The Men Next Door

Ch 32 - Luca

"One day at a time."

That's what Addy always told me when I tried to figure out what the hell we were doing.

That part wasn't the issue. I'd gladly take her one day at a time. But every night that we fell back into bed, my brakes got a little more worn down. Then on New Year's, my steering wheel locked up, pedal to the metal. And sometime around the end of January, when Brooks and Bella were out of town and we had no worries about bumping into them at my place, my emergency brake snapped clean off the center console.

I'd lost control.

I was catching feelings.

And there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of slowing down.

No matter how much I tried to talk myself out of it, I knew that I wanted more. More than just sex. More than a flirtatious friendship. More than a girl who was hung up on another guy. I'd already been there and done that one too many times in the past year, and I wasn't looking to repeat history.

So naturally, I put Addy in the hot seat the next time I saw her.

"What are we doing, Ads?"

She swallowed a bite of the pizza we'd ordered in. "Um, eating dinner?"

"No shit, Sherlock. But what are we really doing? The two of us?"

Suddenly, the back of the pizza box was the most intriguing thing she'd ever seen. "We've talked about this."

"That's bullshit," I said, spinning her barstool around so she'd look at me instead of the bright red cartoon man on the cardboard. "And you know it."

"We have talked about it," she maintained. "I might not've told you what you wanted to hear, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen."

"We've said like, 10 words about it. Every damn time I try to bring it up. That's not a conversation."

"I don't know what answer you're looking for, Luca."

"Any answer. A real one. Are we just going to keep 'hanging out' five nights a week and pretending it's not a booty call? Where's this going?"

"Why does it have to be going anywhere?" she sighed. "Can't we just enjoy the ride?"

I smirked. "You certainly enjoy the ride."

Addy rolled her eyes and threw a napkin at me. I kicked it to the side when it hit the floor. "And so do you. So why fix it if it isn't broken?"

"Because I want more, Addy. Eventually. I want someone to come home to. Someone who will laugh at my good jokes and call me a dickhead when I make a bad one. I don't want to get stuck in this cycle of hooking up and playing fucking fairytale make-believe in my head every morning-after."

She put a hand on my chest to push me back as she stood from the stool. "The day after we hooked up for the first time, I texted you. Said we shouldn't do it again because it was too soon for either of us to get wrapped up in anything serious. And you responded that distractions don't have to be serious. 'No pressure, nothing serious, no strings attached.' I've reread those messages a million times when I start to feel like I might be leading you on."

"That was true when I said it," I told her, watching her hips sway as she walked to the window to gaze at nothing in particular. The neighbor's brick wall wasn't exactly a sight to behold. "But you're not a 'distraction' to me. Not now. Not anymore."

"Then what am I, Luca?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," I said, creeping a few steps closer. Every movement made me feel like a hungry fox trying not to scare off a skittish rabbit. "What do you want to be?"