Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch Read Free Book Online Page A

not mentioning this conversation to Howard? I don’t want him to think I’m . . . uh . . . mad at him or something.” Or instigate any awkward conversations that aren’t strictly necessary.
    She nodded. “My lips are sealed. Just promise me you’ll talk to him. He’s a great guy, and I’m sure he’ll answer any questions you have.”
    â€œOkay.” I looked away and there were a long few seconds of silence.
    â€œHave a nice day, Lina.”
    She went down the stairs and out the front door, but I just stood there staring at my bedroom door. It was practically glowing with urgency. Cue panic.
    It’s just one of her journal s. You can do this. You can do this . I finally started making my way down the hall, but at the last minute veered toward the stairs, the violets teetering dangerously.
    I had some seriously thirsty violets on my hands. Sonia had said so. I’d just take care of that first. I plummeted down the stairs, then looked through the cupboards twice before finding a shallow dish big enough for the flower pot.
    â€œHere you go, buddy.” I filled the dish with an inch of tap water ( F ) and set the pot inside. My violets didn’t seem particularly interested in having company, but I sat down at the kitchen table and watched them anyway.
    I wasn’t stalling. Really.

Chapter 5

    JOURNALING WAS KIND OF MY mom’s thing. Well, a lot of things were kind of her thing. She also liked hot yoga and food trucks and really terrible reality TV shows, and once she’d gotten really into the idea of homemade beauty products and we’d basically spent a month with coconut oil and mashed avocado all over our faces.
    But journaling . . . that was a constant. A couple of times a year she’d splurge on one of these thick artists’ notebooks from our favorite bookstore in downtown Seattle, and then she’d spend months filling it with her life: photographs, diary entries, grocery lists, ideas for photo shoots, old ketchup packets . . . anything you could think of.
    And here was the strange part: She let other people read them. And even stranger? People loved to. Maybe because they were creative and hilarious and after you read one you felt like you’d just taken a trip through Wonderland or something.
    I walked into my bedroom and stood at the foot of my bed. Sonia had left the journal right in the center of my pillow, like maybe she was worried I wouldn’t notice it otherwise, and it was weighing down the bed like a pile of bricks.
    â€œReady?” I said aloud. I was definitely not ready, but I walked over and picked it up anyway. The cover was made of soft leather and had a big gold fleur-de-lis in its center. It didn’t look anything like her journals back home.
    I took a deep breath, then cracked open the cover, half expecting confetti to come shooting out at me, but all that happened was a bunch of brochures and ticket stubs fell out onto the floor and I got a whiff of something musty. I picked up all the papers, then started flipping through the pages, ignoring the writing and focusing on the photographs.
    There was my mother standing in front of an old church with her camera slung over her shoulder. And there she was grinning over a gigantic bowl of pasta. And then . . . Howard . I practically dropped the book. Okay, of course he was in her journal. It’s not like I’d appeared out of thin air, but still. My mind totally resisted the idea of the two of them together.
    I studied the picture. Yep, it was definitely him. Younger, longer-haired (and was that a tattoo on his upper arm?), but definitely Howard. He and my mom were sitting on stone steps and she had short hair and Old Hollywood lipstick and this I’ve been swept off my feet kind of look.
    I sat down on my bed with a thud . Why hadn’t she just told me her and Howard’s story herself? Did she think that her