I hastily leave the elevator holding Luca. Sofia is waiting for me in the hallway.
The elevator doors slam shut, then the elevator whooshes upward to the no doubt better, child-free floor.
“It’s going to be okay,” Sofia whispers.
“You don’t know that.” I look around the hallway. The carpet is white and fancy, and I wonder how quickly Luca could ruin it and just how angry the people here would be.
I want to go back to the before times, when Gaby was here and telling me about the wonderful future she had planned with Luca.
All of this is wrong.
I’m not supposed to be about to knock on Axel’s door.
I look for Axel’s door: 1508. The last thing any of these uppity Bostonians want is to have somebody ring their doorbell by mistake.
The door opens. “Enzo?”
Axel is barefoot, wearing gray sweatpants and a T-shirt that’s seen better days, and his hair is damp like he just showered.Water droplets cling to his collarbone.I tear my gaze away from his muscular chest. I feel Sofia’s gaze on me and focus on Luca. The hallway is too hot.
Luca doesn’t stop crying.
“This isn’t how you make a good first impression,” I tell him.
“He doesn’t need to make a good first impression.” Axel grins at Luca. “Welcome, Luca! This is your new home!”
His voice is bright and shiny, and I glance at Sofia.
She’s looking at him with awe, which so doesn’t help.
“You don’t have any other things?” Axel asks me.
“I-I wasn’t sure how this would work out,” I confess.
“He left some things at the hotel, and most things are in LA,” Sofia says.
Axel notices her for the first time. He raises his chin. “Sofia.”
“Axel.”
The air is icy between them.Huh.
Axel ushers Sofia and me into the apartment before him, his demeanor frigid.
The apartment is bachelor pad glam with black everything. This is nothing like Gaby’s pastel-painted wall cottage.
“Nice view,” Sofia says. Boston Harbor stretches out below us, the water glittering with reflected city lights.
“Uh, yeah.” Axel rakes a hand through his hair. It’s trembling slightly, which it never does. I know. I play hockey with him. He turns to me. “It’s better than the view we had freshman year. Remember how it faced onto a brick building. On the second floor?”
“Yeah.” I don’t like being reminded of how Axel and I used to live together. It makes all the new tension between us feel extra unwelcome and strange, like someone has thrown a prickly blanket over us.
Luca is still screaming. His face turns red.
Axel crouches on the ground. “I’ve got you, Luca.” He turns to me. “Ever thought we would be sharing genes, Enzo?”
I shake my head quickly. My heart does something complicated—a lutz or flip, like the figure skaters who sometimes used the ice in LA.
Axel is still the guy who got Gaby pregnant. Was he not careful enough about using a condom correctly? Was he carrying expired ones around?
