Chapter 56: Luca gone

Mia's POV

His car was not in the driveway.

I noticed before Zack had even finished parking. The space where Luca's car always sat was empty. Just concrete and the shadow of the oak tree and nothing else. I stared at it through the windshield for a second. Then I got out before Zack turned the engine off.

The front door was unlocked. I went straight down the hall to his room. The door was open. Not half open the way he sometimes left it. All the way open. Like he had not bothered closing it behind him or like he had left it open deliberately so whoever came home first would see exactly what was not there anymore.

His skating bag was gone from the chair. His phone charger was gone from the desk. The hoodie he left on the back of the door every single night without fail was gone.

I called his phone.

Voicemail.

I called again.

Voicemail.

The automated voice was calm about it. His phone was either off or he was declining. I stood in the doorway of his room and looked at the empty chair and the bare desk and the door with nothing hanging from it and I told myself this was not what it looked like.

It looked like exactly what it was.

I went to the kitchen.

Jade was at the counter cutting an apple into slices. She did not look up when I came in. She had the particular focus of someone who had been waiting for a conversation they did not want to have and was buying time with the apple.

"Don't ask me where he went," she said. "He didn't tell me."

"Did you tell him about the kiss."

She set the knife down. She looked at me.

"He saw the kiss, Mia. He didn't need me to tell him anything."

"He was in the stands."

"He was in the stands. He came in through the side entrance so you wouldn't see him. He watched the whole practice from the top row. He left before you came off the ice." She picked up the knife again. "I saw him walking to his car through the lobby window. His face was..." She paused. She cut another slice. Carefully. "He didn't say where he was going. I didn't ask."

I sat down at the kitchen table. I put my phone face up in front of me and watched it not buzz.

The kitchen was warm. The apple smelled sweet. The light above the sink hummed the way it always hummed at this hour.

I heard Zack's footsteps in the hallway. He had given me a few minutes. I had not asked him to but he had done it anyway. He came through the kitchen door, looked at me, looked at the chair across from me, and pulled it out.

He sat down without asking if he should.

"He left?"

"He left."

He looked at the table. Then he looked at me. He did not say anything immediately. He did not offer me something easy to hold onto. He just sat across from me in the same kitchen where we had worked out the terms of the arrangement weeks ago and let the silence be what it was.

"He'll come back," Jade said from the counter. Flat. A fact, not a comfort. "He always comes back."

Zack looked at her briefly. Then back at me.

"He's not going to stay gone," he said. "He's too stubborn to stay gone."

"I know."

"Are you okay."

I looked at him. "What do you think."

"I think you kissed me two hours ago and now Luca is gone and you're sitting at a kitchen table watching your phone not ring. I think that's a complicated afternoon."

"That's one way to put it."

He leaned forward. Both arms on the table. His eyes were steady on mine.

"Mia."

"What."

"If he comes back tonight, I'm not going to disappear and let you have the conversation alone. He needs to say whatever he's going to say in front of both of us."

"He might not want that."

"I know he doesn't want that. I'm not doing it for him."

"And if I want to have it alone."

"Then you tell me and I'll go. But you have to tell me. You can't just walk past me to the porch and expect me to stay in here and wonder what's being said."

I held his gaze. He held mine.

He was not asking for permission. He was laying out terms the way he had laid out the arrangement terms at this same table. Here is what I need. Here is the line. Tell me now if that's a problem.

"Okay," I said.

He nodded.

My phone buzzed.

I looked at the screen.

Luca: Front porch. Now. Alone.

I looked up at Zack. He was already reading my face. He knew. He had probably known since I unlocked the screen.

"He said alone," I said.

"I know."

"You just told me you weren't going to let me have the conversation without you."

"I know what I said."

"Those two things are not compatible."

He looked at me for a moment. His jaw worked once. He leaned back in his chair.

"Go," he said.

"Zack."

"Go, Mia. He asked you alone. You go alone. But when it's done you come back inside and you tell me what was said. All of it."

"And if I don't want to."

"Then that's your choice. But you should know that I'm going to sit in this kitchen for however long it takes and I'm not going to sleep until you come back in. So." He picked up his glass. "Go. Before he changes his mind."

I stood up. I picked up my phone. I walked to the front door.

I went outside.

The porch was cold. The sky was dark. The street was quiet the way it got at this hour on weeknights when the neighbors had gone in and the road was just road.

He was on the top step.