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If He Were Feeling What I’m Feeling He Would Know How It Feels!

Hi, reader! It’s me again, Fielder Lemon! Did you miss me?

Let’s check in with Operation: Ricky @ Second Glance, shall we?

Lite Sabotage

Win over Ricky’s family

Get Ricky alone to see if he still has feelings for me

Remind Ricky what he’s missing (I feel like we’re here, yes?)

Show him how much I’ve grown and changed (jury’s out)

Compare/Contrast: Pros of Fielder vs. Cons of Cam

Figure out if Ricky actually loves Cam

Isolate (then eliminate) Cam!

I still feel a bit icky about that last one, but not terribly so because I still haven’t figured out how to break it to Ricky that I think Cam might be hooking up with randoms on the side. I have no proof, though, other than what Tyler, Benny, and I saw.

Anyway, I’m not worrying about that right now because I’m having the single best day of the last thirteen months with Ricky, and I’m not getting my hopes up at all, but I’m saying nobody in the history of days has ever had a better day.

With the Matty of it all, it keeps getting better.

“Matty isn’t answering his texts,” I say.

“This is amazing,” Ricky repeats, over and over again.

“Yes, except Matty didn’t tell me he was going on a date! When I woke up this morning, Matty was already gone. Now I know it’s because he was sneaking out to meet the lemon farmer’s son! Which, hot. Kudos, Matty! But it’s upsetting. Matty tells me everything!”

“Leave him alone,” Ricky says. “He’s clearly enjoying himself.”

“But—”

“Are you worried he’s going to somehow mess up your connection to Niccolò?”

I wasn’t, but now that you mention it, yes! “Nooo.”

He glares at me, knowingly.

“Matty can be messy . . .” I trail off.

“A Lemon, messy? Never.” He rolls his neck and smirks, all suave, and it makes me swoon. Hard.

“Ignoring you.”

“He’s your best friend.” Ricky’s attributing the “best friend” label to someone other than himself hurts in a way I couldn’t have expected. “I’m glad he was there for you this last year.”

Well, someone had to bring up the elephant in the lemon groves.

I barter with myself about what to bring up.

How much is too much? We have a lot to talk about, but it feels like we’ve finally started to reconnect, maybe even build something new, and I don’t want anything to rock the boat.

It’s too delicate, so I say the most honest, true, and neutral statement possible: “I wouldn’t have gotten through it without him. ”

Ricky’s jaw pulsates as he looks away, off into the mountains.

“What’s on your mind?” I ask, knowing the thoughtful look on his face, the one he has when he’s writing a new poem and trying to turn a phrase or planning the blueprints of a new woodworking project and working through the schematics.

He lets out a heavy sigh and sips the fiery limoncello like freaking apple juice. I never liked the stuff, so I’m pretending to savor mine. “Nothing.”

“Come on, I know you, Ric.”

“Do you?”

It’s a quick jab, but it hurts like a paper cut you don’t see coming.

“I did, once,” I say softly. “Until you left without saying goodbye. Then I wondered if I ever knew you.”

He takes a step back, the color draining from his face.

He turns from me, but instead of walking away, he takes a beat, a breath, and then starts talking.

“I regretted leaving the second I walked out the door. I thought I was doing us both a favor—it doesn’t matter now.

But I-I regret it every day. When you didn’t take my call, I knew I’d fucked up, but I thought maybe we could .

. . I don’t know. I’m not good at talking about all this stuff. ” His voice is shaking.

“Doing us both a favor? Your call? I never got a call.”

He swiveled on his heels. “Yeah, I called you. Well, not you because you had me blocked. But Matty. Back in January.”

“Uh, nope. You didn’t. I think I would’ve remembered that. What happened? Piece it together because—”

Ricky grinds his teeth. “It was the anniversary of Nonno’s death.

I ended up in the ER after I cut myself in the workshop, and I wanted to talk to you because my head wasn’t right.

I didn’t have anybody to call. I didn’t wanna worry my parents or Sienna with something silly like stitches.

” He holds up his thumb, which I take in my hand.

I run my index finger across a small scar down his pad.

“I still had Matty’s number, so I took a chance, and he was actually with you.

At the mall. He said you were shooting content at some new vegan health bar place. ”

I vaguely remember that day, and Matty never mentioned Ricky calling, but .

. . “Holy balls. He was acting really weird after he got a call from his mom. I kept asking him about it, but he was giving me attitude, so I left him alone. I figured he was pissy because he gets moody for no reason sometimes, especially with Zia Rosa, but what the actual fuck? That was you on the phone?” My legs feel wobbly.

Come to think of it, that morning I got an alert on my phone that it was his nonno’s death anniversary.

I open my mouth to speak again, but nothing comes out.

“You really didn’t know?”

“If I had known, I would have talked to you, no question.” Anger builds in my chest, and I clench my fist. “I’m gonna kill Matty.”

“It’s not worth it.”

“Isn’t it?” Matty knew I spent every waking hour working toward a plan to win Ricky back. That could have been an opportunity to do exactly that.

“Is it?” he asks calmly. “What would it have changed?”

We both chew on that question because the potential answers are too vast for either of us. My mind spins, Avengers: Endgame –style with reverse timeline scenarios of what could have happened if my dumbass cousin had just given me the phone.

Infinite possibilities, sure. But the only one that matters is this one. The real one.

Our eyes meet, and a single tear falls from his.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I hated you for that,” he says.

I hated him, too. For breaking my heart and doing so without warning.

For leaving like a coward. For making me feel like I wasn’t good enough to keep.

But I loved him at the same time. It’s funny, the fragile line between love and hate—it’s not really a line at all.

Hate isn’t the absence of love, nor is it the opposite of love. Hate is love with nowhere to go.

Being with him these last few days has made me remember the real Ricky, the quiet, fun, beautiful boy I fell in love with, not the Ricky who broke my heart and whom I became desperate to prove myself to in the wake of heartbreak.

I spent the last year so hell-bent on my revenge bod and becoming a self-reliant Fielder because at the end Ricky made me feel like I was lost, floundering, and in need of being taken care of by him.

But maybe it wasn’t that I needed to change myself so much as find myself. Maybe it was that Ricky just needed to be cared for, too.

“Can I have a . . . ?” he asks, holding his arms out.

I nod because of course ! My body is screaming for his hugs.

All at once, I’m flooded with a sensation I haven’t felt in so long I nearly cry.

Ricky wraps his strong arms around me, and I burrow my face into the crook of his neck, resting my cheek on his muscly shoulder. He pulls me so close, hugs me so tight, that our bodies fuse together. Cedar, oak, woodchips, Dove, citrus flowers.

And I exhale, expelling every ounce of nervous, frantic sadness that had been building and building and clogging me up.

Relief, safety, home .

If Mount Vesuvius erupted right now and blanketed the entire globe in layers of volcanic ash, it wouldn’t matter because the combined power of the lemon trees and Ricky’s arms would protect us.

Neither of us pull away. It’s the kind of hug where both people are fully content to just be . Here. Now. In a space just for us. For as long as it takes.

He hums, and it reverberates through my chest.

Instinctively, we both loosen our grips at the same time.

Pull away, but only enough to look into each other’s eyes.

The sun overhead peeks out from behind some clouds, and his face is illuminated golden from the lemon tree branches. His eyes are pools of honey. I want to get stuck in them.

“You know what Nonno said to me when I came out to him?” Ricky says, his voice a low, deep whisper. “He told me that when you love someone, say it out loud. Never let”—his breathing is ragged, labored—“those moments . . .” His chest heaves in and out.

Pass you by? I finish for him, recalling how it felt yesterday when we found ourselves in the exact same position, at the exact same lemon farm, except now it’s just us, with nothing stopping us from righting all the wrongs of the past year.

Except, so much time has passed, and it’s hitting me that as much as I want to kiss him and tell him that I love him, if I do, and it ends again, I don’t think I’d survive a second massacre.

If he felt what I’m feeling, the way he changed me and left me to put myself back together without him, he would understand my hesitation.

All I’ve wanted all year is for Ricky to want me again.

But now that he’s here, inches away from me, I’m afraid.

Do I really want him , after the way he hurt me, knowing he could do that to me again?

Knowing that he probably will because when I’m with him, I feel like the Fielder he left alone on the beach.

Uncertain.

I step back, out of his arms.

He stares at me, brows furrowed, head tilting in confusion.

“There you boys are!” Isabella says. “Andiamo! It’s time to finish the pici!”