AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Raphael choked for a second. “He stopped you?”
“I was booking a ticket.” Luca leaned forward and shifted his feet in the rapidly cooling water. “I was sitting on a park bench like some pathetic kicked puppy, getting ready to confirm my purchase, and he shows up with a bottle of water and a goddamn cupcake. And somehow, he talks me into going to a farm tomorrow.”
Raphael stared at him a long time, and for a moment, Luca thought he was going to laugh, but the sound never came. Instead, he reached in the bowl, pulled the drain, then set Luca’s feet on a fresh towel before he started to pat them dry.
“Did I say something wrong?” Again, he added to himself.
Raphael looked up with soft eyes and shook his head. “No. I like Wilder.”
“Oh.” Luca sat back and tried to shift away from Raphael, who grabbed him by the ankles. “It wasn’t like that. He definitely wasn’t interested.”
Raphael’s eyes softened along with his smile, and he shook his head. “That’s not a surprise. The man has lived here for three years, and he’s never so much as looked at anyone that way. But that’s not what I meant.”
Luca sagged with relief, but he wasn’t really in a place to explore that feeling any deeper.
“I just mean he’s a good person.”
“That seems to be going around,” Luca said, and there was a touch of bitterness in his tone that made Raphael look directly at him. “That’s not my life, you know? That’s not where I came from.”
With a sigh, Raphael finished drying Luca’s feet, then pushed back and reached for his crutches to stand. “See that room right there,” he lifted his crutch and jabbed it toward a door at the far end of the room. “That’s the lounge. Go sit down, and I’ll bring something to drink.”
“Like alcohol?”
Raphael chuckled. “Do you want alcohol?”
The truth was, yes. He did. He wanted to lubricate his awkward sober social skills with expensive gin, but that was what he was trying to escape. “Something else,” he said, then slipped his feet back into his Birkenstocks and shuffled away.
He felt a little boneless and fatigued, but in the way a good massage had always done for him. It felt odd to not have any obligations in this moment—to shed his usual desire to impress someone long enough to want to stick around. The urge was still there, but he’d already humiliated himself beyond reason in front of this man, and Raphael still wanted to be his friend.
He knew he would drive himself up the damn wall if he continued to worry about it, so instead, he pushed through the door and found a quaint little sitting area with a sofa, love seat, coffee table, and a mounted TV. There was an essential oil diffuser in the corner that was turned off but still smelled faintly of rose, and the soft, yellow lights at the top of the ceiling were more soothing than the harsh fluorescents in the main shop.
He eased himself down into the soft leather, and he felt the cushion form around him gently. It was oddly decadent, and he wasn’t expecting it, but he decided to indulge in that moment as his eyes closed and the rest of his body relaxed. He barely heard when Raphael moved back into the room, the clink of his crutches and the soft shuffling noise of his feet.
The sofa moved gently when Raphael sat, and Luca opened his hand but not his eyes when something humid and cool touched the back of his wrist. “You can’t sleep here tonight. Your rent fee doesn’t cover the salon.”
Luca snorted, then finally looked at the bottle in his hand—something pale and fizzy with Turkish letters he recognized only from his month-long excursion to Istanbul when was attempting to procure art for his global display. He cracked the top and took a sip, and was startled by the sharp, subtle pear flavor. “This is good.”
“It better be. One of my friends ships it to me,” Raphael said. “It’s expensive.”
Luca squirmed. He wasn’t used to being the man people lavished with gifts—even something as small as this. He was never the person in that position to be pitied for his circumstance, and it was becoming a small, festering wound in his belly.
“Can you go upstairs at all?” Luca asked after a beat.
Raphael raised an eyebrow. “I’m not going to have sex with you.”
Choking on the swallow he’d just taken, Luca swiped his hand over his mouth in an attempt to regain some dignity. “I’m not hitting on you.”
“Not your type?” There was a slight edge to his voice that made Luca’s defenses rise.
“I… Are you trying to pick a fight?”
“I just don’t get you.” Raphael leaned forward and put his drink down. “You’re rich and gorgeous, you show up here saying you want to find love…”
“Wait, you want me to fall in love with you?” Luca felt rising panic until Raphael rolled his eyes.
“No,” he said plainly, then he laughed. “I don’t want you to fall in love with me.”
“Good, because I don’t plan to. And you’re completely wrong about me. That isn’t why I’m here.”
