Tessa and I both start talking at the same time.
“Oh, I don’t think?—”
“She wouldn’t want?—”
“Please? Youhaveto come for dinner,” Micheletto chimes in, directing his puppy-dog eyes toward Tessa, who hasn’t built up a tolerance for his charm yet. “I can show you my trading cards. I’ll besohappy if you come over.”
An expert emotional manipulator.
I watch Tessa’s internal struggle in real time as she weighs disappointing Micheletto against spending additional time with me.
“Well…”
“Perfect!” Lu interrupts. “All my recipes have meat, but if you’re vegetarian you can eat around it.”
Tessa absentmindedly nods, mumbling a distant, “It was, um, nice to meet you. I’ll leave you three to eat. Thanks for inviting me to your home.” She heads toward the front door, then pauses and turns around. “Giovanni. I’ll come earlier tomorrow to make up for the time missed today.” With that, she walks out of the shop, the bell clanging behind her.
I study the nail holes in the wall from all the times I’ve moved the bell. Her damn heel heights are constantly changing, which makes placement tricky. My shop was converted from an old ground-level apartment, and the door frame is already unusually small. Right now, the bell is at the highest it can go while still chiming when someone walks through the door. It almost got her though… might have to take another look tomorrow.
“Tessa’s really pretty. And she told me she loves Pokémon,” Micheletto gushes, his cheeks bright pink.
I huff. “Well, you’re too young for her.”
Lu’s mouth tilts up in a knowing grin. “I thought she was too young foryou.”
“Whatever. Either way, we hugged. I got a hug and you didn’t,” Micheletto brags.
“I don’t even want a hug from her!” I run a hand through my hair, tugging on the ends.
He grins, excitedly bouncing on his toes. “She smelled like cotton candy and rainbows.”
“It’s actually pears and—you know what?Yousmell like betrayal,” I mutter.
“She wants to trade cards with me. And,” he adds, puffing out his chest, “I haveLeafeon. That’s an evolution of Eevee, her favorite. I think I’ll give it to her as a present… She’ll love it.”
“Stop talking about giving her gifts!”
Lu cuts in with a huge smirk on her face. “Why? Are you jealous he has something to offer and all you have is a bad attitude and graying sideburns?”
“Your shift is over. Take your spawn with you and get out of my shop.”
She completely ignores my order and saunters right past me to my office, humming an Italian love song.
Chapter 5
Tessa
Even the model looks amused as I fill the girls in on the details of my last breakup. Giggling behind her lens, Esme takes a test picture of Peyton instead of the women’s suit she’s supposed to be shooting.
I pretend to be offended, mock outrage on my face. “Don’t laugh! He let the microwave beep like a psychopath instead of turning it off with three seconds left, so obviously I couldn’t trust him.”
Peyton gasps. “He let itbeep? Out loud? Echoing through the kitchen with no regard for your eardrums? That chills me to my core, Tessa. You should’ve started with that, instead of him wanting a girlfriend who better ‘fits in with his five year plan.’ No wonder you broke up.”
“Well, now that a few months have passed, I’ve realized it was only a matter of time. The whole microwave thing would’ve come into play sooner or later.” I match her playful grin with one of my own, taking a sip of the mediocre caramel latte I bought from the coffee cart earlier. The sweet flavor dulls slightly whenI think about yet another failed relationship where I wasn’t enough.
I swallow hard, pushing down the truth in favor of a comfortable deflection. “Anyways, I told him only one of us gets to be irrational in the relationship, and it’s always going to be me. We never would’ve worked.”
Esme adjusts the camera strap around her neck and tells the model to take five. “Well, maybe you can have an Italian fling. One week left!”
