I burst out laughing. “Really?”
Dante smiled at me. “No, not really. You had me the very first time you turned to face me in the bar, and I looked into those big green eyes. You’re such an incredibly beautiful boy, Charlie – perfect face, perfect body. I would have expected you to be cocky and arrogant, but you weren’t at all. Instead, you were so sweet and humble,” he said, running his fingertips over my cheek. “I could tell you were going through some stuff, there was such sadness in your eyes. And one of my very first thoughts when I looked at you was that I wanted to take that sadness away, that I would do anything to see those eyes sparkle with happiness.”
“Well, you’ve always done an excellent job of making me happy.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “I was enough of an ass to break up with you.”
“You thought that was for my own good.”
“And then I chained you to a person and left the country! Why you haven’t punched me in the face for that one, I’ll never know.”
“You chained me to Christopher. I ended up getting a best friend out of the deal.”
He grinned and rolled his eyes. “Everything I say, you make into a positive.”
“Yep. Really happy people have a tendency to do that.”
Chapter Nineteen
Three weeks later, both of Dante’s casts had come off, and I’d returned to work. Nolan’s was the hot new lunch destination, apparently, and I’d been pulling in great tips.
His hands had been weak from lack of use, but Dante worked his physical therapy like a job, doing his exercises religiously, and was finally to the point where he could actually hold things in a closed fist with each hand.
He also busied himself by taking an active role in a couple of his investment properties. One was a restaurant in the Marina district. He’d completely gutted the building, and would be redecorating, hiring a new staff, and designing the menu from the ground up. I came home from work one day to find blueprints spread all over our bed and Dante sitting cross-legged in the midst of them, making notes on a yellow legal pad. He had an endearing habit of wearing my clothes around the house, and was dressed in a pair of my gym shorts and an old Stanford t-shirt.
“Hi angel.” His face lit up in a bright smile, and I leaned over to kiss him.
“Hi sweetheart. Whatcha doing?”
“I got the revised blueprints for the restaurant today, so I’m doing a little fine tuning.”
I tilted my head to look at the big sheets of paper. “I can barely make sense of them.”
“I’ve always been fascinated by architectural drawings,” he told me. “In another life, I would have loved to study architecture.”
“Why not in this life?”
“Well, you know,” he said, setting the legal pad aside. “I went into the family business right out of high school. What I was going to do for a living had long since been decided. College is a luxury for those without eight generations of tradition resting on their shoulders.”
“So now that you’re retired, why not go back to school and pursue a degree in architecture?”
“That’d be kind of awkward, wouldn’t it? Going back to school at twenty nine? I’d be the oldest one in all my classes.”
“So?”
“I don’t know. It’d be weird.”
“No it wouldn’t. To start with, why don’t you just try a course or two though U.C. extension? See if architecture really is where your passion lies.”
“That’s actually a really good idea. The students would probably be closer to my age there, too.” Dante gathered up the blueprints and set them on the floor beside the bed, and I climbed onto the mattress and straddled his lap, kissing him.
“What about you, Charlie? You ever think about going back to school?” he asked when we broke apart, looking up at me as he linked his fingers at the back of my neck.
“Nah. All I ever wanted to do was play pro football. When that dream died, there was really nothing else I was interested in.”
“Why not take a few classes? See if anything grabs you?”
“I dunno. I was never much of a student. I think that even if I hadn’t gotten injured and had to drop out, I probably would have flunked out of Stanford anyway,” I said.
“I think we should take a few classes together through university extension. We both might discover our passion.”
“Oh, I already discovered my passion. Weeks ago,” I said with a grin, and kissed him deeply. He tugged my t-shirt out of my jeans, and then pulled it off over my head and tossed it away from us.
And then in a move that showed me exactly how much he’d healed, he slid off the bed and stood up with me wrapped around him, my arms around his neck, legs around his waist as he cupped my ass. He held me like this for a long moment, kissing me, claiming my mouth with his tongue, and then laid me on my back on the mattress and continued undressing me. “You’re obviously feeling better,” I said happily.