Page 63 of The Getaway List
Jesse nods, popping a stray chocolate chip from the toppings bin into his mouth. “You can have tiers of brownies at the wedding.”
Mariella waves a hand, stubbornly not looking at any of us when she says, “Luca had a crush on me, past tense. He likes Riley now.”
Before I can slowly peel out the window to remove myself from this narrative, Luca’s brows pucker in confusion. “Says who?”
“Says you sending her stuff from the dispatch!” says Mariella. “And yes, I’m an asshole for knowing that, but the fact is I do, so no point in beating around the bush anymore.”
Luca looks genuinely offended, but not personally so. “What are you talking about? If I had a crush on Riley, I wouldn’t have sent cheese.”
“Hey,” I protest.
Luca turns to me in mild panic. “No, I mean—not that you’re not—you know, great and all—”
“That was in defense of the cheese, not myself,” I say, gesturing for him to proceed.
“So that was you?” Tom asks.
Luca looks between me and Tom like we all just drop-kicked him onto another planet. “You guys were discussing well-crafted faux-marble cheese plates so intensely. I thought it would be like a fun ‘welcome to New York’ thing. You didn’t realize it was me?”
Tom chokes trying not to laugh, but I don’t have even that much self-control. Luckily both Luca and Mariella look too mutually stunned to be upset with us for it.
“We did not, but it was deeply appreciated,” I tell him. “You have impeccable taste in random cheese deliveries.”
“Thank you,” says Luca, who seems genuinely out of breath now, like this conversation is a gym class he didn’t mean to sign up for. He glances around at all of us in turn, settling somewhat defiantly on Mariella, and adds, “Now can we please get to making these brownies? I have a professional reputation to uphold.”
Words that might have held more weight to them if Luca hadn’t tied his apron to the part of the chair behind him, and subsequently knocked over a small vat of edible glitter that created a cloud that dusted us all in turn, so the group of us were immediately sparkling from head to toe. In the ensuing distraction I almost miss the sneaky smile curling on Mariella’s lips and the faint blush under Luca’s freckles when she aimes it right at him, but not quite.
“All right, Brownie Bonanzer,” says Tom to Luca as he pulls a glittery apron over his equally glittery shirt. “Show us what you’ve got.”
The next hour is as deliciously lawless as we were all anticipating, and then some. After some deliberation, we each decide on our flavors largely based on what occasion they’re for. Jesse is taking Dai out to see live music in the park tonight, so he opts for a combination of their favorite flavors, regular batter stuffed with Rolos and toffee bits with cookie-dough filling, plus bright blue and black sprinkles for the band’s signature colors. Mariella and Luca appear to be in some kind of face-off making brownies for each other, which is a pursuit I wash my hands of considering Luca’s aversion to dessert (Mariella has opted for a blondie base and a not-small amount of some kind of chili-lime jam) and Mariella’s aversion to chocolate (I decided not to ask too many questions after watching Luca start fileting gummy worms).
My heart twinges a bit when I notice Tom filling his with raspberry jam and honeycomb and nothing else, because those are Vanessa’s favorite flavors, not his. But she’s back tonight and he’s been nervous about it all day. If he needs someone else to protect his true brownie agenda, I am more than happy to be the one to create an actual Tom version, which I have precariously stuffed with cookie dough, sea-salt caramel, crumbled frosted animal cookies, pretzels, chocolate chips, and marshmallows, and topped with rainbow sprinkles and sea salt on his behalf.
Luca has to dispense the dough and fillings for each of them to make sure the ratios won’t obliterate their ovens—probably smart, considering the batter I made could easily take out the entire Upper West Side unsupervised—which he’s in the middle of doing when Tom gets a call on his phone and ducks out.
Mariella walks over to Luca, her face solemn. Jesse and I busy ourselves to give them some space, Jesse with sending glittery selfies to Eddie and Dai in an attempt to convince them it should be part of the band’s next rebrand, and me with washing an entire sticky Halloween haul worth of candy off my hands.
“Hey. Just so you know—the crowd I was with back then—they were assholes,” says Mariella.
Luca’s lips twitch into a sympathetic smile. “Yeah. I got the gist of that at karaoke.”
“What I mean is I was probably too busy trying to impress them to notice people actually worth impressing,” she says, scooting closer to him. “People who are deeply informed about the proper filling and batter ratios of brownies and how to optimize oven temperatures based on them.”
Luca doesn’t blush or get self-conscious like he usually does. Just stares at Mariella and says sincerely, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I guess it was sort of like—a second chance at a first impression, maybe? Or just a first one at all, since I didn’t make one the first time.”
Mariella shakes her head. “I’m the one who needed a second chance at that impression,” she says.
Luca just smiles and says, “Nah. I liked them both.”
I stare down at my hands only so neither of them catch the grin I’m trying to bite down. The two of them banter back and forth about who is going to like the other’s brownies more, long enough that I frown at the door, wondering what’s taking Tom so long. I’m about to poke my head out when Mariella turns to me abruptly, with a triumphant look on her face.
“I just realized—now that we know who sent the flowers and the cheese, the mystery of your summer rom-com trope is solved,” she says.
Jesse mentioned the flowers to Mariella at lunch today, since I’d ended up pressing them between some of Tom’s gigantic textbooks to preserve them back when I didn’t know who they were from. They made for an eclectic addition to Vanessa’s otherwise bare room.
Off my expression, Mariella raises her eyebrows and says, “Unless it’s not solved?”
I towel off my hands, my eyes still focused on them. “There was one other thing,” I confess.
