32. Amelie
32
AMELIE
I give Henry poor directions to my favorite breakfast place, second only to the patisserie back home. We make two wrong turns, since all trees look the same and I’m too prideful to use GPS, but we get there eventually. I develop a horrid appetite by the time we’re seated, so I order my usual—the biggest stack of pancakes I’ve ever seen.
Henry gets a black coffee and an omelet. He thanks the waitress and hands the menus back to her when she brings out his mug, and I watch in horror as he drinks it. I understand that he likes black coffee, but that fact will never not get to me. Where’s the flavor? It’s dirt water!
“Why are you making that horrible face?” Henry asks through a smile.
I take a sip of my coffee—perfectly flavored with sugar and cream. “No reason.”
“There has to be a reason.”
“Nothing you’d be interested in.”
“Ah.” He nods solemnly. “Got it.”
“I think you’re just talking to hear your own voice.”
A faint smile. “I thought you enjoyed nonsensical conversation.”
“Only when I’m the one talking.” I pause to stir my coffee. “You know, Arlington, I’m starting to realize that I don’t know much about you.”
He meets my eyes, shock clouding his expression. “How do you figure?”
“I don’t know. Like, I know things about you, yeah, but what if they aren’t true anymore? Do you still like baseball?”
He nods. “Yes, I’m alright with baseball.”
“Tom Hanks movies?”
“Of course.”
“ Lord of the Rings ?”
He shrugs. “I could do without it, but the sentiment is there.”
I grin. “Okay. So that’s all the same.”
“I think I am the same,” he says, shrugging. “Not much has changed. Though I feel like the opposite would be said about you. And that isn’t a jab,” he adds on, “before you mention it. I’m just saying.”
I cross my arms and exhale. “So ask what you want.”
Henry’s brows shoot up, and I hold my breath. He’s going to go in for the kill, I think. He’ll ask the deepest, most personal questions he can think of just to see me squirm. Might even make a show of drawing information out of me.
“You said certain things are off limits,” he reminds.
“You get one free question. Choose wisely.”
He runs his tongue over his teeth, holding eye contact with me. I’m expecting a question about my job, or about what happened between us, or literally anything other than, “What’s the deal with you and Margot?”
“ That’s what you’re asking?”
Henry nods.
“I’m regretting giving you free reign over this,” I mutter.
“I knew you would.” He smiles, and my stomach dips at the sight. From hunger pains, obviously. Not because of the way his face brightens, or because his eyes are still glued on mine, or any of that other stuff. I’m simply starving.
“Margot and I stopped talking on our own four years ago,” I start, fixing my focus on the napkin holder. “At first, Mom would hand me the phone once a week and tell me to talk, but when I moved out, we didn’t have that anymore, so we fell off. Shortly after that, it just…” I wave a hand through the air as my voice trails off. “You get it.”
He nods, implying that he does, indeed, get it.
I sit further back and close my eyes as a small voice in my head screams at me. That isn’t the full truth. That isn’t real. And the voice is right; that isn’t the whole story. But I’m not about to dive into the truth right now. Not at seven in the morning, when I have an opportunity to interrogate Henry.
“I assumed it would be something more dramatic,” he admits, then frowns. “No, let me rephrase that. Not dramatic , just…”
“Worse?” I offer.
He shakes his head. “Layered.”
I shrug. “It’s never mattered much to me. I don’t think about it.”
Lie.
“Do you think this trip will change anything?” Henry asks.
I shrug again. “Not with how things are going so far. But it’s fine, I guess. If it’s meant to be fixed, it will be.”
“It will,” he agrees, and for some reason, that reassurance makes me tense up. I didn’t intend to tell him all of this, and now that I have, I feel like I’ve said too much. It wasn’t deliberate, but I’m not on my guard right now. His gaze is almost disarming—if I don’t look away, I’m going to give up the codes to my safe.
“My turn,” I blurt, clasping my hands in front of me. The quickest way out of this is to turn it around on him. “Now I get to ask questions.”
“I didn’t agree to that.”
I cock my head. “You’re going to turn me down?”
“No,” he says smoothly.
“Okay. Good.” I exhale. “Tell me about your family.”
“That isn’t a question, and you know about my family.”
“Not really. I knew very little in the past, and I know even less now. Talk.”
Henry sighs but doesn’t bother arguing. “Fine. My dad—as you’ve learned—owns The Gallery. It turned him into one of those stereotypical businessmen who lives in their office, surrounded by ink pens and deposit slips, and now, he’s more of a business partner than a family member.”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t talk outside of payment trades. Technically, I work on my own, but he insists on displaying my public work in his museum. I told him I wouldn’t do it unless he gave me some form of return, so he pays Lizzy and I’s rent. It was more of a petty request than an actual want, but I couldn’t resist.” A pause. “I’ve got a lot of work in there, some under aliases. It’s too much to transfer, even if he’d let me.” He takes a deep breath, glancing out the window before staring into his coffee. “I’m actually not sure I should’ve said that.”
“It doesn’t affect me,” I say, but then I wonder if it does. How many pieces have I taken that were under an alias of his? How many will I take in the future? I can’t do that. I already vowed to leave him alone. “What…what are the names?”
He looks at me, amused. “I’m not saying that.”
“Oh, come on .”
“You know too much, Ames.” He grins. “More than most.”
I try to ignore the way those words make me feel. Something is wrong with me this morning.
“My turn now,” Henry says, and I scoff.
“I barely even got a turn!”
“I just gave you a fair bit of information.”
True. “Fine. But I can turn this down.”
“Alright.” He leans forward. “What’s your favorite color?”
I try—and fail—to hide my shock. “You want to know my favorite color?”
“Yes. Is it still green?”
Why is he asking me this? Is it to mess with me? There’s probably some psychological thing in asking a deep question, then an impersonal one. Maybe it’s meant to get my guard down even further.
“Pink,” I say slowly, looking down at my blush-colored sweater. “I thought that was obvious.”
“It was, but I didn’t want to make the wrong assumption.”
“A wise man,” I mumble, stretching my legs out under the table. I go far enough that my legs knock into Henry’s, but neither of us move away. “And yours?”
“Gray.”
Of course his is the same, much like everything else about him. The way he acts and talks. His passions and cares. His snarky attitude, the way he can still make me freeze under his gaze?—
“Like your eyes,” Henry adds. “The same shade of gray as your eyes.”
I clamp my mouth shut. “Pardon?”
He nods casually. “I’ve always loved your eyes.”
My face goes hot. Henry is obviously enjoying this, because he’s trying to hide the smile crawling across his face. But why do I care? He’s an artist. He’s always aware of colors and shapes and facial profiles and all that jazz. The second he saw me in the museum, he was probably sizing me up, evaluating me like a subject. Seeing what was different about me.
Her nose seems more crooked now, I’m sure he thought. Her hair is tangled. WOW! I never noticed—her ears look like Dobby’s.
“Okay,” I say, my throat feeling dry. “Thank you.”
He laughs. “Don’t act so stunned.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because you know I think you’re beautiful. You’ve always been aware of that.”
My mouth falls open, and I decide I need to leave this restaurant immediately. “You can’t say things like that.”
Henry hums and stretches his legs out further, enough that our shins are fully pressed together. This booth is very small, I realize, because we’re both still sitting straight up. “Why not?”
Oh . That tone. This is a challenge.
I open my mouth to say something. I’m not really sure what , because my brain is genuinely not cooperating, but I never have to figure out an answer. A waitress appears with our breakfast and saves me from any further trouble.
I’m thankful for two reasons.
One, Henry can’t keep confusing me if he isn’t talking.
And two, I won’t ask what I want to ask, which keeps the peace.
What are those aliases ?
It shouldn’t matter to me, but it does. And I’m going to get a concrete answer, no matter how much he tries to distract me with his words and glances.