Page 76 of The Sweet Spot

“Well, good. I sure hope Luca’s worthy.”

“Me too.”

“I mean it. You deserve a good guy.” Saira had always disapproved of me and Dallas. She felt like it was opportunistic on Dallas’ part, even if we had both agreed to keep things casual. “When are you seeing him again?”

“I don’t know.” Despite our night together, we left things pretty open-ended when he dropped me back to campus. “Soon. He might come by Tuesday after class.” Picking a loose thread from the comforter, I wrap it around my finger.

Leighton and Skye come in, each holding an enormous pizza box. “We’re starving. Y’all want some?”

“I could go for pizza,” murmurs Saira, putting her pretzels away.

“Hey, babe,” I say to Skye, touching her arm. “How’s the roommate situation going?”

“Better.” She puts the pizza down on our coffee table. “I told her if she kept bringing her man over at all hours, I’d start bringing mine. She didn’t want that.”

Snorting, I give her a fist bump. “Nice.”

“The Golden Rule,” Leigh says. “Who would’ve thought?”

“Just seems like common courtesy to me,” Skye says, wrinkling her nose.

“I must admit, I would’ve loved to see her face if she showed up while you and Xavy were getting it on,” Saira says with a snicker.

Skye scoffs, plopping down beside Saira. They didn’t know each other before, but their shared Caribbean heritage—Skye’s from St. Croix and Saira’s mom is Trinidadian—became an instant point of connection when Skye returned to UCSC.

Eating a piece of pepperoni mushroom, I navigate to the UCSC laundry app to see if any washing machines are available downstairs. There are, so I wipe my hands on my jeans and heave my laundry into my arms.

“Hey, I’m gonna go and get these clothes started. A couple of machines just freed up.”

“You better hurry,” Leigh says through a mouthful. “There might not be much left by the time you get back.”

Luca

“So, Luca,” Mãe begins, pausing expectantly. I can barely hear her with the music and family chatter on her end—a typical weeknight evening at the Walnut Creek house. “When do I get to meet this girl?”

Huffing softly, I balance the phone between my ear and shoulder so I can grab groceries from the trunk of my car. “Soon, Mãe, soon. We just started seeing each other.”

“But you said you’ve liked her for a long time,” she argues. Dominic, my stepdad, pipes up in the background, and Mãe promptly tells him to hush. Maybe she switches rooms, because suddenly it’s quiet. “Listen, baby. That’s how it was with your stepdad and me. You know this. We were friends for a long time before he finally made his move. We were engaged within months.”

“I know, and that’s great,” I say, and I mean it, “but I’m in no rush to get engaged.”

“I know that, smartass,” she says crisply. “My point is that I don’t want you to sit around and procrastinate because of what happened with Brooke.”

Here we go again. Once you’re on Mãe’s shitlist it’s hard to get off—and lately my ex tops that list. My mother knows how it feels to be cheated on, and she was devastated to see it happen to me. To make things worse, she’d liked Brooke. When things blew up, I think she felt almost as duped as me.

But I’m too distracted by Wren to think about Brooke these days, and when I do it’s to wonder why I stayed with Brooke for so long. Our relationship wasn’tbad, but it wasn’t this. There wasn’t a near constant urge to text, or long, rambling, late night phone calls. It wasn’t a mutual fascination that bordered on infatuation. In fact, I think about Wren way more than I’m comfortable admitting and sometimes that makes me want to pull back. Ironically.

“This is nothing like that,” I say after a long moment. “Although now that you mention it, yeah—I don’t want to screw things up. Again.”

“You weren’t the one who screwed up last time,” she says, getting fired up all over again, “but I understand.”

“I’m taking my time with Wren. We’re taking our time.” And we are, although making Wren come every time we’re together after darkmightnot be the best definition of taking things slow. “She’s worth it.”

“You’re right.” She sighs. “There’s no rush. I just want you to be happy…because you’re worth it, too.”

“I know, Mãe.”

“Wren is welcome anytime.”

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