Page 124 of The Holiday Hate-Off
This shakes me to my core.
I want to believe him. I want to think this strange relationship between us can grow and change—that we can too. But I’m so afraid to feel things for a man who already has one foot out the door.
“It’s not really in keeping with the frenemies-with-benefits agreement,” I say at last. I’m not sure which of us moved to face the other—maybe both—but only inches separate our mouths now. His face looks more intense, cast in shadow, and I feel my pulse pick up.
“Maybe I’m sick of following the rules,” he says, his gaze lowering to my mouth.
He leans in slightly, and I feel myself doing the same, but I stop with a couple of inches still left between our lips. “You’ve never liked following rules. You make them your own.”
“Yes,” he says, the words practically whispered into my mouth. “And it just so happens I’d like to change your rule.”
“Oh?” I say, my lips even nearer to his.
Anyone walking past could see us in here, nearly kissing, but the thought doesn’t make me retreat.
“Yes. You called us frenemies with benefits. Lucia, I’m not sure whether you’ve realized this, but that implies we’re friendsandenemies. Friends spend time together. They don’t just?—”
I press my finger over his lips and glance through the front window, worried that Nonna Francesca didn’t go upstairs like she said and is spying. Or maybe she has crazy sonar hearing.
He sucks my finger into his mouth, and I gasp at the unexpected sensation. “Enzo.”
“Although I have no problem fucking you whenever you want either.”
“You’re bad,” I say.
He presses his forehead to mine. “Yes. But I still think the Italian Stallion is a terrible name. Let’s call our cappuccino the Frenemy.”
“Not romantic enough. It needs to be romantic.”
“Feels pretty romantic to me,” he says, edging close enough that I can feel him forming the words.
Then he leans in and kisses me there, on his grandmother’s swing, on the front porch of her house, and I can feel the walls surrounding my heart crack for him.
We make out on his grandmother’s porch like teenagers, pausing every now and then to talk, until she cracks open the door who-knows-how-long later.
“Stop this nonsense and come inside to fix my television. I need to watch my programs.”
I’m mortified, but I don’t miss the small, satisfied smile on her face.
After I return to my own place later that night, I pull out the letter from my neighbor. My plan was to open it when I got home, but I don’t. I keep it in its envelope beside my bed.
CHAPTER 27
ENZO
Ismile when I see the whiteboard sign outside Love at First Sip. “The Frenemy” is written on it with a green Sharpie, perhaps because I still have Lucia’s red one—along with the promise that I can use it to write on her face at a time of my choosing.
Beneath it is scrawled,
You decide if you love it or hate it, and enter your vote!
Lucia has an eye for marketing, it seems. Now I’m even more interested in seeing her plans for the app.
I hadn’t planned on going into the café until later, but I push through the door of the Sip as if gravity is indeed messed up and it’s Lucy who changed the laws.
I escorted her home last night—to the door I’ve left all those notes at—and she told me she’d consider my offer. And also that we shouldn’t sleep together again until we’ve renegotiated our rules.
I almost told her that I was Lobster Stalker. I wanted to tell her.
