Page 23 of All’s Well that Friends Well (Lucky in Love #2)

LUCA

This week has been a feat of time and space. It went both impossibly quickly and impossibly slowly, and my already short fuse seems to be running even shorter this evening.

I usually keep myself busy on Saturdays. I run, I finish up odds and ends from work, I even read if I’ve got time.

Setting up for breakfast picnics is never on the to-do list. But today it was.

Susan Miller—who I apparently cannot say no to—was over here bright and early with several rented tables, a bunch of folding chairs, and a few plastic tablecloths.

She had me move things around, unload chairs, provide feedback, and I went along with all of it.

When she finally left this afternoon, I found myself even more tired than usual, and grumpier too.

Maybe it’s because I own exactly one pair of good blue jeans, and I’m wearing them now. The seams are digging into my thighs, just uncomfortable enough to be irritating. Maybe that’s why I’m in such a foul mood at the moment, my hand gripping the steering wheel with unnecessary force.

“Sure,” I mutter under my breath as I come to a stop at a red light. “That’s why.”

It’s not why. The cause for my irritable mood has nothing to do with the pants I’m wearing or the slightly too warm evening that leaves a sheen of perspiration on the back of my neck—the one place my car’s air conditioner can’t blast directly.

My mood is more complex than that this evening.

I’m headed to see the Delaneys, which means the next several hours will be nothing short of hell for me, made more full of fire and brimstone by the fact that Maura’s parents genuinely adore me.

Their smiles and hugs and unconditional love will suffocate me, until I’m drowning in guilt and regret with no one but myself to blame.

I don’t even have a right to complain, because I’m the one who keeps visiting them. They ask, but I could say no. I could tell them the truth, that by the end of our relationship I no longer had any intention of marrying their daughter.

That I loved Maura, but I loved myself more.

And at this thought, my mind somehow flits in the last direction it should ever go: to freaking Juliet Marigold, who loves everyone and everything with reckless abandon.

I groan as the light turns green and put a little too much force on the gas, causing me to burst forward like a driver in Mario Kart.

I jump, adjust the pressure, and then clear my throat, my cheeks heating from embarrassment over my sheer stupidity.

It takes a second for my pulse to settle down, but then my brain wanders right back down the path it just tried to take.

Juliet .

It’s just…I never thought I would feel sorry for Juliet Marigold. She’s a Disney princess who bakes and probably sings to animals and looks beautiful at all times. She has a wonderful family, sisters who clearly love her enough to face me down when they’re concerned I’m firing her.

There’s no reason for me to feel sorry for her. There was no reason for me to dig through the closets in my rental, searching blindly for anything that looked work appropriate so that I could give it to her.

She’s just so unapologetically herself, and she doesn’t try to fit in with anyone else. As her boss, I’m concerned people will take advantage of her, or misunderstand her and cause problems. That’s all.

Is that why you agreed to be her friend, too? my traitorous mind says. Is that why you indulged in a childish back-and-forth game of messages on sticky notes? Is that why you took the time to explain that her behavior was inappropriate, rather than just shoving her away?

“I just don’t want people to misunderstand her unnecessarily,” I say firmly.

She’s not a snob. She doesn’t think she’s better than everyone. She’s not malicious. She simply is who she is, and as long as she doesn’t think she’s hurting anyone, she refuses to be anything else.

And, I guess, I can grudgingly admit…I respect that.

I’m allowed to respect positive qualities. It doesn’t mean anything.

I’m not sure people see those positive qualities in her. In fact, I’m fairly sure that people underestimate her, almost constantly. Something shifts behind my sternum, as uncomfortable as the stupid pants I’m wearing, and I sigh.

I’ve been underestimating her. When someone surprises you over and over, it means you need to let go of all your expectations, because they’re clearly incorrect.

And Juliet? She surprises me at every turn. She has since the day we met. Most people would take a hint, but she doesn’t. She’s tenacious to a fault, invasive in the most well-intentioned way.

Now she’s waltzing around my workplace in bright pink, humming cheerfully to herself, and apparently trying to get me to fall in love with her.

Heat creeps up my neck at this thought, my hands flexing compulsively on the wheel. Absurd —she’s absurd. Normal people don’t say things like that, and if they do, they don’t mean them.

But then again, Juliet doesn’t behave the way most people behave. She’s unrestrained, uninhibited, impervious to the waves her mere appearance is making.

Well—seemingly impervious. But I saw her when she was talking to her brother on the phone. She knew what people were saying about her, and it hurt her. She was mortified, too, when I pointed out that she’d basically been stalking me.

Stop. I need to stop thinking about this—about her, about work, about all of it.

Right now the only thing on my radar should be Mr. and Mrs. Delaney—I still can’t bring myself to call them by their first names—and how wonderful they are, how much they look forward to our visits, how much brighter I make their month by visiting.

I couldn’t do anything for Maura, but I can do something for her parents, even if it’s something small like showing up and eating with them. They get lonely, I know.

I do too. And yet somehow when I see them, that loneliness doesn’t go away. If anything, it widens that chasm in my chest, makes me feel further away from everyone rather than closer. I’m not sure if that’s normal.

“Should I go to therapy?” I mutter to myself.

When my phone rings, I snatch the opportunity to divert my mind and accept the call without looking at who it is. My voice is strangely loud in my ears after the rush of my whirling thoughts. “Hello.”

“Luca Slater!”

My heart skips a beat, mostly from surprise. The voice is cheerful, bright, and unmistakably feminine.

Feminine—and familiar.

“Ju—Miss Marigold?”

“Yep!” she says, completely carefree—like she calls me all the time, like I’m not her boss. “I’m bringing you the peach breakfast bars for the breakfast tomorrow.”

And it must be my shock that causes the truth to spill from my lips: “I—I forgot. I completely forgot. I didn’t even—” I break off, searching back.

She asked if she could bring her food over, and I said yes without thinking because I secretly loved the peach crumble she’d made.

“I forgot that I wouldn’t be home. I’m on my way to dinner. ”

“Oh, really?” I know I’m not imagining her disappointment.

“Hmm. What should I do, in that case—hang on.” These two words are more abrupt.

“Wait. You’re going to dinner—a date? No, you said you didn’t have a girlfriend—but you could in the future,” she babbles on, talking to herself more than me.

“Are you going on a date? Delaney, right? Is she beautiful?”

Something strange and unpleasant turns in my stomach at the sound of her voice speaking that name. “Where did you hear that name?” I say, a demand rather than a question, the words harsher than necessary .

But she doesn’t seem to notice. “On your calendar,” she says. Then she sighs, a staticky sound that filters unpleasantly down the line. “Of course you’re going on a date. Who wouldn’t want to date you?”

I snort at this. “So many people don’t want to date me, Miss Marigold. Most of the world.”

She hums skeptically. “I don’t know about that,” she says.

“Well, I’m not going on a date?—”

“You’re not?” she breaks in, and she has no right to sound that happy. No right at all.

“No,” I croak. I clear my throat. “I’m not.”

“But even if you were,” she says, “you require more than beauty from a woman. Right? So even if you went on a date with someone and she was beautiful, I still might have a chance.”

I almost recognize a faint spark of humor deep down inside when she says this, but I move past it. “I suppose by that logic, you would be correct.”

“Excellent,” she says happily. “Well, what if I bring my bars over later, when you’re back? Just run them by?”

I shake my head, glancing up at the clouds in the distance.

Maybe they’ll usher in a bit of cool air.

“I won’t be back for a while,” I say, turning onto the Delaneys’ street, “and in fact, I need to go. I’ll see you at the breakfast, Miss Marigold.

Just bring the food then.” I make my voice as businesslike and official as possible, and when I’m done speaking, I hang up.

I ignore the twinge of strange regret I feel. Even stranger than regret is the bizarre thought that just for once, it might be nice if her presence lingered—if I were with her rather than pulling into the Delaneys’ driveway.

But I’m not. I’m here, and there’s a bouquet of flowers in my passenger seat, and the back of my neck is still sweaty. There’s something like disgust at myself rising in my chest, too, as I battle the dilemma that haunts me night and day.

Where is my self-respect? I come here every month. I let myself go through this.

And yet if I stop—if I cut these genuinely wonderful people out of my life just because seeing them hurts—where is the self-respect in that, either? Where is the strength, the tenacity that I expect of myself?