Page 103 of All at Once

“Trust me,” I argue, “part of why I waited this long to do so many things is because I’ve if anything given myselftoomuch credit. Thinking I had it all figured out and that I knew what was best when I didn’t know anything.”

He sets his glass down, turning his body slightly toward me. “I know how easy it is to self-deprecate, and looking at the past usually makes you feel worse, but where you are right now deserves to be appreciated.”

My heart is fluttering again. “I love how you speak,” I say, while I shake my head as if I’m in a daydream.

His brows knit together amusedly. “What do you mean?”

“You make things sound so simple, yet so meaningful that I actually believe what you’re saying.”

“Well I’m just telling you the truth. And I’m not one to go around complimenting everyone for the sake of it.” He smiles with such sincerity that I’ve lost count at how many times I’ve wanted to kiss him at this point.

It might be wrong to compare. But I can’t get Enrique’s response to my question from yesterday out of my head. The curiosity of hearing Luca’s answer won’t go away.

Glancing at him, while he’s now focused on the deep blue water, I ask, “What color would you say my eyes are?”

He doesn’t even flinch. “What a perfectly normal and not at all random question to ask?”

I don’t particularly feel the need to explain myself to him.

It’s Luca after all.

“Your eyes are brown,” he says.

Okay same answer as Enrique.

I look at the ocean thinking he’s done.

But then he resumes talking, “With a ring of honey around them when you’re looking at the sun. Depending on the lighting though, you have some tiny specks of turquoise near your pupils.”

I try to look back at him. But it’s hard to do so, considering how I’ve completely froze.

As if he hasn’t already pierced every corner of my heart, he continues so purely, “It’s kind of cool. I’ve never really seen anything like it.”

I can’t tell if I want to smile.Or just cry.I get the sense that he’s too tired to read any of my emotions, for once thankful for this as I face toward him again.

“Oh I almost forgot,” Luca says, while reaching for his pocket, before taking out a napkin.

Temporarily forgetting how he just shattered my heart in the best way possible at his description of my eyes, I tease, “You brought a sandwich napkin?”

He tries not to roll his eyes, while biting down on his smile. “Yes, I brought a sandwich napkin.”

As he unveils the second burnt disaster cake we made last night, I cover my mouth with my hands. “You did not bring that.”

“You don’t throw away perfection,” he says with an alluring look in his eyes. And a bit seductively if you ask me…

Luca closes his eyes with exaggeration, making me giggle as he breaks the cake that might as well be the hardest cookie into two. He then reaches out to hand me my half when his fingers brush over mine. I immediately look at his eyes. He quickly meets mine.

It’s then that my reflexes fail me, and my wrist nudges his glass, sending a pool of champagne over the edge, covering the bottom half of his shirt.

He snorts. “What’s with you and spilling drinks on me?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see it,” I say nervously, not really feeling sorryat allwhen I almost notice a trace of his v-lines peek through his now damp shirt.

He smirks with a tilt of his chin. “Is that a fetish of yours or something? Wanting to see me wet.”

“In your dreams,” I say.But also in my dreams.

As if this isn’t the most flustered I’ve felt around him thus far, he also has to remind me how charismatic his laugh is, while we try our best to slowly eat the overcooked dessert. “It’s a damn shame that this wasn’t the cake the wedding could have experienced,” he says.

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