The Men Next Door

Ch 5 - Campbell

Luca glanced at me suspiciously as we walked along the pavement beside old, overgrown railroad tracks. I'd been quiet the whole way over, and while Brooks had seemingly caught on to my solemn mood, my other neighbor clearly didn't know what to make of it. Either that, or he was silently debating grabbing my hand every time our arms brushed—which was often, because the crowded path felt more like a Trader Joe's freezer aisle than a park on a Saturday afternoon.

Brooks was on my other side, confidently parting the sea of oncoming pedestrians, when he abruptly turned and asked how New York had been treating me. It was like a light bulb had just flared to life inside of his brain, and I tilted my head at him curiously, accidentally floating into Luca's elbow in the process.

"I should've asked before now," Brooks explained. "It's probably been a huge adjustment from Gainesville, yeah?"

I arched a brow at him, correcting my footing on the path. Luca steadied me with a hand on my back, then removed it just as quickly.

"Have you been researching UF, or do you just know your Florida geography?"

Brooks gave me a sheepish smile in return. "I was curious when you mentioned you went to grad school there. Habit from working with my clients, I guess. I like to understand where people come from."

"It is a big adjustment, but I'm settling in okay. Better than I could have hoped, really. It was a good choice coming here."

"Even with the shared hallway?" Luca joked.

I could feel Brooks' puzzled gaze before I saw it. "What about the shared hallway?"

"I scared the hell out of her when I was leaving," Luca said. "She's not used to having interior doors and giants for neighbors and stuff."

"Startled," I corrected, choosing to ignore his gloating. Because it was true—I was five-foot-seven, probably pushing five-foot-nine in those boots, and Luca still towered over me. Brooks did too, even if Luca was a little more broad from all his time in the gym. "I wasn't scared."

"Don't even try to deny it," Luca teased, laughing. "You were scared. You jumped ten feet in the air like that cat seeing a cucumber."

I laughed along with him despite myself. "I wouldn't have sent you that video if I knew you'd use it against me."

But I did send it, because I saw it on social media after work one day and somehow knew that he would love it, even though I barely knew him. And when I typed 'Luca Marino' into the search bar, there he was, smiling at me from inside a little circle on the screen. I was pressing the follow button before I could even think about it, then grinning like an idiot when he liked the contextless message an hour later.

"This is a very mild payback for kidnapping me in a moving truck, Bella. You should be thanking me for my graciousness."

The grief hit me full force then. I couldn't hold it back anymore—not when that was the same type of joke my dad would've made, with the same loving nickname attached. So even though I tried to laugh, it came out more like a sob with a few tears attached.

"Shit," Luca said. "What did I say? You okay?"

I shook my head, wiping away the errant moisture. "No, nothing. It's not you. Just one of those days, remember?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you did say that."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Brooks asked.

"It's a long story," I warned him, even though it wasn't really. My dad died in a tragic car accident. How hard was that? I didn't have to make it as complicated as I tended to, but leaving out the rest felt like a betrayal to my younger self. The version of me who had grappled with guilt for years on end, who still got caught up in the what-ifs now. I wanted to honor the truth of it—of what I'd overcome.