Ricky held his phone down low in his lap so he wouldn't get caught with it in class, and his eyes narrowed at the words on the screen. He kept his pen poised over the half-filled page of his notebook just in case his professor glanced his way, and started to key in the words Okay. See you after date nite. But the picture of Gia and Jupiter standing on the sidewalk behind Ricardo's Cafe today gnawed at him.
Jupiter. Stupid name. The guy had his hands all over Gia, and even from where Ricky sat in the parking lot, he didn't mistake the look on the guy’s face as his eyes traveled all over her, too. "Let me tie your apron for you, Barista Boy," Ricky snarled under his breath. “Around your neck.”
The room around him stilled, and he glanced up to see Professor Lenarde making his way down the center aisle of the classroom toward the table where Ricky sat with three other students. He said nothing to Ricky, just held out his hand for the phone, and then picked up his lecture where he'd left off as he made his way back to the front of the classroom. He set the phone on his desk beside one other he'd already collected at the beginning of the hour. Everyone in the class knew Lenarde's strict cell phone rules, so Ricky shouldn't have been angry, but he was. Not at Professor Lenarde, but at Gia.
She was canceling on him. Sure, she said she'd come over after babysitting, but he wouldn't be surprised if she came up with some other excuse to avoid coming over then, too.
Gia had been so distracted by her Roman god that she hadn't noticed Ricky sitting in his truck, even though he'd waved out the window at her when she'd first walked out the back door... followed way too closely by Barista Boy. Who had his hand on her back. And then on her waist. And hips. And—
Every muscle in his body clenched as he remembered how slowly Barista Boy had untangled Gia's apron strings, how his gaze had traveled up and down the length of her as his fingers toyed with the knot at her waist. How he'd smiled—maybe at something she'd said, but maybe just at the thoughts that surely were running through his head as he untangled the strings of her apron as though he was undressing her—and how he'd taken his sweet time re-tying it, his hands resting at her waist so intimately. How his fingers lingered on the curve of her hips before she finally stepped away from him.
He was going to go crazy if he kept thinking about it, about them, but he didn't know how to stop the images from playing on auto-repeat in his head. He didn't even have to close his eyes to see it; Gia and Jupiter might as well be standing in front of the classroom acting out the scene again and again for the whole world to see.
He couldn't sit here another—he patted his pocket for his phone to check the time before he remembered it had just been confiscated. It occurred to him that if he wanted his phone back, he was stuck there for however many more minutes the class lasted. He groaned out loud.
"Mr. Zander. Do you have a problem with my lecture? My teaching style? Perhaps I'm not entertaining enough to hold your interest?" The professor's words intruded on his misery and Ricky straightened quickly, bumping his notebook with his elbow and sending it scooting off the end of the table. He lunged for it, knocking his chair backward into the table behind him, making the girl sitting there shriek in surprise. He caught the notebook by a page, but it tore free and fell to the floor anyway, the torn sheet still clutched in his hand. Ricky straightened slowly, and instead of answering the teacher's sarcastic questions, he simply gathered up his textbook and pen, shoved them into his shoulder bag, then turned and apologized to Amanda, the girl he'd startled. He snatched up his notebook off the floor and then headed to the front of the classroom.
"I apologize for disrupting your class, Professor Lenarde," he said in a low voice as he approached the teacher. "I need to excuse myself for the rest of the day." And without waiting for a response, he veered toward the teacher's desk, snatched up his phone, and left the room.
Fifteen minutes later, Ricky sat slouched behind the wheel of his truck at the back of the employee lot where he could see Gia's blue Prius. Why he was there, he didn't want to admit even to himself, but he'd convinced himself that she might have actually blown him off so she could spend the evening with Barista Boy. She wouldn't do that to me, he kept trying to assure himself. She's not like that. And yet, only an hour ago, he'd sat in this same parking lot and watched her behave in a way he'd never seen her act with a guy. To add insult to injury, it wasn't just another guy, either. This guy was an Italian god—apparently—whom she'd supposedly just met that morning.
But another thought kept pushing through his head. Do what to you, Rick? Cheat on you?
And therein lay the crux of the matter. As her best friend, he may have the right to give his opinion about a guy she was interested in, but he had no claim on her love life. Or at least, he'd never asserted any such claim, even though his heart insisted he had.
He'd pretty much fallen for Gia—literally—the moment he laid eyes on her a week after his family had moved to Midtown when he was twelve. School had just let out, and because he was a new kid in sixth grade in a small town, he was still trying to figure out how to make friends since most of the other kids had been in the same class together all through elementary school. Gia, tall and stick-thin, her pale skin freckled, her long red hair in a wild ponytail on top of her head, had sauntered by with a group of girls just as he'd mounted his bike. Like a scene out of the movies, she'd turned to look at him, and everything in his world had gone slow-motion. Her curls fluttering across her face, her hand reaching up to push them away, those mermaid eyes, big and blue-green and wide and friendly and aware and curious and interested—interested—in him... and his foot slipped off the pedal, his backpack flopped to one side, throwing him even more off balance, and he went down, bringing his bike over on top of him.
Only his pride had been really hurt. He'd sustained an ugly elbow abrasion, but that kind of surface injury was nothing new to him. He'd taken his share of tumbles from his bike and skateboard over the years, had shredded a few shins and knuckles, broken some bones, even gave himself a concussion after a particularly nasty ramp trick gone wrong. But as the volley of giggles erupted around him, never before had he so desperately wanted the earth to open up and swallow him whole.
And then she was there, leaning over and lifting his bike off him. A moment later, she crouched beside him, and he didn't know where to look. She wore a short ruffled skirt—didn't girls know you couldn't squat in a skirt in front of a guy?
"You okay?" she asked, and her voice, although light and laced with a hint of humor, wasn't mocking in any way. He nodded, too embarrassed to meet her gaze, and instead, tried in vain to keep his eyes glued to her red Chuck Taylor All-Stars. But he was a twelve-year-old boy, after all, and try as he might, he couldn't help himself. His eyes drifted up her black and white striped long socks, over her knobby knees—one bearing a mottled bruise that looked a few days old—to the pale skin of her inner thighs... and right up her skirt.
He let out his breath in exquisite relief—okay, only slightly tinged with disappointment—at the sight of the black bicycle shorts she wore beneath the purple ruffles. He was already blushing furiously from his fall, so at least he didn't get any redder when she said, "Well, you're obviously not too badly hurt since you just looked up my skirt." She'd thrust out a hand, pulled him none too gently to his feet, and then said, "I'm Gia. You're new, aren't you? Wanna walk with us since riding a bike isn't working out so well for you?"
Within moments, he'd been absorbed into Gia's group of friends—mostly girls, to his wounded ego's delight—and they'd been inseparable since. They lived only a few blocks apart from each other, rode bikes and skateboarded together, watched movies and did homework together. Pretty much anything they could do together, they did.
Except dating. They'd never done that together. In fact, as far as he knew, Gia hadn't really dated anyone throughout junior high or high school. Oh, she'd giggled with her friends about their hot classmates, about the trending movie stars, musicians, and athletes whose posters they'd taped to their walls, but she was driven to do well in school, and she'd seemed content to just hang with her circle of friends and their boyfriends as they came and went.
To hang with him. They were a team. Ricky and Gia. Rickaroni and Georgy Girl. They shared the same loathing of their real names—Fredrick and Georgia—but once their friends discovered the miraculous coincidence, they also became Fred and George in honor of the beloved and inseparable twins from the Harry Potter empire, throughout the rest of middle school. In high school, once they commandeered their licenses, they were the TDD—Team Designated Drivers—at extracurricular events. They even had business cards made up and distributed throughout the school. They were the co-hosts of many a high school party themselves, and they often co-officiated school activities because they were popular and unassuming and people just liked them. They even went to their senior prom together, although Shelby Evans had actually invited him after she bought tickets. Shelby had settled for going with one of Ricky's friends who'd been ever so grateful to go on the arm of one of the hottest girls in school. Ricky had also heard rumors that Gia had received at least two invitations, but she'd said yes to him, explaining that he was her best friend and she couldn't think of anyone else she'd want to share the memories of her senior prom with more than him. At Gia's insistence, they'd wrestled their way through a series of dance tutorials so they'd look good on the dance floor, because she refused to do the default high school shuffle. Although they'd laughed through much of the process, by the time prom rolled around, they'd found a rhythm they could work with and made quite an impression on their peers.
He'd wanted to kiss her that night. Not that he hadn't wanted to kiss her a thousand times before that night. But dancing with her in his arms beneath the glittering twinkle lights overhead, he'd felt like a prince with his princess. She was make-his-knees-weak gorgeous in an ice-blue dress that draped her body like it had been tailor-made for her, her long hair swept up and away from her face in a cascade of curls that fell from a fancy set of clips at the back of her head. He'd almost been afraid to touch her, not because she looked fragile or out of reach, but because he was so sure that when he did, the floodgates would open and spill out all that he felt for her... and everything would change between them.
Eventually, he knew he'd have to tell her. Eventually, his heart wouldn't be able to go on without her knowing his feelings, without him knowing if she felt anything in return. But he'd been afraid. Afraid of the possibility that his confession would ruin their last year of high school. Afraid she'd withdraw from him, afraid to see the pity in her eyes.
So he chickened out. He told her she was beautiful and then traded dance partners with his friend so that he could regroup, even though he regretted it the instant he saw the flash of hope in Shelby's eyes. Instead, he decided, beyond relieved when he held the laughing Gia in his arms again, he'd tell her right after graduation, maybe on a special summer night. The 4th of July right before the fireworks?
But that summer, Gia had focused a lot of her time and energy on her family, on her new job at Ricardo’s, and the time never seemed right. Before he’d had a chance to come up with a new plan, a new year had begun. When John Dixon had his fatal fall, once again, everything was put on hold as the Gustafson family rallied around Renata and her kids. In the wake of her first husband's death, she’d needed all the support she could get from her sisters, especially when circumstances led to a wedding for Ren and Tim Larsen that same fall.
Every time he made plans to talk to Gia, it seemed that something came up to deter him. At Christmas, he bought her a special necklace to commemorate... but because it had been the first Christmas without John, coupled with bringing Tim and baby Charise into the mix, and of course, along with the addition of Vic and Trevor all joining in the festivities, well, things had been so different. Ricky knew Gia so well, and he could see how affected she was by the many changes going on around her. He watched her studying her sisters, learning by observation how to cope with life and all its ups and downs.
And now that Phoebe and Trevor were together? Well, even though Gia and Ricky were both thrilled to see people they loved so much find each other, it did put a different spin on things between them. If—no, when—Trevor married Phoebe, Gia would be family by marriage. He knew it shouldn't matter, but it still sounded and felt a little weird, the idea of dating someone who would kinda be his cousin.
But last weekend, during Juliette and Vic's wedding, he'd been so sure he'd seen something in Gia's eyes that told him the time was right—she'd sniffed him and sighed like a girl in love, he was sure of it—and he'd made up his mind to surprise her at work with flowers and an invitation to dinner. His folks were out of town on one of their week-long retreats, so it would be the perfect opportunity to have some one on one time with Gia. He'd cook Gia's favorite meal of spaghetti with huge meatballs, serve soft garlic bread sticks from Mona's Bakery along with an assortment of Mona's pastries, too, of course. Then they'd top the evening off with a movie of her choice, even if it meant he had to watch Across the Universe or Moulin Rouge for the thousandth time. Even he had to admit, Ewan MacGregor had the best man-cry performance he'd ever seen in a movie.
But now? For all he knew, Gia was having spaghetti and meatballs made by a legit Italian guy who probably made his own garlic bread sticks and pastries from scratch, and loved musicals, too. And how old was he? Thirty? He had the look of a guy who'd been around the block a few times, and Ricky was not thrilled at the idea of Barista Boy offering to take his Georgy Girl for a spin....
Except that she wasn't really his girl, was she? Because like a coward, he'd waited. And waited. For the perfect time, the perfect place, the perfect circumstances. Any fool could tell you there was no such thing as a perfect moment showing up on its own. Moments became perfect because of what one did with the ones he got. And he, Fredrick Thomas Zander, had wasted almost a decade of potentially perfect moments with Georgia Amity Gustafson by not telling her how he felt about her.
So here he sat, waiting for her outside her work again, hoping against hope that she wasn't just blowing him off—even though he probably deserved it after his little chest-pounding incident—and would give him just a few minutes of her time. He glanced over his shoulder into the back seat where the bouquet of flowers lay wilting and wasted because he'd acted like an idiot. Why hadn't he just taken the flowers with him instead of launching himself out of the car in a state of jealous panic?
Well, he'd go to her empty-handed today and make up for it on Friday night when she came for dinner.
Because surely, she'd say yes to him. Wouldn't she?