Page 25 of Snow Place Like LA
“I promise nothing,” I said regally.
Angel looked like he expected no less. “Okay, here it goes,” he said and jammed his fingers into his loose, messy curls and closed his eyes. The words came out in a rush. “I just got a job offer from my dream studio last week, and it’s based in Milan, and they’re paying me so much money—I mean, not like ‘buy a boat’ money, but more money than either of us have ever made—and I’ll be able to get an apartment and pay to live like an adult and I’ve been trying to find the right way to tell you because of how I left last time and I want this to be different but also it’s exactly where I want to be and exactly what I want to be doing and they want me there in a month, the end.”
He didn’t move after he finished, as if braced for something bad, but I threw my arms around him, half-clambering into his lap and kissing the backs of his hands until he dropped them from his head and allowed me to kiss his mouth.
“Congratulations, congratulations, my genius Angel, I knew you’d wind up somewhere amazing,” I squealed, peppering his face with kisses. “I’m so happy for you!” It was true even if the words stung just a touch.
His arms circled me and it was inside his embrace that the full weight of his revelation sunk in.
I wasn’t upset that he hadn’t told me until now—actually, I was glad he’d told me with still a month left to go. But that meant that in a month, I wouldn’t be able to kiss him or sit in his lap. In a month, I wouldn’t feel his arms around me, or smell the lingering Mr. Bubble on his skin, or get to hear the shivery way his voice got low and bossy when he was in the mood.
I wouldn’t have him, and I would have wasted this entire summer being mad at him instead of pouncing on him the minute he got back from Paris, and there was nothing I could do about it. I wouldn’t ever ask him not to follow his passion, to stay in this town just because I was trapped here too—but already the feeling of missing him was unbearable. I pressed my face into the side of his so he couldn’t look at me.
He seemed to feel the change in me immediately. “Luca,” he said, trying to turn his head to look at me and then laughing a little when I wouldn’t let him. “Luca! Listen for a minute! I want you to comewithme.”
There was a silence that spanned everything—our breaths, our heartbeats, the world outside. I pulled in a shaking inhale as I leaned back enough to look at him.
“What?”
His eyes were bright, and even through his glasses, I could see them so closely, so clearly. Copper near the pupils, with crypts and threads of dark brown, a hue and texture I’d never be able to match even with the most expensive silks or damasks or vicuña wools.
“I mean it,” he said earnestly. “I want you to come with me. Live with me. You wouldn’t really be a kept man, because you could do your internship at Prada, but you wouldn’t have to worry about paying for anything, because I could take care of it all.”
I was just staring now, no idea what to say.
“We could be together, both of us following our dreams,” Angel said excitedly. “This is perfect. Say you’ll come with me, babe. Please.”
There was something unpleasant hooked into my guts now, behind my chest. Inside my bones, making them ache and hum. I couldn’t—I wouldn’t even know where to begin—
“I can’t afford it,” I said, and Angel laughed.
“Did you not hear what I just said? I can pay for us to live over there! And we can figure out plane tickets. My mom has so many miles, it’s not even funny.”
“But Uncle Ray-Ray’s,” I said. My voice sounded hollow and numb—Ifelthollow and numb. “I can’t leave them without a costume designer.”
“They’ll be just fine,” said Angel. “They’ll find another Luca.”
“But my apartment, I can’t let my lease lapse—Carol will rent this place out in a heartbeat! Do you know how hard it is to find a full kitchenanda place with washer and dryer hookups for this price?”
“Well, ideally,” Angel said softly, “we’d still be living together, wherever we were.”
The softness in his voice should have been a warning, but I was too far gone to heed it. “And I can’t just leave my entire life and all my friends—”
“I don’t think it’sjust leavingwhen you’re going to follow a dream. And to be with someone you love,” Angel said. “Or was that wholemy heart is backstitched toyoursthingjust a slick thing to say to the naked man in your bathtub?”
That was when I realized his arms weren’t around me anymore.
“Angel,” I said, but I didn’t know what else to say. Because obviously, I couldn’t move to Milan with him! Obviously I couldn’t just go scratch at Prada’s door and hope they’d still take me! That wasn’t how life worked! You didn’t just get to have a sexy Italian sojourn with the hot guy you were in love with!
And—and—what if it wasn’t really me? What if I got to Milan and I wasn’t as sophisticated or worldly as I’d always thought? What if I got to Prada and I was actually terrible at designing wedding dresses or making espresso or delivering parcels?
What if Angel and I moved in together and then everything fell apart?
No. No, it was better not to push, not to seek. Better to let something—a dream, a relationship, a version of yourself—die quickly than watch it slowly fail.
“I think you should get off my lap now,” said Angel after I still hadn’t spoken. “I need to get ready for work.”
“Angel,” I said again, pointlessly, as I slid off his lap. He threw the sheet off him and then stood up, showing off his perfectly molded ass and the delicious stretch of his back. A stretch that was visibly tense. He strode to the footboard of the bed, grabbed his briefs and yanked them on with short, jerky movements.
