Page 9 of A Pizza My Heart

My eyes drift back Foster’s way.

They slide over his tan skin, the biceps begging to be let free from his sleeves. The new tattoo covering his forearm. The stubble Drew wants to lick.

She’s right—Californiahasdone him good, which makes me wonder why he’s back in town after being gone so long, after leaving me with a hole the size of the fucking moon inside my heart. He was my best friend and he left me. Never really said goodbye either.

What the hell is Foster doing here? And why is he sitting in the middle of my father’s restaurant with a woman who definitely isn’t his wife?

Slice Two

Foster

“So…” My LustStruck date Natasha draws the word out. “Where are you from, Foster?”

I peer around the pizzeria I practically grew up in. At a glance, it doesn’t appear as if anything has changed in the nearly thirty years it’s been open. But, if you look closer, and if you’ve been patronizing the joint for as long as I have, you know they’ve made updates over the last few years.

New tables, different chairs. A more modern fabric stretched across the booths. Simon even replaced the outdated light fixtures.

Nothing major, but enough to give it a fresh feel.

Which is what makes it odd to be sitting here again after so many years. It doesn’t feel likemyversion of Slice.

The place I got my first job. Got into my first fist fight—because one of the summer visitors got grabby with a waitress—and got my first black eye. Had my heart broken by the girl who never knew I was head over heels for her.

But I guess that’s what happens when you pick up and move across the country to avoid…well, everything.

Shit changes. Life goes on.

“Here,” I tell her eventually. She thinks I mean the area, and technically I do, but I also mean righthere,Slice. This place is home. It’s always been home.

She wrinkles her button nose. “You sure? You don’t look like you’re from here. You have a sort of…vibe about you, like you’re from money or somewhere far away.”

I hold back my snort. I am definitelynotfrom money, not even close.

We didn’t have it as bad as some kids, but I remember getting the free lunches at school and not having a new pair of pristine kicks on the first day of classes. My parents didn’t have it easy making ends meet, but we never went without the essentials.

“I just moved back here from California.”

Natasha sits up at this revelation, her interest in me clearly piqued. “Really? I’ve always wanted to go there. When are you headed back?”

Did she miss themoved backpart?

“I’m not.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders sink inward as if the information disappoints her, like she thought I was going to invite her back to Cali with me.

Yeah…no.

“Are you from around here?” I ask after a few beats of awkward silence.

“Off and on. My family spends summers here.”

“Is that why you’re here? For the summer?”

“It is.” She sits forward, pushing her breasts between her arms and toying with the salt shaker sitting in the middle of the table. “But I think that’s a good thing, don’t you?”

Warning bells begin ringing inside my head.

The last time I hooked up with a summer beach bunny, I married her…then divorced her four years later.