Page 68 of The Sweet Spot

Guess I’m not the only astute listener here. I like that. “But it hasn’t always been easy. Take the expenses, for example. She almost lost the studio the summer you and I met, all because the building was under this new management that hiked the rent way up. Most of the money I made that summer helped my mom through the transition.”

“Wow,” he says softly, setting his beer down on a coaster from a local bar. “That’s incredible. That you’d do that for your mom.”

“She’s my mom.” I shrug. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I would.” He nods. “But I doubt everyone would.”

“I was pretty salty about it at the time.” I chuckle. “I had to cancel all of the big summer plans I’d made with my girlfriends. It was our last hurrah before college, so you know.” Of course, being stuck in Santa Cruz that summer was how I’d met Luca, but I keep that to myself.

“Probably made you stronger,” he muses.

“My mom’s friend called it a ‘character building time,’” I say, remembering Darius. “And my grandmother loves to say that said difficulties are requirements for growth.” I sigh, realizing I miss Gramma Kate. I saw her all the time before I went to college, but now it hasn’t been since Christmas.

I bet she’d love Luca. She’s always been a sucker for a pretty face.

“Are you close to your grandparents?” I ask.

“Ironically, I’m closer to my dad’s than my mom’s,” he says. “Ironic, because they live in Brazil. My mom’s parents live in the Bay, but I haven’t seenthem in years.”

“Why?”

“Mom’s not too close to them. They weren’t too crazy about the idea of her marrying some poor guy she met in college, even if he was Brazilian.”

“It’s mind-boggling to me that people still think that way.” I wrinkle my nose, disgusted. “I’m glad your mom followed her heart. She made you.”

“And my brother, Nico.”

“Does he live around here?”

Luca cracks a smile. “Yeah, up in the Bay with his wife and kids.”

“Tell me about your dad,” he says suddenly. “You said earlier that you’d just met him. Did he leave your mom before you were born?”

I probably should have seen the conversation coming to this, but I was so caught up in Luca’s world I didn’t even see it coming. “I…”

A small wrinkle forms between his eyebrows, and he leans forward. “Look, if it’s a sensitive topic—”

“My mom was artificially inseminated,” I blurt, staring at the beer sweating between my palms. “She didn’t even know my dad, so we kinda met him around the same time. We’re all still getting to know each other, I guess.”

“Oh, okay.”

I look up. To Luca’s credit, he stays neutral-looking. I can only imagine what’s going on in that gorgeous head of his.

“It’s nuts, I know.” Butterflies—the icky, anxious kind, not the fluttery, fun kind—surge around my gut. I gulp down half my beer in an effort to drown them. “You’ve got a great poker face, by the way.”

Luca smiles a little, cocking his head as he watches me.

“What?”

“It’s not as big a deal as you think it is.” Closing his eyes, he shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean. Meeting your father is going to be one of the biggest moments of your life, for sure. But the way you came to be?” He aims his laser gaze straight at me. “Not a big deal. You’re not the only person whose mom had you like that, and you’re not the only one who’s never met their dad. Doesn’t make you different or weird.”

A startled, borderline hysterical laugh bursts from my lips. “You really get to the point.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I’ve been told.”

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right.” Relief that he accepts this for what it is washes over me. “It’s just, I’m the only personI knowwhose mom had them like this. It can be hard to relate to.”

“I get it.”

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