto the street, my purchase dangling from his fingers in a brown paper bag.

“You’re so impatient that you want dessert first before your meal?”

“That is the best way to live, Ben. I can always take leftovers from a meal home. Kind of hard to do with an ice cream cone.”

“Gelato,” he corrects, overdoing the Italian accent by a million miles.

“Yeah. We have time right? Restaurant closes for lunch at two forty-five?”

“Two-thirty, so we should have time, yes.”

I grab his free hand and pull him behind, on a mission as I dig in my purse to pull out my phone.

“I’m going to Google the best gelato shop near us.”

“I could ask Luciano about this, too—”

“Google is fine, surely it won’t lead me astray. We won’t have to wait for his reply if he’s busy.”

“He literallyliveshere, I’m sure he knows the best place weshould go—”

“It’s fine!” I groan, stabbing my thumb into my screen, because for some reason I’m so fixated on finding a place myself in a foreign fucking country. My chest gets tight with emotion because I’m such an idiot, but I can’t stop now. “Let’s go to this one, it’s only a couple blocks over.”

Ben heaves a sigh, and it tickles my nerves in that fight or flight response kind of way. But I stamp down whatever is threatening to come up my throat with an iron hot poker because I don’t need to ruin a good time. I don’t.

He doesn’t say anything else, but his hand slips into mine and squeezes. But I still feel so fuckingcrazyfor the way I think.

I need more dopamine.

When we finally come to the gelato shop, it’s freezing cold inside. But it helps me focus, even when I let Ben take over and simply stare at all the flavors in the tubs beneath the glass display case.

I can hear him talking back and forth with the shop attendant, but now that I’m here, I can’t decide what I want to try.

There’s lemon, vanilla, dark chocolate, mango, hazelnut—

“And for you, miss?” A warm voice calls out to me, a proper Italian accent. I lift my head to the older gentleman who is waiting with the scooper in his hand. I look up at Ben in a panic, but he squeezes my hand again and my heart stops its frantic fluttering.

“Whatever your favorite flavor is,” I answer, and the way his face lights up in a smile makes my heart clench. Sometimes my indecision isn’t the worst thing in the world, even if I do fall back on this a lot.

“Sì, sì. Suso,” he says with a nod. I watch as he scoops a big dollop from one of the tubs onto the waffle cup. The flat waffle chip he sticks into the gelato has the same word on it, and then I realize that’s the name of the shop.

He hands it over the counter to me with a smile, nodding to Ben where he’s paying at the register. “Gustare. Voi due siete una bellissima coppia.”

“Grazie, e buona giornata,” Ben says back and my mind completely whites out.

“I’m sorry, do you speak Italian?”

I noticed him talking with the taxi driver of the boat and the hotel staff, but I was too busy in my head taking everything in to register that he might have beenspeaking their language.

“Not well.” He shrugs. “I can understand it better than I can speak it. And my accent is terrible,” he says, nudging my shoulder in jest as we walk out of the shop. “My grandmother was Italian.”

“No wonder you love Italian food. This is your freaking home country.”

“I was born in America,” he says with a laugh.

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