Reckless Girls(8)

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GOLDEN BOY LOOKS UP WHEN she approaches his table, and his smile slices through everything.

It seems stupid, to feel so happy just because a cute guy is smiling at her, but Lux has learned to take these unexpected moments of joy where she can find them.

“Did my waitress tell you I asked about you?” he asks, ducking his head, grinning a little sheepishly. His eyes are a warm brown, his hair longish and curling around his earlobes, and it shouldn’t be so charming, this human golden retriever thing he’s got going on, but it is.

It really, really is.

“Maybe,” she says with a little shrug, and he winces, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.

“Great. So there goes any chance of you thinking I’m actually cool, right?”

“Oh yeah, right out the window.”

His smile deepens, and Lux sees that he has dimples because of course he does.

“Well, shit,” he says with a sigh. “See, I was gonna do this whole thing of chatting with you, asking interesting but not invasive questions—”

“Naturally,” Lux replies, her cheeks hurting with how hard she’s trying not to burst into a giddy grin.

“And then,” he goes on, “at the very end of the meal, I was going to very smoothly ask for your number. But since that’s blown to fuck now, I’m just gonna skip to the end and tell you I think you’re gorgeous, and I’d really love to take you out sometime.”

Lux’s heart is beating hard, and her stomach is basically a butterfly garden at this point. Still, she’s having too much fun to give in quite so easily. “You don’t even know my name,” she reminds him, and he points at her name tag.

“I do now. Lux. Which actually makes how uncool I’m being even harder, because goddamn, that is a very cool name. I knew you were out of my league.”

He leans back in his chair, and Lux notices the way his T-shirt stretches across his broad chest.

“I’m Nico,” he says, and she puts a hand on one hip.

“That’s also a cool name.”

“It’s a nickname for Nicholas.”

Lux screws up her face, pretending to think. “You know, that does lose you some cool points, but on the whole, still a good name. I’ll allow it.”

He laughs then, laughs like a kid, throwing his head back. “I take it back,” he says. “Don’t give me your number. Marry me.”

“Let me see how well you tip first.”

When was the last time she flirted with a guy? When was the last time she felt like the Lux she’d been before, the one who always had a quip on her lips, the quickest and sharpest of all her friends?

Years.

Years and years. But here she is, doing it so easily with this guy.

She’ll eventually work out that this is Nico’s superpower, making people instantly feel like the best, most comfortable versions of themselves. But right now, standing by his table on a Thursday night, she doesn’t know that, doesn’t understand that the light turned so brightly on her shines on everyone he meets.

Gesturing at the notebook still lying open on the table, Lux asks, “What are you writing?”

The light is soft in this little back corner, but she still sees him blush a little, and it might be then that she falls in love with him.

He turns the notebook to her so that she can see the page. There’s a list of food that doesn’t sound very appetizing—she sees Spam listed in all caps—as well as a series of numbers, a crudely drawn map.

“I sail,” he explains. “Got a twenty-five footer I’ve been working on. Planning to take her to Hawaii as soon as I can, so.” He sweeps a hand over the page. “Logistics, basically.”

Lux doesn’t know much about boats other than that she likes looking at them. She may have grown up in California, but she has Midwestern roots. Her parents were both born in Nebraska, and her dad still lives there, with his new wife, and his new kids.

It had been Lux’s mom’s idea to come to San Diego after the divorce, wanting a fresh start, a place that was all theirs. And that had been great until she’d gotten sick Lux’s sophomore year of college. Pancreatic cancer, sudden and devastating, nowhere and then everywhere. Her mom had fought hard, though. They’d given her six months, and she’d lasted three years, but every one of those years had been a struggle, so much that when she’d finally died, Lux had felt a guilty surge of relief.

It’s over now, she’d thought. At least it’s finally over.

It had been, but it had left Lux with a strange three-year gap in her life. The last time things had been normal, she’d been twenty, going to UCSD, leading a fairly typical life—classes, parties, the occasional hookup.

Then the phone call. Her mom’s voice shaky on the other end. Her whole life upended overnight.

The three years between that phone call and the night Lux packed up her things and left the rental house she couldn’t afford anymore had been a blur, and she emerged from them to find she hadn’t managed to hold onto even the smallest part of her life before. Friends had gotten tired of never-returned texts and phone calls, they’d never had any family in California, and her dad … well, she’d blown any chance of them actually having a relationship right the fuck up.