Page 92 of Good as Gold
He gives me a curious glance. “Maybe that’s not something we should make into a competition? Just a thought.”
First try, though.
“Mom doesn’t know yet,” he adds. “So if you could keep it to yourself for another week.”
“Sure. Zara knows, though, so your time with this secret is limited.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “I’ll consider myself warned. Now get a plate. Food’s ready!”
My other brothers whoop with joy.
Stepping back, I wait for Skye and Zara to come out of the house. Zara sets Micah onto a blanket in the grass and makes herself a plate to share with him. Alec teases Damien about his threadbare jeans. Damien teases Benito about his obsession for washing his car.
But I can already feel myself receding into the background again. An outsider in my own family. The next barbecue in this yard will happen without me. And the one after that.
I watch Benito put a protective arm around his wife and kiss her on the jaw. And I ask myself a question that I’ve never asked myself before—do I want what Benito has?
It feels like a dangerous question. Even if the answer is yes, that door isn’t necessarily open to me. My life is elsewhere. Leila might not ever feel about me the way Skye feels about my brother.
Also, I haven’t succeeded at getting her pregnant. She wants a baby more than anything else. I thought I was helping, but it’s just dawning on me that I might be the obstacle, not the cure.
“Matteo?” Benito puts a plate in my hands. “Get involved, man, before they’re ready for seconds.”
“Thanks.” I take the plate with the sudden certainty that he’ll make a great daddy. No question in my mind.
But being a daddy might not be happening for me. This whole summer I’d been thinking that it was a choice I’d have to make—to be involved as a parent, or not.
Now I realize that I’ve been worrying about the wrong thing.
Numbly, I put some food on my plate. After my first bite, my phone pings with a text.
It’s only the airline.Time to check in for your flight to Denver.
Don’t I know it.
CHAPTER33
LEILA
The light is fading in the sky outside my apartment. With the windows open, I can hear the buzzing of cicadas on the breeze.
Every teacher knows what that sound means—the end of summer break. Once the cicadas start up, you might as well break out the school clothes.
Tonight it sounds especially mournful. The fact that Matteo is leaving tomorrow has me bumping around my apartment like the last billiard ball on the pool table. I change my clothes and then wonder if the sexy red lingerie I’m wearing is too much.
I unbutton my shirt enough so that the camisole peeps out. But then I decide that looks dumb, so I button it back up again. He can find it himself. I change the sheets on the bed. Then I make homemade lemonade and set it out on the counter.
It’s what I poured for Matteo that first night, when I was so nervous, but also shaking with anticipation. I wish I could rewind to that night and start all over again.
Matteo just gave me the summer of my life. It’s not just the potential pregnancy, it’s thejoy. My divorce made me feel like a failure, and I guess I still do. But Matteo gave me something valuable—lemonade from lemons. Hot kisses and guiltless fun after a year that hurt us both.
But now I don’t know what the future holds. That makes me nervous, which is why I find myself turning all the spices in my spice drawer so that the labels face out, and then rearranging my bookshelf.
When the knock finally comes, I jump. I run over to the door, and my first reaction is to notice how great Matteo looks with a beard. He’s let his scruff grow out this summer.
But my second reaction is fear. One look in his eyes, and I know something is wrong. He doesn’t smile. He leans in and slowly kisses my jaw. And then he sighs.
“Come in?” I say stupidly.
