“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.