Page 57 of The Getaway List
“Not Brownie Bonanza?” Luca asks, the pitch of his voice unexpectedly high.
“Yeah. That’s the one. You get to make your own brownies on the premises, right? With all those different secret-recipe brownie batters and fillings?”
“Right,” says Luca, who is suddenly very interested in looking at the holographic ocean on the cover of his new Tides of Time book.
“Well, you know Tom has a thing about desserts that are actually ten different desserts at once, so that place is kind of his white whale. He really wanted to go when it blew up, must have been—”
“Around Christmas,” Luca supplies.
“Yeah,” I say, recalling all the very delicious-looking TikToks and “I went to Brownie Bonanza” foodie-influencer articles that went viral a few months ago. I was grateful for them at the time because they gave me an excuse to bombard Tom with links, some of which he’d actually responded to. “The reservations were basically impossible to get.”
In fact, that’s why it got added to the Getaway List in the first place—once it was clear that supply was absurdly smaller than demand, we agreed we’d just go together the next time I was in the city, when the hype calmed down. Besides, someone needed to make sure Tom didn’t dive headfirst into all the toppings and frosting options and refuse to leave the premises. It would have made for a very strange mark on his arrest record.
“Yeah. The place is, uh—pretty popular,” says Luca.
I wince, wondering if I’ve already blown it for this summer. “I should have booked something earlier, I just meant to look into it first because of Mariella’s peanut allergy.”
“Oh, it’ll be fine. It’s a peanut-free facility.”
Luca sounds strangely distant, enough that I stop a good block from the ice-cream place and tilt my head at him.
“Do you not like brownies or something?” I ask.
Luca lets out a breathy laugh. “I’m not a sweets fan, really,” he says. “But, uh—we won’t have an issue getting in.”
“How come?”
“I know a guy,” says Luca. Which would be an objectively very cool New Yorker thing to say if Luca didn’t deliver it with the enthusiasm of someone about to walk into a five-hour SAT test.
“Only if you don’t mind asking … the guy,” I say carefully.
Luca shakes his head. “The guy would be thrilled,” he says. “The guy will hug me and make a big deal out of the whole thing.” Then he sighs deeply and clarifies, “The guy is my mom and dad.”
“Sorry, what?”
Luca looks at me miserably. “My family runs Brownie Bonanza,” he mumbles.
I stop dead on the street. “Excuse me, and you were going to tell us this when?”
“Never. I’m the black sheep of my whole family,” says Luca, whose puppy-dog face is close to crumbling. “A monster who doesn’t like sweets.”
“Then why the hell are we getting ice cream right now?” I demand.
“I don’t know!” Luca blurts.
I pivot us away from the ice-cream shop abruptly. “All right, I’m not your writing friend anymore. I’m your self-advocacy friend. Stop letting people drag you places you don’t want to eat.”
Luca laughs and says, “No, you can still be my writing friend. I already got this lecture from Mariella a week ago.”
“Well, apparently she needs to give it again if it didn’t stick!”
Luca laughs out loud, following me down the sidewalk, pink-cheeked and pleased.
“So you and Mariella are hanging out?” I ask.
I have no intention of stirring the “Luca and Mariella” pot here, only because Mariella might have taken it off the stove. But it’s clear from today that if Luca had any feelings for me early in the summer—enough to send something from the dispatch—those feelings are only writerly enthusiasm now. I can’t help but wonder if that means other feelings have developed in the meantime.
Luca nods. “I keep waiting for her to get bored of me, but I guess there’s a lot of crossover on places she wants to photograph that also make for good places to write. Plus I think she doesn’t like taking photos on her own.”
