Page 5 of When Love Gives You Lemons
Reader, have you ever heard a room full of Italian women gasp? They’re not so much gasps as they are nasal shrieks and hollers in harmony with some epic hand-flapping like wings. It’s enough to cause my temples to throb.
I break through the chatter with the one question he still hasn’t answered. “Dude, who are you engaged to? Why haven’t we met her?”
Topher clears his throat. “Well, that’s the thing. Youhavemet her. You all have.”
My brows furrow. I twirl the ring on my thumb anxiously.
He rotates the camera so it’s front-facing, and the last person I expected to see is smiling and waving at me, and my heart literally stops. Like,911, world-stopping GIVE ME THE PADDLES, I’m having an actual heart attack here! levelstop.
Topher’s disembodied voice, all low and in distorted slo-mo, says, “You remember Sienna DeLuca.” Then, as if I would have forgotten, he reminds me, “Ricky’s sister.”
Oh, IrememberRicky DeLuca.
The love of my life—
—who broke my heart, shattered it into a bajillion pieces and left without a trace.
How could I forget?
Chapter 1.5
Fielder Lemon and Ricky DeLuca’s Great Commencement Massacre, Precisely One Year, Two Weeks, and Three Days Earlier (But Who’s Counting . . . ?)
Dear reader, did you know “commencement”—as in a commencement ceremony at a high school graduation—means “a beginning”?
It’s supposed to be poetic.
The end of the most vital eighteen years of a person’s life (to date, anyway) is the beginning of a new chapter. I learned that at Ricky DeLuca’s graduation. He was a year older than me. As I sat in the crowd watching my boyfriend (and best friend/next door neighbor of the last nearly twelve years) clad in his emerald-green and gold cap and gown, all I could think about was how this was a new beginning forus. After an epic all-night party, Topher surprised Ricky and me with a free, all-expenses-paid week in the Hamptons at his beach house to celebrate, to give us privacy away from the Coven.
Glittery waves crashed on the Long Island shoreline from a dark obsidian ocean lit by a bright white moon. Millions of stars dotted the sky, but Ricky and I were the only two on the beach. A warm breeze wrapped around us, lulling us into a trance. Nestled against a dune, our legs entangled, we stargazed together. Our tradition.
We spent so many nights wrapped up in the stars.
Something about that night felt delicate, a shaky breath before a plunge.
There were too many strange silences, like we were suspended midair, and nothing moved except the Atlantic tide. I told myself it was because tomorrow we would head home to face the real world, whatever that looked like for us, Fielder and Ricky. But mostly for Ricky, who didn’t have high school in the fall to look forward to, unlike me.
On the blanket next to Ricky a battery-operated lantern cast a soft glow on the sand, illuminating a well-worn leather-bound journal I bought him two Christmases earlier. We’d been best friends since his family moved in next door when I was five and he was six. We became instantly inseparable. But the summer before I entered high school, a strange tension bubbled its way to the surface; I went from carefree to breathless when I saw him, my sweaty skin prickling with electricity. Every time we were together, which was every damn day, it felt like we hovered around each other but couldn’t quite connect the way we used to, like someone holding two magnets and pointing their, like, poles at each other, ensuring they never meet.
Our immediate families spent Christmas Eve together—youknow, the whole Italian seven fishes shebang that brings everyone together, even non-blood neighbors. When it came time for us to do our usual best friend gift exchange, and he opened the journal and read the inscription I wrote in the front flap that he was an incredible poet, working words the way he would wood, and how I couldn’t wait to be by his side when he won his first Pulitzer Prize. His cheeks went beet red, and he dashed outside and into the snow, fluffy piles of the stuff billowing inside as he slammed the door behind him. I ran after him with a jacket, yelling his name so that he’d stop and at least not freeze to death. When I caught up to him and yanked on his shoulders so that he would face me, he spun around, and his eyes were red and glassy. I asked him what was wrong, what I did, and when I grabbed his hand, it was like the magnet poles flipped, and he leaned forward and—
—kissed me.
Middle of the street. Golden glow from the streetlamps, massive snowflakes fluttering around our heads like we were in a damn snow globe. It was sloppy and messy as he mashed his teeth against mine in a way that reverberated through my skull. Horrible. Borderline painful. Wet. Yetperfect.
“I’ve never done this before . . . kissed adude.” He shuddered. “Or anyone.”
“Neither have I.” My words trembled, from the cold or nerves I couldn’t tell.
“But you’ve been out for, like, years already!” he said.
“I’ve kissed lots of dudes in my head.”
“Have you ever kissed me?” He looked down, dragged his foot in concentric circles in the snow. “You know. In your head?”
My cheeks got so hot I no longer cared about the snow. I swallowed hard. “I—”
“Sorry—that was weird. Did I make it weird?”
