Page 80 of Love Around the Corner
“That’s the Pleiades, a star cluster. Can you see some bright spots inside the cloud? Those are individual stars in it. There’s Merope, Electra, Alcyone, Atlas.”
“Can you name everything up there?”
She laughed, that bright sound that always sent a little shiver down the back of his neck. “You know there are an infinite number of objects in space, right? Knowing them all is impossible.”
He straightened up and looked at her. Her head was tipped back, face turned to the night sky.
“What do you like about it?”
“Space?”
“Yeah. Is it that thing everybody says, about space making them feel small and insignificant?”
Livie shook her head, eyes still on the stars. “No. Space doesn’t make me feel small. It makes me feel bigger. More than I am.”
“How so?”
“Space doesn’t welcome human beings. It’s not our place. We’re too small, too fragile. But when I’m working, when I see something new come back from a telescope, something no one else has ever observed before, I feel like I’ve figured out a way around our human fragility. Maybe space doesn’t welcome most humans, but I’ve found a way to walk up there amongst the stars, to look back through time. I mean, primordial black holes! You’re looking at the birth of the universe. And I can do that.Me. And that makes me bigger, stronger, than anybody else. I’m alone out there with space and all its mysteries.”
He stared at her pale, perfect profile against the dark of the night around them. This girl was destined for greatness. What a waste that she was here, killing time in a grimy, empty lot, waiting around for a bunch of unappreciative undergrads, being hassled by a blowhard professor who wasn’t worth a tenth of her. One day, she’d break free of her orbit around Adams and their insignificant little Brooklyn neighborhood, and when she did, she’d light up like a comet, streaking away to parts unknown to change the world, to crack the code of time and space.
He rubbed the heel of his palm across his chest, trying to ease the ache that image caused him somewhere deep inside, somewhere in the vicinity of where his heart would be. If he still had one. It would be a good thing, Livie getting out there and blazing a trail of brilliance across the world. And he’d be out there on his own trajectory again, too. This little interlude—when she was biding her time in this academic backwater and he was biding his time until the next opportunity reached out to grab him—would be over. And he absolutely refused to feel sad about that.
“You’re beautiful, you know that?” His voice sounded rough with everything he was holding back.
She startled, looking at him with those big dark eyes. “I told you, you don’t have to say that kind of stuff to me.”
“I’m not saying it to flatter you. I’m saying it because it’s true.” He reached for her hand and she turned to face him fully. She was back, returned from her momentary trip to the stars, back on earth, and back with him. For now.
He ran his hands up her arms, over her shoulders, and up her neck, under the warm fall of her hair. “I’m saying it because I think it every time I look at you.”
She said nothing as he leaned in and kissed her, only released a long, slow breath.
“I’m saying it because when I’m not looking at you, I’m thinking about what you look like, your hair, your lips, your breasts.”
“You’re obsessed,” she murmured against his lips.
“I told you I was,” he said back.
He kissed her again, less sweet and soft this time, urging her lips apart, finding her tongue with his. One step brought their bodies flush. Arousal pulsed through his veins, even though there were layers of coats and sweaters and shirts between his body and hers.
“How much longer did you say you have to stay out here?” he whispered against her mouth.
“As long as there are students here working.”
“Livie. I don’t see any students.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she gazed up at him, her fingers toying with his hair. “Then I guess I don’t have to stay.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Vinelli’s Meats was a madhouse. It always was on the afternoon before a major holiday, as everyone crowded in to pick up their custom orders.
Thanksgiving was tomorrow, and Gemma had tasked Livie with picking up the turkey she’d ordered weeks before. Everybody knew Vinelli’s had the best birds in Brooklyn, so everyone else ordered from them, too. People came all the way from Bay Ridge and Marine Park to get a Vinelli turkey.
Vinelli’s was already decorated for Christmas, which she loved. They always started well before all the other businesses on the block. The faded light-up Santa in the front window and the dusty plastic holly swags overhead were older than she was. Boxed panettones imported from Italy lined the wall behind the meat cases. Vinelli’s had already put out the Christmas booze, too. In the corner, a silver tray held a little forest of open bottles—some scotch, vodka, whiskey, rum, and a bottle of Baileys—along with a stack of disposable plastic cups. For the next month, customers would help themselves to a drink while they waited on their orders and chatted with their neighbors. While Livie didn’t drink or chat easily with neighbors, she liked watching other people do it. It was one of the things that made this neighborhood great, and gave her that warm feeling of belonging someplace.
On the other side of those glass cases, featuring meat products in every permutation imaginable, three harried guys in white butchers’ coats ran back and forth, retrieving turkeys from the walk-in cooler in the back and calling out names out front. Livie patiently waited her turn, pickup ticket clutched in her hand. She stepped up to the counter and handed it over to one of the butchers when another butcher held a giant turkey aloft and called out the last name of its new owner.
