Olivia grabs an M&M, tossing it up and catching it in her mouth, looking at me thoughtfully while she chews. I can practically see the wheels turning in her head. “Reasonable point. I am making a trio of dipping sauces, so that will kick the whole thing up a notch.”
“As long as one of those dipping sauces is ketchup. If it isn’t, Jeremy will riot.”
She rolls her eyes, propping her chin in her hands. “Your brother is a fucking child.”
Grinning, I slide her now-full coffee mug across the island. “He’s a former professional hockey player. Of course he’s a child.”
The oven timer dings behind me, and Olivia pops up from her seat, coming around the island and grabbing oven mitts before pushing me out of the way with her hip and opening the oven door. “Perfect,” she with a smile, and it’s only then that I register the cinnamon scented air.
“Whatcha got there, Liv?” I ask, peering over her shoulder.
Pulling the baking dish out of the oven, she sets it on the built-in range and turns, tossing the oven mitts on the counter and grinning widely. “Breakfast.”
Wrapping my arms around her waist, I lean in and kiss her because she’s here and so am I, and I can’t stay away from her. “You made me breakfast?”
She kisses me again and breaks away from my hold, opening the refrigerator and pulling out a carton of eggs and all kinds of other things I don’t recognize. “Bet your gorgeous ass. I like to cook when I’m thinking, so I made a French toast casserole situation, and I need you to tell me how you like your eggs. Your kitchen is remarkably well stocked, but god bless grocery delivery because no fucking way was I disgracing my absolutely immaculate breakfast casserole with that pancake syrup travesty you have in your fridge.” She holds up a bottle of pure maple syrup she proceeds to pour into a small saucepan, flicking on a burner and setting it to low. “The good stuff or nothing, pal of mine.”
She’s so cute, all disgruntled over fake maple syrup, her hair wild and her cheeks flushed from the heat of the oven, that my mouth starts making words before my brain engages. “I really like you,” I blurt out, stopping just short of what my brain really wants to say, which is,I love you, because too soon. Way too fucking soon.
She studies me like she’s trying to figure me out. “Because I think you have terrible taste in syrup?”
Laughing, I gather her into me in a hug, laying my cheek on the top of her head. “Definitely that. But also because you make a trio of dipping sauces for mini hot dogs and wake up at the crack of dawn because you’re worried about signature cocktails. You’re freakishly good at catching M&Ms in your mouth, and you make me breakfast just because, and you make this space that has justbeen a house for me for the last five years feel like a home. It feels happy with you here.I’mhappy with you here.”
She presses a kiss to my chest before leaning back. “I’m happy being here too. Is it weird that it feels like we’ve been doing this forever when it’s only been a couple of weeks? Is it too fast to feel this much?”
The idea that her feelings match mine has my heart thudding in my chest, my mind racing forward to everything that lies ahead. To a life together I desperately want. But I force myself to focus on the here and now, bringing a hand up to cup her cheek, running my thumb back and forth over her smooth skin. “I think it doesn’t matter whether it’s two days or two years. When it’s right, time doesn’t mean a thing. And this feels exactly, perfectly right.”
“For me too,” she says quietly. “It feels exactly right for me too. Should we tell Gabe?”
I cringe, internally thinking of having that conversation with my best friend. The one where I tell him I’m head over fucking heels for his sister. That should be fun. “I want what you want, Liv. If you’re ready to tell Gabe, then so am I.”
She bites her lower lip the way she does when she’s lost in thought. I free it with my fingers, gliding my thumb along the indentations from her teeth. “I don’t want to go to Italy without him knowing about us.”
I feel buoyant at the thought that she sees a future for us beyond Italy at the same time as my stomach twists at the reminder of six months apart. “You want that?” I ask carefully. “Us together, after you get back?”
“Of course,” she says easily, a kind of understanding in her eyes that has emotion clogging my throat. “I want us together while I’m there too. Six months is a long time, but it’s not forever, and there are phones in Italy. And video calls. And maybe we can be one of those couples who write handwrittenletters to each other. My brother-in-law Elliot’s great-grandmother had this great love in the early nineteen hundreds who wrote her love letters for years and mailed them to Boston all the way from England. I mean, can you even imagine? I’ve read some of them, and they’re so romantic I could die.”
Smiling, I brush her hair off her forehead, needing to keep my hands on her. To touch her in any way I can. “I think I’d be a really good letter writer.”
“I just bet you would,” she says, smiling softly before it turns wicked. “And I bet you’d kill at phone sex with that filthy mouth of yours. Lucky for us, I have a ring light with a phone stand and an end table full of toys. It’ll be like I’m right here.”
Nothing could possibly be like having her right here, wrapped in my arms, but my dick really loves the idea of ordering her to fuck herself with a toy while I watch. “Baby, I’m so in, as long as you’re sure. This is your time to experience the entire world without anything holding you back. To do absolutely everything you want to do without any reservations. I want you to have everything.”
For a second, Olivia lays her head on my chest, her arms tightening around me. “You couldn’t possibly hold me back, and I already have everything. I have six months at one of the best cooking schools in the world. I get to live in Italy and explore the country and eat amazing food and meet new people and have experiences most people only dream of. And I get to go there knowing that I have you and my family here, waiting for me when I get home. I want both, Bry.”
“Then that’s what I want to give you,” I murmur, kissing the top of her head and memorizing the feeling of her body pressed against mine. “I want to give you everything, and I would wait for you as long as it took.”
Olivia looks up at me, emotion swimming in her eyes. “Then six months doesn’t seem very long at all. Let me get through the gala, and then we’ll tell Gabe before our Very Parker Christmas.”
I smile, thinking of spending Christmas with her at our annual celebration at Ben and Julie’s childhood home. Their parents, Rachel and Steven Parker, are the most amazing people, and over the years, they’ve pretty much adopted our whole friend group into their fold. Since moving to Pittsburgh, Olivia and I have both spent Christmas there for the last couple of years, but the idea of being there together—as a couple everyone knows about—makes my heart feel like it’s going to explode.
“You’ve got yourself a deal. But I have a confession to make.” I smile at her a little sheepishly. “Jeremy kind of already knows about us.”
“Does he now?” she says, one eyebrow raised playfully.
I shrug. “He guessed the night you crashed game night and had me meet you in the bathroom. He’s weirdly intuitive.”
Olivia snorts out a laugh. “I mean, I showed up in your college sweatshirt. No one else in this group went to Penn. I’m actually surprised he’s the only one who figured it out.” Her smile drops, and her face turns serious. “This isn’t a forbidden relationship, Bry, and I’m not hiding anything from anyone. I wouldn’t have cared if Gabe found out that night or if he walks in here right now and sees me half naked in your kitchen. He’s your best friend and my brother, and we both love him, so he deserves to hear it from us the right way, but neither of us is asking his permission. This is happening.”
