“I’m sorry,” he says as he fishes the other cockroach out of his food. “It was stupid of me.”
But seeing him sitting there, sucking sauce off a rubber cockroach, is more than I can take. I crack up.
He smiles, unsure, but so soft and so beautiful. “We’re okay?”
“We’re okay.” As I say it, I realize I want it to be true. I want to spend time with him—get to know him again. I want to know what happened to him after he left New York. I need to know how he felt back then—and even now.
I need these things for my sanity. It’s just closure.
I’m not totally playing with fire.
Chapter Eleven
WHEN BRETT CLIMBED on top of me this morning before he left for the airport, I felt like I was going to throw up. It’s guilt. I know it. Because I can’t stop thinking about Alessandro, even when I’m having sex with Brett. Especially when I’m having sex with Brett. It’s a sick fantasy, but I can’t shut it down, no matter how hard I try.
Brett’s on the road for six crazy weeks of touring. I’m so jealous. But I’m also scared. Because without him here, fighting the urge to spend all my time with Alessandro is even harder.
When I walk into Argo Tea, he’s at a table near the window, and there’s already a cup at my place. I peel off my winter wear and lower myself into my seat, wrapping my frozen fingers around the steaming cup. I hope he thinks the shake in my hand is from the cold.
“It feels like snow today,” he says by way of a greeting, swirling his coffee in his cup.
That’s his tell. I look at him more closely. Is he nervous too? About what? I didn’t tell him Brett was gone.
“Colder than a witch’s tit,” I say, bringing my cup to my mouth with both hands and sipping. The warmth of the tea sends a shiver through me.
“I took the liberty,” he says with a nod at my cup. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“Thanks. So, where are we going?”
Some of the caution melts off his face and his mouth pulls into a smug half smile. “That’s how you want to play this? No surprise?”
I shrug. “I’m going to find out when we get there, right?”
He lifts his cup and looks at me over the top of it, taking a slow sip. “No,” he finally says, lowering it back to the table. “I’m not going to tell you.”
I roll my eyes and sip my tea. “Fine. If you won’t tell me, then I’m not telling you what we’re doing next week.”
His smile is back. “Good. I like surprises.”
“But I will tell you that we have to do it on Saturday instead of Thursday.”
He lifts an eyebrow at me.
I lift my eyebrows back. “If I say more, you’ll probably be able to figure it out,” I warn.
He raises his hand. “Enough said. I’m assuming this is happening in the morning, since you work Saturday nights?”
“Yes.”
He nods. “I’ll make it work.”
I shrug, trying to come off as indifferent, but I’m really starting to get into this. I went online to research what quirky things New York has to offer and I have a few stops lined up that I’m pretty stoked about. “If you say so.”
He watches me sip the last of my tea, then stands. “Ready?”
I wrap my scarf around my neck and scrape my chair back. “Let’s go.”
We step outside and the cold bites after the warm tea. I slip on my gloves and pull my jacket tight around me. We come to the subway, and I grab the rail and swing around for the stairs, but Alessandro keeps going.
“We’re walking.”
“How far?” I ask, feeling the warm air bellowing up from down there.
He stops walking and turns. “You’ll warm up. And, in any event, it’s not too far.”
I stand at the mouth of the subway and stare at him, exaggerating my shiver.
He smiles and walks back to collect me, looping an arm around my shoulders.
And, damn if I don’t feel warm all of a sudden.
He turns us and starts up Fifty-eighth, and I keep stride at his side. “I should have asked. Are you afraid of heights?” he asks as we walk.
I cut him a look. “We are not going to the Empire State Building! You said no lame-o tourist attractions.”
“I’m quite certain I never used the word ‘lame-o,’ and we’re not going to the Empire State Building.”
“So where then?”
He just smirks at me.
Twenty minutes later, when we’re still walking on Fifty-eighth, I’m starting to think he’s going to walk us straight into the East River, but then he takes a left on Second Avenue. “Almost there,” he tells me with a squeeze of my shoulders.
I’m warm now from the walk, but I like that his arm’s still around me, so don’t tell him that.
We walk two more blocks and stop at a funny-looking cement building. I look up at it. “This is that cable-y thing that goes over to that island, isn’t it? I’ve seen it from the Queensboro.”
His smile is amused. “The ‘cable-y thing’ is an aerial tram, and it goes to Roosevelt Island, yes.”
He unloops his arm from my shoulders and takes my gloved hand, towing me toward the stairs at the front of the building. We swipe our MetroCards, wait behind the gates, and then cram into the big red tramcar with at least a dozen other people.
“I don’t think this is undiscovered,” I mutter to Alessandro as we move to the back.
He smiles and his smoky eyes turn a shade darker. “It is to us. That’s all that matters.”
We find seats and I jump a little when we swing away from the station a few minutes later. I stand and turn for the window as our big red box rises out over the city. Second Avenue falls away below us as we lift into the sky, and behind us, Manhattan is laid out on display.
“Wow. This is so—”
“—cool,” Alessandro says with an amused smile, standing and turning toward the window.
“Stop it,” I pout.
“Never let me curb your enthusiasm,” he says, softer.
When I glance at him, he’s not looking out the window. He’s looking at me. I wipe my jacket sleeve under my nose, sure there must be something dangling there. Finally, his eyes shift toward the view out the window behind us, scanning the New York landscape and locking on the top of the Empire State Building, just visible over the other buildings in midtown. “You do know, at some point we really are going to have to visit the Empire State Building.”
I shrug. “I guess. When we run out of everything else.” A little shudder ripples my skin into goose bumps. How long will that take? How many more Thursdays do I have with Alessandro before the city dries up and leaves me with no excuse to see him again?
He nods slowly as his gaze shifts to me. “That could take years.”
Years. The combination of his words, the intensity of his gaze, and the fact that he just answered my unasked question, gives me more goose bumps. Is he staying for years? Or will he go back to Corsica and leave me here again?
I shake the despair that settles in my bones with the thought away. It doesn’t matter if he stays or goes. He doesn’t matter to me.
But it’s hard to convince myself of that as I stand here, locked in his gaze.
“Roosevelt Island was occupied by the British throughout the Revolutionary War, until 1782. American prisoners of war were quartered there until peace negotiations were under way,” he says, releasing me from his gaze and turning toward the island we’re approaching.
I start breathing again. “You’re into art and history? What kind of a geek are you?”
His gaze flashes to me and there’s an amused spark in his eyes. “A geek of epic proportions.”
We glide alongside the Queensboro Bridge, out over the East River, and our tramcar starts descending as we approach Roosevelt Island. The whole thing only lasts about four minutes, but it’s four seriously incredible minutes.
“There is a bus,” Alessandro says as we unload from the tram, “but I’d
prefer to explore on foot, if you’re up for a little more walking.”
I shrug to hide my shudder, wondering if he’ll put his arm around me again. “Sure.”
He ushers me out of the station and across the street toward the Manhattan side of the island, where we walk along the road near the river, past what Alessandro says is the only subway stop on the island, until we come to a brick path on the left. We head down the path toward the water to a large observation platform that looks back over East River toward the city.
I lean my elbows on the rail and watch a tugboat chug up the river. “It’s nice here. Quiet.”
“It is. There’s only one bridge onto the island from the Queens side, so traffic is limited.”
I turn and look at the road behind us, between the apartment buildings and the water. There are a few parked cars, but no traffic jam. No taxi drivers honking their horns. “They should do that for all of Manhattan,” I say, turning back to the city. “You know . . . like when people make you take your shoes off at their front door,” I say, thinking of Mallory. “Welcome to Manhattan. Leave your car at the door.”
I glance at Alessandro and his eyes scan the city. “That’s an intriguing thought.” After a minute, he looks at me and waves an arm to the right. “There’s an old asylum and a lighthouse to the north, if you’re interested.”
I crack a smile. “An asylum, huh? Is that why you brought me here? To be with all the other crazy people?”
He smiles back. “It closed decades ago. Only a small part of it is left. They’ve built an apartment building around it. I’m actually more interested in the lighthouse at the northern tip of the island. It was built from stone quarried off the island. And at the southern tip are the ruins of an old smallpox hospital that I’d like to see.”
“How do you know all this?”
He smiles and tips his head at me. “The internet is an amazing thing.”
He grasps my elbow gently and guides me off the to the right, and I think again of the night he found me. The internet really is an amazing thing.
We follow the walking path along the water, taking in the peaceful quiet and the view of the city. Even the cold November air feels crisper here. Apartment buildings and condos are spread behind us, but there’s an expanse of grassy space all around them. Space. It’s like city living in the country.
We don’t talk, but it’s comfortable silence, and I feel myself unwinding a little as we walk. After about fifteen minutes, Alessandro breaks the silence. “This way,” he says, directing me off the path and back across the road. We loop around the front of a gray cement apartment building with lots of windows until we come to the front entrance. It’s octagonal, built from stacked blocks of rough gray granite, and topped with a blue roof.
“The Octagon,” Alessandro says. “This was the entrance to the asylum. The rest of it was demolished decades ago.”
“So,” I say, looking over the building, “there was an asylum and a smallpox hospital. Was this like Quarantine Island or something?”
“Not exactly,” he answers, still examining the building. “There were, and still are, hospitals on the island. It’s one of the few places in Manhattan where there was still open land to build them.”
He takes my elbow again and we start back toward the path along the river. In another ten minutes we’re at the obvious tip of the island, and perched there is a tall, gray gothic-looking lighthouse, built out of the same rough granite blocks as the Octagon. There are two other people milling around it, snapping shots—the only two people we’ve seen on the path. So maybe this place really is undiscovered.
Alessandro’s hand slips into mine and he holds it as we take a circle around the lighthouse. “The lighthouse was active from 1872 through the mid 1900s, when most commerce was still seafaring,” he tells me, and for some reason I find it interesting. But not as interesting as his face as he examines it from all sides. From his strong cheekbones to the dimple on his chin, those lines beg for me to trace them with my finger.
His eyes gravitate to mine, and the air is suddenly charged. His grip on my hand becomes tighter, and I don’t even realize I’ve leaned into him until he clears his throat and steps back, letting go of my hand. He rubs the back of his neck. “We should loop down the Queens side of the island.”
I nod and he lays a hand on my back, ushering me that direction. Where I was cold before, now I’m beyond hot, and his hand on my back is the source of the burn that works slowly through me. Whatever’s hanging in the air between us is palpable, like a gravitational pull that won’t be denied. We walk without talking, but there’s so much I want to say—things I feel the desperate need to tell him.
But I can’t.
He veers off the path once to walk me past a white clapboard house. “This is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Manhattan, the Blackwell House,” he says. “The Blackwells owned the entire island until 1828, when they sold it to New York.”
Finally, he drapes his arm over my shoulder as we walk back to the path, and something deep inside me aches at the feel of him there. There’s some part of me that still remembers how safe I felt with Alessandro way back when—and how scared I was after.
Please, don’t leave me.
The tears that streamed down my face as I said those words threaten again at the memory. I push them away and look out over the water toward Queens.
“This is it,” Alessandro says, “the old smallpox hospital.”
I look at him, then past him at the remains of a crumbling three-story stone building sprawling across the southern tip of the island. It’s all gothic, with intricate stonework over the entrances and peaked windows, built from the same gray stone as everything else, with a roof that caved in decades ago and climbing vines all up the walls. It looks totally creepy, like it’s got to be haunted. I half expect gargoyles or whatever.
“It’s eerie,” I tell Alessandro. “But really cool.”
“That it is.”
I shudder when he smiles down at me.
We loop around the large building and over to the path on the Manhattan side of the island, where we lean against the rail, him gazing back at the ruins of the hospital, and me looking toward the city. As we stand here, I realize everything in me feels calmer just being out of it. Everything is slower here. It’s quiet, and even though it’s technically still part of Manhattan, it feels like a whole different planet. I can stand here and watch the city race by and for the first time I can remember, I don’t have to worry if I’m keeping up.
“What are you thinking?” Alessandro asks.
When I look up at him, I realize he’s staring at me. “When does it stop being hard?”
I’m not really sure what I mean, but Alessandro looks back over the city with a pensive expression and shakes his head, as if he understood me perfectly. “Damned if I know.”
WE’RE DOING SCENES from fairy tales tonight and I’m Sleeping Beauty. From the Disney version, no less. I tried to tell Quinn I’m totally not the girl for this part. I don’t do airhead. But he said the true test of an actor’s grit is when they have to do something out of their comfort zone.
So here I am, way the hell out of my comfort zone.
Nathan is Prince Phillip. Better him than Mike. Mike’s kind of a douche.
We’ve got the scene when Princess Aurora (me) meets Prince Phillip (Nathan) in the woods. Of course, I’m clueless and don’t know I’m a kick-ass princess, so I swoon all over Prince Phillip and he falls in love with me at first sight because I’m so ditzy, and I need a big, strong man to protect me.
By the time Nathan and I are done, I feel like I need a shower.
“Pick something better next week, Quinn,” I grumble when I take my seat next to him.
“That was horrible, Irish,” he says, shaking his head. “Worst I’ve ever seen from you. Utterly uninspired.”
“It’s hard to be inspired when the role sucks. The least you could have done was given me the evil fairy. I could have
gotten into that.”
“But any great actress figures it out. You needed a challenge, and I handed you one. Instead of rising to it and showing us something softer, you bashed it over the head. Sometime you’ve got to let your softer side show, Irish.” His lips press into a line. “And I’m not just talking about the play.”
I fidget with a hole in my jeans as the next group, Kamara, Vee, and Mike start on their scene from Hansel and Gretel.
When everyone is done, Quinn stands. “Next week, Greek tragedies. Pick up your roles on the table.”
I move to the table and see my name on a script for Antigone. Mike and I are doing the scene together.
As I’m scanning through my part, Nathan comes up behind me. “Sorry that was so lame.”
I look up and shrug. “We didn’t have much to work with.” I lift my script for next week. “This looks a little more promising.”
“Good.” He scratches the top of his head. “So . . . there’s this—”
“Dude! Tell me I’ve got something better than Hansel,” Mike says, clapping Nathan on the back and cutting him off. He scoops his script up and flashes me a grin full of perfect white teeth. “Looks like we’re together, Irish.”
“Looks that way,” I say, folding my script into my back pocket. “See you guys later.”
But as I walk home through the park, I can’t stop thinking about what Quinn said, because as he said it, I realized something. I walk around every day wearing a face that’s not mine. I’ve hidden my softer, weaker parts behind a character who’s tough and doesn’t need anyone—my comfort zone. But Alessandro brings those parts out in me. Something about being with him pries those softer parts out from under my armor. He brings out that little girl that I was when we met. But I can’t go back to that. Not when I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am.
Sometimes Quinn is wrong.
Chapter Twelve
I’VE LEFT THREE voice mails for Brett in the ten days he’s been gone, and he finally called me back at two this morning. He was in a crowd somewhere, but between the loud music, the fact that he was drunk enough that he was seriously slurring, and the woman whining that he should hang up and dance with her, I couldn’t catch where. I’m not even sure what city he’s in.
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