The Slut's Guide to Romance(ONC 2024)

3

Feeling uncomfortable in Owen Fairchild's home, I called Lucca. I never told him about my meeting with Owen this spring. We're close but they're different. Intertwined. I only tell him what the housekeeper told me and Lucca, being Lucca, He's annoyed.

"What the fuck does that mean?" Lucca's deep smooth tone growls from the other line.

It's nearly 4AM here, which makes it about ten in Miami on Thursday. Knowing Lucca, he's still at the restaurant. Probably on a break with a cigarette he never actually smokes in his mouth. The mumbled sound melding with his sympathetic frustration.

I didn't see Alexia for the rest of the day. In a house this big I don't think I will see her unless she wants to be seen, but my flight back to Oregon is in two weeks and it feels like we're already wasting time as I lay in the plushest bed I've ever felt.

"I'd tell you if I knew," I reply with a half shrug to add enthesis to my confusion. "She said tread carefully, then took off down the hall leaving me in this room bigger than my apartment. Hell, I think it's bigger than your apartment."

"How exciting," Lucca says in a dull tone that tells me he's mulling something over.

As much as I wanted to keep our relationship professional, Lucca Mendoza has become the big brother I didn't know I wanted. He's cagy about Alexia but we pretty much opened up to each other about everything else.

My parents' cold war. His growing up in the streets of Miami, and everything it took to get him to want to go back there. His sisters, Inez and Catalina who I closely resemble with my heart shaped face and big brown eyes.

"You think she's talking about Justice...?" Lucca ponders and I would be lying if I didn't think so myself.

Georgia Senator and former presidential hopeful, Justice Foster is a walking human rights issue. In his short time in office he had set the state back by implementing some of the most daunting anti-woman, trans and LGBTQ bills in United States history. Only for it to be exposed that his wife, who he was adamant had been estranged from her formerly addicted, drag loving brother, was a 'hedonistic' bisexual who had an abortion in college.

Their divorce could be an act. Some kind of political stunt to calm his Christian conservative consitutates. Alexia could have just left the country until the next political scandal takes the light off of her but if that's the case, why am I here?

"I don't know..." I admit. "But I'm sure I'll find out. We're supposed to meet for brunch later. Is there anything I should ask? Look out for maybe...?"

"Everything," Lucca speaks at a distance as I roll on my side.

"Words nice. Use words," I tease.

I can hear Lucca's hesitation. He always hesitates when it comes to speaking about Alexia who he only called 'her' or by her pet name of 'Fresca.' Up until literally last week when he was telling me not to fly to France to be alone with his ex.

Part of me thinks he's afraid of her. Or something about her until I remember Lucca isn't afraid of anything. But there was something in what he told me at his Afro-Cuban/Italian fusion restaurant 'Con amore Catalina.'

Before we were friends, Lucca absolutely refused to put time aside for our chats. For the week I shadowed him, I had to be on his time, and move at his pace, because he had a restaurant to open and I was just some annoying college kid Owen was doing a favor.

Standing at six-foot-five in his pristine white Chef's coat, Lucca navigated the stainless-steel chaos with military precision, his crew moving like a well-oiled machine. I was the bumbling interloper, clutching my portable equipment, so scared to take up too much room though I masked it well.