Текст книги "A Little Too Much"

Автор книги: Lisa Desrochers

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“Not in this lifetime.” I start moving again, but the kid with the cigarette springs like a snake and grabs me. I start to scream, but I fall off my heels as he spins me against the door in the alcove and pins me with his body. He slaps a hand over my mouth and holds his cigarette ash up to my face, just an inch from my cheek. “You scream again, you fucking whore, and I’ll take your fucking eye,” he hisses.

“Dude!” the blond kid says. “Chill. She’ll do it.” He looks at me, his eyes wide and pleading. “We’ve got money. How much do you charge?”

They think I’m a hooker. Perfect.

With the other kid’s hand over my mouth, it’s not like I’m going to answer. I just glare at him.

“You’re going to want to let the girl go.”

I can’t see Alessandro, but there’s no mistaking the voice. The attention of the kid holding me snaps to his friend, who’s staring, wide-eyed, at where I’m sure Alessandro is standing, just around the corner of the alcove, out of my line of sight.

“Dude,” the blond kid says again to his friend without taking his eyes off Alessandro. “Let her go.”

He doesn’t. He presses the cigarette closer to my eye. “You’re going to want to mind your own fucking business, man.”

Alessandro steps into view, just a few feet from the blond kid, and, if looks could kill, the kid holding me would be vaporized. His face is dark and tight, his laser gaze trained on the kid with the cigarette. His hands twitch at his sides and he’s got that half-crazy look Lorenzo always had, like he’s coiled tight, ready to snap.

The blond splits a glance between Alessandro and his buddy, then takes off at a sprint. The dark-haired kid’s grip on me loosens as he watches his friend bolt. The momentary distraction is all I need. I bring my knee up hard into his crotch and he cries out and falls to his hands and knees, holding his junk. It only takes him a second to find his feet and he staggers off.

Alessandro steps into the alcove, the rage in his dark gaze giving way to panic. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I spit. “I had things under control, you know? I didn’t need you to save me. I’ve never needed you to save me.”

He winces and I close my eyes against the unwelcome memory.

Alessandro holding me. Wiping my tears.

“I’ve never needed you,” I repeat, disgusted by the tears I feel pricking the backs of my eyes. I am not going to cry in front of him—or anyone—ever again.

He picks up my shoes and lays them on the sidewalk at my feet. “Let me take you home.”

I step into them and start walking, ignoring him as best I can. But I don’t stop him when he keeps stride with me.

I know I told Alessandro I didn’t need him, but I’m not sure it’s true. That whole thing shook me up—though I’ll never admit it to him. My heart is racing, and adrenaline is still pouring into my bloodstream. I force myself not to shake, or blow out a nervous breath, or show any signs of weakness as we walk the three blocks to the subway. We wait in silence for the D train, then climb on. It’s not until I stand to make the transfer at Columbus Circle twenty minutes later that I think to ask. “Where do you live?”

He follows me off the train onto the platform. “West Village.”

“You’re going the wrong way.”

The hint of a smile flits over lips that I’m just now realizing are full and red and perfect. “I know.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know you’re safely home.”

I just stand here on the platform, staring at him, as the train whooshes past and disappears into the tunnel.

“Why?”

His eyes narrow with his confusion. “I just—”

“No. I mean . . . why all of it?” I say, flicking my wrist at him. “Why did you find me? Why did you agree to come out tonight? Why are you even bothering with me?”

He catches his lips between his teeth, thinking. Finally, he blows out a breath and scratches the back of his head. “You meant something to me, Hilary. You were important to me once. I just needed to know you were okay. I needed to see for myself.” He shakes his head. “You were never supposed to know I was here.”

God, I wish I didn’t know he was here. I narrow my eyes at him and spin for the stairs, feeling all my anger bubbling up and spilling over. How could he possibly think he could know how broken I am just by looking? I’ve spent eight years learning to hide it. “And am I? Do I have your stamp of approval?”

He stops me with a hand on my arm. “That’s not what I meant.” His voice is soft, and when I spin to face him, the look in his eye tugs at my heart—sends me eight years into my past. Tears press at the backs of my eyes again, and damn him.

“I’m going to catch the one,” I say, waving an arm up the concourse toward my train. “You should head back.”

His eyes scan me again, lingering over my legs. He bites the corner of his lower lip and looks up at my face. “I’d like to see you again sometime when we can talk.”

“You always wanted to talk,” I grumble opening my bag and rooting through it for a piece of gum. When I find one and look up at him, his expression is tight. Guarded.

He reaches up to scratch the back of his head . . . again. One of his childhood tells. So they’re not all gone. “There are a lot of things that need to be said.”

“When?”

His eyes flick over me again. “Let me buy you lunch. What’s your favorite restaurant?”

He wants to take me out? No one’s taken me out for a really long time. “Luigi’s.”

He nods. “I’ll meet you there at one.”

He keeps stride with me as we walk to my platform and my anger starts to ebb a little. When we get there, I look at him. “Thanks.”

His eyes widen a little, surprised, I guess, after my snippiness. “For what?”

I gesture vaguely at the platform. “This.”

His face darkens as his lips press into a line. “Don’t thank me, Hilary.”

The train comes and I climb on. The doors close and I watch Alessandro disappear as the train whisks me away. I settle into a seat near the door and lean my head back into the wall panel, closing my eyes.

I remember how everything changed for me with Alessandro. He was the first person in years who seemed to really care about me. He never hurt me. He kissed me on the mouth and he touched me so gently. He was sweet and tender . . . and I started to trust him. Then I started to need him.

And then he left.

I feel the sucking wound in my chest open up again as if it was just yesterday. As if I haven’t spent the last eight years forcing myself to forget it and move on.

But I have moved on. And I can never go back.

Chapter Six

LUIGI’S IS ALWAYS packed and there’s only, like, eight tables, but we luck into a party that had two of them stuck together just leaving, so we and the couple waiting ahead of us score seats near the window.

“So what are we talking about today?” I ask once we’re settled and the waiter has taken our drink order.

“You.”

I huff out a laugh. “Then it’s going to be a short conversation.”

He rubs his forehead, then leans on his elbows and looks at me with weary eyes. “I have been haunted for eight years, Hilary. There’s not a day that’s passed that I haven’t wondered about you.”

I feel my armor going back up and the claws coming out as I glare across the table at him. He has no idea what it means to be haunted. “I told you. I’m fine.”

“I have to know . . .” The skin around his eyes tightens but he doesn’t break my gaze. “Did Lorenzo rape you?”

I actually laugh out loud. “That’s what this is about? You think you owe me something to make up for your brother?”

He just looks at me, because I didn’t answer the question.

“No, Alessandro. He didn’t rape me.”

Over Alessandro’s shoulder, I see the woman sitting behind him turn and look at me.

“I know I can’t fix it if he did, but there are resources—”

“He didn’t rape me,” I say again, lower but more slowly so he’ll hear it. Lorenzo was never the problem. I didn’t care about him enough for him to have the power to really hurt me. I pick up the menu and flip it open, refusing to look the person who did in the eye. “Are we getting pizza or what?”

Alessandro blows out a sigh and the storm on his face subsides slowly. “What do you like?” he asks, and it feels ten degrees cooler when his laser-beam gaze lowers from me to his menu.

“Veggies, mostly. And pepperoni.”

The waiter comes back with our iced teas and sets them in front of us, and my eyes are drawn to Alessandro’s arms as he reaches across and takes my menu. As I follow the veins in his forearm, coursing over long, lean muscles to the rolled-up sleeve of his button-down, I catch myself envisioning that perfection all the way up, covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he punched the bag at the gym.

“Are you ready to order?” the waiter asks, snapping me from my fantasy.

Alessandro hands him our menus. “We’ll have a large veggie combo with pepperoni.”

The waiter scribbles on his pad, then takes the menus. “Salads?”

“Antipasto for two, I think,” he says with a questioning glance at me.

“Fine,” I say, squeezing lemon into my tea.

As I watch the waiter take our order to the computer and key it in, I feel Alessandro’s eyes on me again, but I’m not ready to look at him yet.

“I need to know what happened to you after we left,” he says, suddenly intense.

No you don’t. I narrow my eyes at him. “Why?”

There’s a long minute where he doesn’t answer.

“Listen, Alessandro, I know you have this whole major guilt thing happening,” I say, waving a hand in a circle at him, “but that’s not really my problem, you know? I’m seriously okay. Everybody has shit they need to deal with. I’ve dealt with mine. My life is really good. As a matter of fact, it’s great. So at this point, the only thing you could do to make my life better would be to score me a part on Broadway.”

His eyebrows go up. “Broadway . . . ?”

I twirl my straw in my tea. “I’m hoping to score a part in a musical. I have an amazing voice.”

A smile twitches his lips and a little of the tension that’s always there runs out of his shoulders. “I remember.”

I just stare at him as it all comes flooding back.

It was only a week after Lorenzo and Alessandro had shown up at the group home. We were all in the basement “rec room” where there was a radio and a TV with a broken Xbox. I was curled up on a sticky overstuffed chair and Lorenzo and Eric were sprawled on the sagging couch getting stoned. Two girls, Hannah and Trish, who were like sixteen I think, had smeared on heavy makeup with tons of eye shadow and liner and were doing a fashion show. They’d cranked the radio and were shimmying around to Beyonce’s “Naughty Girl,” stripping off clothes they’d bought at the Salvation Army store until they were all the way down to tiny bikinis. Lorenzo and Eric were watching and catcalling. I remember Alessandro sitting on the floor in the corner. He was doodling something on a pad of paper, but he was also watching.

The black one . . . Trish, I think . . . or maybe it was Hannah, told me to go put on my bikini, but I didn’t have one so I just shook my head.

“Dumb bitch,” she said, turning to the boys and grinding her hips in a circle.

“No guts no glory,” the other one said as she slid onto Eric’s lap.

I had guts, I just didn’t have a bikini, so I stood up and started belting out “Naughty Girl” with Beyonce like my life depended on it.

Looking back, it was pretty bad, but later that day, when were eating dinner, Alessandro slipped into the seat next to me, which he’d never done before. “You have a good voice,” he’d murmured, without looking at me.

They were the first words he ever said to me.

I look down at the table, pulling a napkin from the dispenser for something to do, pissed that he can make me feel this stupid with just two words. “Yeah, well . . . I’m better now.”

“You were exceptional then, so I can only imagine.”

I don’t know if he’s messing with me or not, but all of a sudden, I wish I hadn’t come here. I’ve spent the last week and a half pretending like his showing up out of nowhere didn’t shake me to my core—like it didn’t mater. I wish I could just forget that he ever came back. But I can’t.

Our waiter is back with the antipasto and two plates, which he puts at the edge of our table. “Your pie will be up in a few.” He tips his head at my glass. “More tea?”

“Yeah, sure,” I tell him, then watch as he goes to the counter for a pitcher. He’s back a moment later with a smile, filling my glass.

“I’m glad you know what you want and that you’re chasing your dream,” Alessandro says as the waiter retreats again, pulling my attention back to him.

I run a finger down a rivulet of sweat on my glass. “Problem is, it’s running way the hell faster than I am at the moment.”

The waiter scoots up to our table a few minutes later with a wire rack and a pizza tin, which he sets in the middle of the table. “Anything else I can get you?”

Alessandro lifts a questioning brow at me.

“No, thanks,” I answer, and the waiter shuffles off to clear the next table.

“But you’re getting auditions,” Alessandro says, spinning the tin so the spatula handle is facing me. “With all the aspiring actresses in the city, I’d think that wouldn’t be an easy feat.”

I shrug. “Only because of American Idol. I made it to Hollywood Week.”

He lifts an eyebrow at me. “I know.”

I squint at him. “You didn’t . . . ?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t see it real time, but I told you, I Googled you. The first search results for you are YouTube clips from American Idol.”

Why does it embarrass me that he’s seen that? I scoop a slice of pizza onto my plate. “So . . . how long are you staying in New York?” I ask, to steer the conversation away from me.

He helps himself to a slice. “I don’t intend to stay long.”

I take a bite of pizza and try to ignore the cold rush through my gut. I don’t want him to stay. When he leaves New York again, it will be a good thing. “So you just spend all your time stalking me?”

His eyes flash to mine. “No. I stalk other people too.”

“More ghosts?”

He flinches and lowers his gaze to his plate. “I spend as much time as I can at the Y with the kids.”

“You’re helping inner-city kids?”

He nods.

“Like you and Lorenzo.”

His intense gaze locks on mine. “I hope that I can help keep them from becoming like me and Lorenzo, yes.”

We eat in silence, but I can’t stop flashing him glances. There are things about him that haven’t changed at all, and there are other things that are so different. There are so many things I want to ask: Did he miss me after he left? Did he want to come back? He says he’s been haunted, but are the memories all bad?

Please don’t leave me.

I squeeze my eyes shut against the unbidden image.

“Are you okay, Hilary?”

Alessandro’s voice saying those words taps into that well of despair I’ve hidden away for so long. His just being here after all this time brings it closer to the surface.

“I’m fine,” I snip.

He tilts his head and looks at me for a long, uncomfortable second. “Of course.” It’s clear from his tone that he knows I’m lying, but he doesn’t press me on it. He pushes his plate away and nods at the last three slices of pizza. “Have you had enough?”

“I’m stuffed.”

He waves down he waiter for the check. Once he’s paid, he stands and slides my coat off the back of my chair, holding it open for me.

I grab it out of his hands. “I’m not three. I can put on my own jacket,” I say, shoving my arms through the sleeves.

He tips his head at me and shrugs on his black wool jacket, then escorts me out of the restaurant with a hand on the small of my back. I hate that the feel of his hand there makes me ache inside.

It’s a crisp, clear late October day, right on the edge of winter but not cold enough for snow yet. Dry leaves cling to the trees in the park across the street and the light breeze prods them loose a few at a time. I bundle my jacket around me and watch them flutter to the ground as we walk in silence toward the subway. Alessandro doesn’t break stride when I don’t turn for the stairs, and he never asks what we’re doing as we walk home slowly past the park. It’s a fifteen-minute subway ride . . . or a half hour walk back to my apartment. Picking my way through the street artists, hot-dog vendors, and tourists clogging the sidewalks keeps me from having to look at Alessandro, but for some reason, I’m not quite ready to be rid of him yet.

“I’ve been wanting to go to the Met again,” he finally says as we pass the Museum of Natural History. There’s scaffolding over the massive stone front of the building, but the ugliness of it doesn’t stop the tourists from snapping shots like paparazzi gone rabid.

“The museum?” I glance up and see him looking toward the park. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a straight shot across the park from here—a twenty-minute walk from my apartment—and I’ve never been there.

He nods, turning his gaze back to the sidewalk unfolding in front of us. “Have you been?”

“No.” I’ve lived in the city all my life and I’ve never been most places.

His gaze flicks to me. “Are you free later this week? Or maybe next?”

“Um . . . maybe. I’m usually off Thursdays.”

“Would you be interested in going?”

“To the Met?”

He nods and a smile twitches his lips. “To the Met.”

“Is it expensive?”

He looks up from the sidewalk again. “My treat. And lunch too, if you can handle my company for that long.”

I scrunch my face at him. “How long will it take?”

“The museums are vast. We could spend as much or as little time there as you like.”

My face scrunches more. “Vast . . . I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

He laughs and the sound takes me off guard as the memory of the last time I heard him laugh slams into me. We weren’t too far from here, in the middle of Central Park, near Bethesda Fountain, surrounded by butterflies.

“I promise not to bore you. We’ll hit the highlights,” he says, pulling me back to the here and now.

“How long will the highlights take?” I ask warily.

He looks at me and I’d swear he’s smirking a little. “Leave your afternoon open.”

We turn away from the park up Eighty-second Street toward my apartment.

“This is a nice neighborhood,” Alessandro says. Considering he’s hardly once looked up from the sidewalk, I’m not sure how he’d know.

I shrug even though he’s not looking. “My boyfriend can afford it. His family has money. It’s really his place.”

His pace stalls for a beat. “Boyfriend. You’re with someone.” It’s not a question, and there’s something in his tone that I can’t read.

“Brett. He’s an actor.”

He looks at me, his gaze suddenly intense, as if he’s about to recite the cure for cancer or something. “Does he make you happy?”

Again, he takes me off guard. Am I happy? I’m not unhappy. I kick a pebble in my path and it skitters onto the road, scaring a well-fed pigeon that’s pecking at something in the gutter. “Happy is all relative.”

“You deserve to be happy.” His voice is lower now, as if he said it more to himself than me. He looks up at Trinity Church, across the street, and something mournful passes over his face. He was going to be a priest and he gave it up for the love of a girl who doesn’t love him back. I wonder if that look is for her, or for what he gave up because of her.

We reach my door and I turn to him. “So, did we decide about the Met?”

He nods. “Thursday. Meet me there, at the main entrance? Noon?”

I should say no.

I should.

“Okay.” I unlock the door and slip through to find the elevator waiting. I push four and wave through the glass as the doors close.

And wonder what the hell I’m doing.

Chapter Seven

“SO, WHAT KIND of art do you like the best?” Alessandro asks over our salads.

Instead of going to the museum cafeteria, he insisted on this swanky café, complete with a smug maître d’ and hoity-toity waiters. I feel like I’m being judged.

“Is that a trick question?” I ask, stabbing a cherry tomato, which burps a slimy pile of tiny seeds onto the white tablecloth.

His fork stops halfway to his mouth. “You don’t like art at all, do you?”

I shrug. “Not really.”

“I shouldn’t have twisted your arm into coming here.” He keeps his voice neutral, but he can’t hide the disappointment in his eyes, and it makes me wonder about the other girl. The one he loved. Was she into art? Did they curl up in bed on rainy afternoons and have long conversations about things that I don’t even have names for? All I know about art is what I learned watching The Da Vinci Code.

The truth is, if anyone else had asked me to come here, I would have said no. But something deep inside me wanted a reason to see Alessandro again. Curiosity maybe? Part of me wants to hate him, but the truth is, even after everything, I’ve never been able to find hate anywhere in me for either Alessandro or his brother. Anger? Yes. I’ve been seriously pissed off for eight years and my anger has fueled me, made me stronger. But I never hated them. “What kind of art do you like?”

“Impressionism has never been my favorite, but I can appreciate almost anything.” His sharp edges have softened a little since we walked through the doors of the museum, like being here has somehow lifted the weight of the world off his shoulders.

“I remember you always doodling,” I say, tossing my salad with my fork to mix in the ranch dressing. I hate it when it’s all in a glob. “Do you still draw?” I glance up at him when he doesn’t answer right away.

“No. Not for a long time.” His gaze locks with mine and it’s like he’s trying to see into my thoughts. He never missed much, even as a kid, but I didn’t have nearly as much to hide then. I lower my eyes, afraid he’ll see too much.

I have a flash of an image . . . Alessandro in his usual corner of the rec room with his sketch pad, so quiet, watching as Lorenzo and Eric wrestled on the floor. His eyes kept flicking to me, where I sat on the saggy couch, painting my toenails.

That was the day after Lorenzo and I slept together. I didn’t want anyone looking at me, especially Alessandro, who always seemed to see everything, so I turned sideways on the couch with my back to him.

Lorenzo usually ignored me, but Alessandro always sat next to me at dinner. After the first time, when he told me I had a good voice, he never said anything and neither did I, but it wasn’t weird. He put the sketch pad on the table between us that night and I looked at it. The sketch was of a girl in a baggy T-shirt and rolled up jeans, with her frizzy black hair falling in her face. She was perched on the edge of a sagging couch painting her toenails. You could just make out the lines of her face in the shadows of her hair, and there was a tear coursing a crooked path down her cheek.

I hated that he paid enough attention to see that.

The waiter shows up with our food and clears our salads. When Alessandro assures him we don’t need anything else, he leaves.

“There are some things I missed last time I was here,” he says, lowering his eyes to his plate and cutting a wedge off his quiche with the side of his fork. “We could start in the nineteenth-century European section?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say as he chews, ’cause it’s all Greek to me. “You’re going to tell me what’s what, right? Because I’m pretty clueless about this stuff.”

He holds up a finger, and after he swallows, he says, “I’ll tell you as much as I know, but everything’s pretty well labeled.”

“If you say so.” I’m nervous. I’m not sure why, but I don’t want to seem like a total idiot in front of him.

“So, tell me about your sister,” he says and my stomach lurches.

“What about her?”

There’s an edge to my voice, and hearing it, his gaze lifts from his plate and questions me.

“She’s great,” I say, preempting his next question, which would be some version of “What’s wrong?” “She’s married to a great guy and they have two great kids and they’re great.”

“Boys or girls?”

“Boys.”

“And you’re their favorite aunt, I’m sure,” he says with half an amused smile.

Despite the knot in my stomach, I can’t help smiling back. “Something like that.”

“Do you enjoy children?”

“What do you mean?”

He lowers his fork to his plate. “I mean, are you a kid person? Do you want children of your own?”

“Hell, no!” I say, but then amend, “I mean, Henri and Max are fun, and I like hanging out with them, but I don’t want any of my own.”

He tips his head at me. “Why not?”

I shrug. “Some people just aren’t cut out to be parents, you know?”

He nods. “I struggle with that. I’m not convinced I’d make a good father, but I can’t deny the part of me that desperately wants a family—children of my own. Lots of them.”

I look down at my plate and twirl my pasta. “You need to find someone who feels the same way for that.”

“This is true.” He picks up his fork and his eyes study my face as he takes another bite. “Were you were happy living with your sister and her family?”

I relax a little. “Yeah. I was really happy there.”

“How long did you live with them?”

“I moved out about three years ago, when I was nineteen.”

“Did you go to college?”

What is this, twenty questions? “No,” I say a little defensively.

His gaze finds mine again. “Why not?”

“Because . . . I don’t know. I didn’t want to go right out of high school. I took a couple of community-college classes to keep Mallory off my back, but I really just wanted to act. And then American Idol happened and I started getting auditions and moved into the city and . . . I just never wanted to go.”

He holds my gaze. “No judgment, Hilary. I’m just curious.”

I look down as I twirl my pasta on my fork.

When we’re done and Alessandro pays, he leads me up to the second floor. There’s a long gallery with paintings on the walls and statues on pedestals. At each one, we stop and read the plaque that tells us what it is. Occasionally, he tells me things that aren’t on the plaque—like how the artist died, or who he trained with. He seems even more relaxed here than he did over lunch, and I realize, what walking in the rain does for me, art does for him.

About halfway down, we come to a painting that looks different from the others. It’s of a woman in a gold-yellow dress with black curly hair, sitting there staring off the canvas at us. She’s pretty in a sort of unique way and she looks like she wouldn’t take crap from anyone.

“Henri Regnault’s Salomé,” Alessandro says. “It’s one of the signature pieces of the Romantic movement.”

“I like it. She looks like she has her shit together.” My eyes flick to the plaque next to the painting and I run a finger under the artist’s name. “Henri . . . It’s spelled the same as my nephew. They named him after Jeff’s dad.”

“It’s the traditional French spelling, pronounced ehn-reh.”

“That sounded very French.”

“Oui, mademoiselle,” he says with a smile.

“That sounded very French too.”

“I lived in France after I left here,” he says, and that’s when I realize I don’t even know where Corsica is.

“So you speak French?”

“I do.”

“But I remember you had an accent before.” And, wow. I only just remembered that as I said it. But he did, just a little. It was the way certain words rolled off his tongue.

“I may have,” he says with a little bit of a cringe, like it embarrasses him. “Italian was my first language. My father was in the military and we lived in Italy until I was six. He spoke Italian to us in the home even after we came back to New York.”

“So you speak French and Italian. What else?”

He smiles. “English.”

I roll my eyes at him. “I mean what else?”

His smile turns to more of a smirk and he lifts his eyebrows at me. “That’s not enough?”

I shrug. “I guess. Say something in Italian.”

“Come sei bella,” he says, his smile softening.

“What did you say?”

“You are beautiful.”

I just stare at him for way too long before turning back to Salomé. “Why did you stop drawing?”

I hear him blow out a sigh, but I don’t turn away from the painting. “Things changed. I just didn’t feel . . . inspired. I lost my love of it, I suppose.”

“That’s too bad. You were good.” He saw things that others missed. He saw everything. And then he managed to put it on paper in a way that made it more real than it had been in the moment. Or, at least it felt that way.

The memory that flashes in my head makes me smile.

“What?” Alessandro asks, giving me a curious look.

“Do you remember that day in the park? It was right before you . . .” left, but I can’t make myself say it. “You were drawing me and I grabbed your sketch pad and ran away, and I ran into that totally lame mime guy near the fountain, who kept doing—”

“—trapped in a box,” he finishes for me with a smile and a small shake of his head.

“Yeah. And he got pissed and started cussing me out and then all those little orange-and-black butterflies came, and like, swarmed us.”

“We never did figure out what kind of butterflies those were,” he muses with distant eyes, still smiling.

“It was pretty cool, though. I’d never seen more than one or two butterflies in the park before that.” I remember Alessandro pulling me against him and laughing as they fluttered all around us. And I remember feeling free in a way I never had before, like I was one of them, fluttering above the ground, light as air. I could go anywhere. Be anything. The feeling made me dizzy. Alessandro made me dizzy. I think that’s the second I knew I loved him, because in anybody else’s arms, I felt trapped, but in his, I felt free.

We spend the next two hours in the European painting galleries, looking at super old paintings that seem to be mostly Italian and French, and Alessandro answers all my questions. He gets pretty excited when I ask something, his hands working as he answers, so without even meaning to, I find myself asking a lot. I love watching those hands. But it’s more than that. It’s like his enthusiasm is contagious, because I’m surprisingly non-bored.

We find ourselves in the main stairwell at the end of the rambling galleries and he looks at me a long moment. “You’ve had enough, haven’t you?”

I glance back over my shoulder. “That was actually pretty cool.”

He smiles softly and guides me to the staircase with a hand on my back. “I can see this really isn’t your thing. What do you like to do?”

I shrug as we start slowly down the stairs. “I don’t know. Nothing, really.”

He flashes me a glance. “You must have a favorite place in the city . . . somewhere that’s special to you.”

I shrug again. “I kind of like Central Park . . . and I went to Coney Island once when I was a kid.” Mallory’s dad took pity on me once and brought me with them.