Page 131 of Crazy In Love

“I’M MOVING TO NEW YORK. BECAUSE MY GIRLFRIEND LIVES IN NEW YORK. AND IF SHE MOVES TO ROME, THEN I’LL GO THERE, TOO. I’LL JUST NEED A MINUTE TO WORK ON VISAS.”

“Stop shouting!”

“I will not stop shouting! I’m ti amo with my girlfriend!”

“He doesn’t speak it properly,” Amedeo groans, stopping in the doorway. “Americans always say it wrong. And that accent is…”

“Hillbilly,” I murmur. “It’s hillbilly.”

“I brought you sheets.” Chris drops to his knees and feverishly unzips his suitcase, flopping the heavy shell case open and presenting, a’la Simba on pride rock, a package of silky black. “I’ll trade my sheets if it means I get to keep you.”

“Chris.” I lower into a crouch and meet his eyes. “You can stop.”

“And my forks, too.” He whips open the other side of the case and reveals his entire cutlery set. Not just the forks. “I’ll use whatever silverware you ask me to use, if it means we can try for round two.”

“You don’t have to give anything up. You can keep your sheets and?—”

“And my shirts.” He stands again, grabbing my hand and yanking me up, then he fists the back of his shirt. “I’ll give up the clothes on my back and wear a burlap sack if you need me to.” His eyes burn with desperation. “Please don’t need me to. That shit is insanely itchy.”

“Chris—”

“And your pen.” He reaches around and snags my pen from his back pocket, presenting it the way others might a diamond ring. “It fell out of your purse in my truck that first day after I picked you up from the airport. You spent the whole fucking drive arguing with me over who had more claim over Franky, then you jumped out to hug Alana and kicked your bag over. I found the pen the next day, and when you asked me about it, I didn’t wanna give it back.”

“You had my pen this whole time?”

“I’ll sell my house and use the money to buy something here. Or in Rome. Or London. I’ll buy you property wherever you need it, and if that means I’m broke and can’t afford the sheets I like, then I don’t mind.”

“Chris, stop?—”

“My skin hasneveritched as much as it has in the last forty-eight hours. I don’t sleep unless I’m with you. I don’t eat unless we’re okay. I don’t want to be Hazel’s godfather if her godmother is on the other side of the world. And I can’t invite anyone into my home office to play chess now anyway. Not after we?—”

“That’s enough of that.” I clap my hand over his mouth and burn. I know my cheeks fire red. “Jesus. From no crowds at all, to offering to take your shirt off and telling them that we… That we?—”

“Have sex?”

Booker tips his head back andgroans.

I draw a fortifying breath and close my eyes,knowing, once I open them again, this will all be just a dream. A hallucination brought on by stress. “Maybe I drowned in the bathtub last night, huh? Maybe none of this is real.”

“I flew to New York to be with you.” Chris takes my hands, pulling me in until our chests touch and his warm breath hits my chin. “I was expecting you to say no, because you have a shitty habit of sabotaging anything good you could have. You’re toxic as hell, Fox Tatum, and irritating to boot.”

“Well… thanks?”

“But I met this cab driver last night. He brought me to my hotel and told me a story about his wife.”

“Wait. What?—”

“She’s gone now. She died. After fifty years of marriage. And to us, when we’re not yet thirty, fifty years of marriage sounds like a really long time. But I swear to you, from where he was sitting, it wasn’t nearly enough. He told me about this bed she’d made him buy and how he kicks the wooden leg every damn day. He said he gets sad now on the rare days hedoesn’tkick it.”

Eugene. My beloved Eugene.

“I want you to irritate me, Fox. I want you to hide my forks, and destroy my sheets, and disrespect the rules of chess. I want you to do all of these things and tell me, at least once a day, that youti amome.”

“That’s wrong!” Amedeo growls. “You’re saying it wrong!”

“If you’re in Rome, then that’s where I’ll be. If you’re in London, then I’m heading to London.”

“And if she’s heading to Plainview?” Exhaling a tired sigh, Booker leans against the doorframe and scrubs a hand over his face. “What if she’s negotiated a job in that hillbilly backward-ass nowhere? What do you say to that?”