Love is Just a Moment by Taylor Hill

you in detail what he looked like, yes I can tell you that at least. The man behind Lou—and he was a man, I could tell that immediately, even if he was roughly the same age as Lou’s still-boyish 21 years—was a little bit taller than my brother, with a similarly well-toned and muscular build that was probably requirement number one for guys like him when they set out to make their street-cred, although the way he carried himself was totally different to Lou and yet somehow still kind of similar. He radiated the same aura of toughness, but without any of the effort that Lou seemed to go to great efforts to expel.
    Yes he was, in his black leather biker’s jacket, boots and jeans, an obvious threat in his every intimation but somehow, also unlike Lou, it wasn’t because he was trying to be. He just was . And his face, paler than Lou’s and made even more so because of the dark almond eyes that shimmered from his solemn expression, it was—forgive me—it was beautiful. He wore his hair longer and slicked back in that traditional Italian way that always kind of irked me but now somehow only further intrigued me, as if hundreds of thousands of old-blooded Sicilian generations were calling me back to the homeland through an eternity of primacy and lust and destiny and—
    Yes, all this flashed through my mind in the space of a second or two, before I had time to catch myself and pull myself together. Jeez, thousands of generations of primacy and lust? I needed to get out more, seriously.
    But damn, even though I was sure I’d want nothing to do with him once he opened his mouth, I couldn’t help but admit that whoever he was, this guy was the sexiest thing I’d seen this side of a TV screen in months, maybe even years. Shame about the company he keeps, I thought.
    The guy looked back at me, his big round eyes peering at me in a way that I couldn’t quite read but seemed to suggest something like… I don’t know, powerful interest or something? Whatever it was, I looked away quickly, reminding myself that I was here as chaperone, only .
    “Hey sis, how you doing?”
    Lou leaned down to kiss my cheek as I rose to greet him, putting my arm around his muscular frame. “Hi Lou,” I said, “you look great, really.”
    Crap, I hadn’t meant to say that, it just sort of came out and now it was too late.
    Lou chuckled in his big gruff voice. “You telling me? Like I don’t know…”
    Jerk.
    I looked past him, letting my gaze linger on his friend, waiting for the introduction and hoping to hell that my uncertainty and agitation wasn’t showing.
    “This is Romeo,” Lou said, “I know right? What a faggy name.”
    “Oh!” Romeo protested immediately, although clearly in a humorous, obviously affected way, as if, not only was he being good-humored about the joke, but he was actually above the whole idea of being joked at anyway, merely pretending to play along out of his own private and untouchable goodwill. Or something like that… Man, I was really reading way too much into this guy. I hadn’t even said hello yet.
    “Hi, my name’s Sandra,” I said, putting out my hand in what I hoped was a purely platonic way, “but most people call me Sandy.”
    “Sandra,” Romeo smiled, “your brother’s told me a lot about you. I know he acts like an ass but he’s alright. Seems to really care about you too.”
    His voice was slow and considered, tinged with the roughness of the street but also deep and rich and somehow sophisticated, as if it was also, like Lou’s, mainly a put-on. But somehow I couldn’t see this guy ever feeling like he had to pretend to be anything other than whatever it was he felt himself to be on the inside. It didn’t make sense and I felt kind of dizzy thinking about it, as if there was some crucial piece of the puzzle that I just wasn’t seeing here. Little did I know how right I was, but time would show me the error of my ways in that regard…
    He took my hand firmly and shook it and