37. Henry
37
HENRY
The drive back to the cabin is silent.
Well, conversation-wise, at least. Not so much noise- wise, given that Arnie and Melinda find an oldies station that they simply have to sing to.
But Amelie doesn’t say a word. She keeps her body turned toward the window and her eyes on the ditch. I answer the few questions that get tossed around, trying to give responses that satisfy her parents so she doesn’t have to speak.
I want to know what’s bothering her. I want to know what switch flipped, because it was almost instantaneous, and it seems to be causing a lot more trouble than I’d originally thought.
The four of us disperse when we’re inside, each going to our respective rooms. I change into something comfier and more casual before stepping back into the living room, and when I do, the only person I lay eyes on is Margot.
I didn’t expect her to be back so soon, but I can’t even question her presence before Amelie’s words pop into my mind.
No being alone in a room with Margot.
She’s already seen me, though. It’s probably pointless to leave.
Cautiously, I make my way into the living room, dropping into the seat across from her. She’s still in her clothes from the showing, but she’s got a book settled in her lap. Her eyes stay glued to the page, so I hope I’m free from questions. If I were smart, I would’ve brought my own form of distraction, because now I’m staring at a blanket on the couch.
“How was the rest of the exhibit?” Margot asks suddenly, hardly looking up from her page. “I didn’t get to walk around.”
“It was nice,” I say coolly. “Your work was great.”
“Thank you.” She sets her book aside and, internally, I panic. A book being discarded means there’s no chance of avoiding questions. It’s real. This is an actual conversation now. “Why are you here, Henry?”
I blink. “Because I didn’t want to stay in my room?—”
“ Here ,” she emphasizes. “With Amelie.”
“Because she asked me to be.”
That’s a flat-out lie. I don’t even think I was on her list of options.
Margot hums. “So you’re really dating her?”
“Why is that in question?”
“Just curious.” She shrugs. “That’s a yes, then?”
“Yes,” I say, loving the way that answer feels. “We’re together. I wouldn’t be here if we weren’t.”
“It was only a question. Not many people choose to date their ex again.”
This is definitely why Amelie told me to stay away from Margot.
“Things just happen,” I say, as if it’s some profound thing and not the dumbest sentence I’ve ever said. “And I’m happy this did.”
She does that humming thing again. I think it’s her way of saying ‘I don’t believe a word you’re saying’.
“So this has nothing to do with…I don’t know, trying to get dirt on her?”
My breath catches in my chest at the implication. At the fact that it’s exactly what my dad asked me to do. “No,” I say firmly. “I’d never do that.”
“Really,” she mumbles, dragging the word out. “That’s strange. I wouldn’t think you’re okay with her job.”
“We’ve discussed this already,” I counter. “Though it’s really none of your concern.”
Margot frowns, like the sentence is distasteful. “And you’re willing to love someone like her?”
My brows draw together. “Why are you belittling her?”
“I’m not. I’m asking you a question. You work in the same line as I do, Henry. You’re an artist. That’s something she hates.”
“No, she doesn’t,” I say, aware that this argument is pointless. So what if Amelie does hate me? It wouldn’t change anything. I’m arguing for little more than my pride at this point.
“Then why ?” Margot sounds exasperated. “Why else would she be doing this?”
I run a hand over my face and exhale. “Maybe you should ask Amelie, rather than trying to make me talk down about her.”
Margot’s face is unreadable as she picks her book back up, seemingly irritated by my suggestion. I let her eyes dart around the page for all of ten seconds before I interrupt her. “I’m going to ask you something now.”
She clicks her tongue. “Fine.”
“Do you know what happened between Amelie and I?”
Her brows raise as she looks up at me, and I get the urge to take the question back. “No. I was at school, and when I got back, she was causing trouble in the city.”
“She never said anything?”
“No. Why?”
I don’t respond, but I don’t have to. She picks up on it almost instantly.
“You don’t even know, do you?” She sits up, crosses her legs. There’s something like excitement in her eyes now, and I’d be appalled if it weren’t making me nervous. “You’ve got no idea.”
I swallow. “No. I have no idea.”
“You guys haven’t talked about it?”
“It hasn’t come up,” I blurt. I really get it now, why Amelie didn’t want me alone with Margot. She’s going to get information out of me just by confusing me. “It doesn’t really matter, I guess. It was four years ago.”
She snorts. “It was years ago, yeah. So what? It was enough to pry the two of you apart, and you were attached at the hip. It couldn’t have just been anything. Do you really want to be together not knowing what happened?”
I crack my knuckles and realize that I’m about to make a very foolish decision.
“Our connection stopped. I don’t know why.” My throat tightens around the words. “I called her, and each one went unreturned. I wrote her, and?—”
“You wrote her ?” Margot sounds revolted.
“Yes. How else was I meant to get in touch with her?”
Her face wrinkles for a moment. “Huh. That’s odd.”
“That she never answered? I know.”
“No, that you even wrote to her. If the connection falls off, it falls off.” She stands and walks to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee that I’m almost certain is cold. “It’s a desperate thing to try and get it back.”
I bristle. “Is that why you two haven’t talked?”
She laughs dryly, and I know I’m about to get even deeper into this argument. “A phone works both ways. Amelie could’ve called me if she wanted.”
I cross my arms, bite my tongue. I have zero right to argue over this. Amelie hasn’t even told me the full story, and even if she had, it wouldn’t be mine to handle. But the way Margot talks about her makes me tick.
Still. This isn’t what I want to focus on right now.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “It isn’t my place to talk about this.”
“You’re right. It isn’t.” Margot takes a seat at the bar and grabs a magazine off the counter, opening it right to the middle. “I know you care about my sister, but you need to stay out of this. It’s between the two of us. All of it.”
I stay silent, mostly because Amelie descends the stairs as soon as Margot stops talking.
“Hi,” she says, eyes going between her sister and I. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing.” Margot’s voice drips with sarcasm. “Nothing at all.”
This room feels mildly combustible.
“Okay.” Amelie drags the word out. She frowns in Margot’s direction before turning toward me. “Come upstairs.”
It’s not a request, and I’m made aware of that when she grabs my hand and tugs me off the couch. She takes me to her room and closes the door behind us, sighing as she sits on her bed. Pillows and random articles of clothing cover the rest of the mattress, so I sit in her desk chair.
“Did she do what I said she would?” Amelie asks.
“Yes,” I say, “and she should work for the FBI.”
She blows out a breath. “I know. It’s weird.”
“I didn’t say much of anything,” I tell her, deciding to keep the slight argument to myself. “Mostly, I just talked in circles.”
“She knows,” Amelie says, grabbing a pillow and hugging it to her chest. “That we’re pretending, I mean. I can tell that she does.”
“She might suspect ,” I correct her, “but she doesn’t know. We’ve given her no reason to think this is fake.”
Amelie stays silent for a bit, picking at her polished nails as she stares at the wall. It’s ridiculous, but really, I just want one of us to snap. To admit that Margot would have no way of suspecting a thing, because this hasn’t felt fake to us.
It could be one-sided.
But after the way she reacted to me earlier, I’m not sure that’s the case.
“Henry, I have to tell you something,” Amelie says, voice lowered. “And you might hate me for it.”
“I could never hate you.” The words are too true. “What is it?”
She finally meets my eyes, her mouth pulled into a frown. “I lied to you. In high school, about the academy. Nothing fell through—I turned them down.”
I have to actively drag that conversation out of my memory. Of all the things she could’ve been addressing, I didn’t expect it to be this. “What do you mean?”
She swallows. Turns away from me. “Do you have that one person you can’t beat? That you feel like you can’t measure up to? Because for me, that’s my sister. She was always better than me. She’s still better than me. So when I got accepted…” She takes a breath. “Margot told me that she got in, too. She applied without telling anyone.”
Oh . I guess this whole thing has been deep-rooted for longer than I realized.
“I turned them down because I didn’t want to do the same thing as her. I didn’t want to hear about how well things were going for her at every turn.” She pauses. “No. Let me rephrase that. I would’ve been fine with hearing about her victories. I would’ve been happy for her. But I wanted to be good, too. I wanted to do something on my own, and I had no chance at that when I was constantly worried about what she was doing.”
Amelie stops talking and looks at me. She’s waiting for an answer, I think, but I’m calculating my words. I don’t want to speak yet. She’s just laid herself bare for me, and if I trip over my words or say the wrong thing, I’ll never forgive myself.
Thankfully, I don’t have to talk yet, because Amelie continues.
“It wasn’t a direct thing,” she says quietly. “I didn’t choose this to hurt you, or her, or anyone else. It’s just what I got into, and I’m good at it. I don’t think I’ll ever be this good at something else.”
“Do you even enjoy it?” I ask. It may not be the correct response, but I’m curious. Based on her tone, her words, it doesn’t sound that way. It sounds like an obligation.
Amelie nods. “I do. Though I enjoy it more when I’m in the city. It’s weird to be away from it.” She laughs dryly. “All of this…I don’t know. Being back here makes me think of what I once wanted.”
“You can have that, you know,” I say, turning more toward her. “Nobody is keeping you from it.”
“Don’t.” She shakes her head, sets her jaw. “Don’t try to talk me out of it, Henry. That’s not what I’m asking for.”
“I’m not,” I say incredulously. “That’s not at all what I was saying.”
Amelie opens her mouth, then snaps it shut before turning away. It takes me a moment to realize why she sounds so defensive. Why she’s giving me a warning, rather than flat-out arguing my statement.
She thinks I’m saying this for my sake. She’s telling me that she won’t change because she feels like I want her to.
“I don’t want to change you, Ames,” I say, and she meets my eyes when I say her name. “That’s the last thing I’ve ever wanted. Your decisions are your own, and I’ve always respected that.”
“I know you have.” There’s a challenging expression resting in her eyes, and it worries me for what’s going to come next. “But what’s changed?”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
“What’s changed with you? Because yes, you’ve always respected my decisions. But I think we both know that, four years ago, you wouldn’t respect this about me.”
I gape at her. “Amelie, I’m not lying.”
“I know that,” she presses. “That’s why I’m asking. What has changed? Why are you okay with it now ?”
There’s not a single logical thought on the forefront of my mind, because despite how much I hate it, she’s right. Four years ago, I would’ve been appalled. I would’ve been horrified at her openness with what she does. With both our attitudes back then, we wouldn’t have lasted past the day that I found out.
But something has changed, because right now, it’s the last thing I care about. It’s not the thing I see when I look at her. I’m not focused on something that she chose four years ago out of what sounds like discouragement. And I guess I should be; I understand that it’s technically wrong to ‘overlook’ something like this, but I’m not overlooking it. I’m aware of it. Have been for ages.
And it has not once succeeded in turning me away from her.
In fact, I’m more captivated by her than I’ve ever been.
These aren’t simply old feelings being sparked again, and I know that. This is a different, newer sense of want. Of need. This is right now. It’s real, and it could be a disastrous thing, but I don’t care. If that’s the case, then I want her to be my end.
Her infrequent, small admissions do nothing to quell my urge to learn more about her. I want to know everything she’s willing to tell me. Every thought she’s had in the past four years. I want to know how her mind works, how she thinks through each and every detail in her plans. How she’s not gotten caught by anyone but me.
I want to tell her that she’s allowed to take pride in her work. And the thing is, I know I’d mean it.
So why am I okay with it now? What has changed?
I have no idea.
My mind is running too rampantly to pinpoint the direction of my thoughts. I couldn’t give her a straight answer if I tried, but I’m able to zero in on the one thing I can’t say.
It’s the fact that I still love her.
The fact that I never stopped, not really.
But I’ve lost her once, and I refuse to do it again. Not over this.
“I don’t know,” I say quietly. It’s not the answer I want to give, but it’s the only one I can get out. “I can’t…I don’t know.”
She nods calmly, while I feel anything but. The look on her face says that she doesn’t believe me, and she confirms that suspicion by asking, “Really?”
I hesitate, because I know my answer isn’t enough for her yet. She wants a real answer, one where I explain my train of thought and why I feel this way. And I’m not going to do her the disservice of talking around it. We’re already walking on eggshells—the more we gravitate toward the other, the more terrifying this becomes. It’s so breakable, and I’ll die before being the one to shatter it.
“I know why,” I correct myself, “but I know it’s not what you’re looking for.”
Amelie’s brows draw together. “What does that mean?’
“It means that I know you, and you want a full answer. Not something like ‘ Because it’s you’, or ‘ Because this is now and that was the past’. That won’t suffice for you, and that’s okay.”
Her face is painted with shock, like I’ve actually surprised her with this response. “Wow, Arlington. You get it now.”
I give a dry, ingenuine laugh. “I know how you operate.”
“Apparently so,” she mutters, sitting up on her bed. The frown she’s been wearing for days settles deeper around her mouth as she leans further into her pillows. She swaps the one on her lap out for a stuffed dog and closes her eyes, but I know she’s not relaxed. She’s tapping her fingers on her opposite wrist, and her foot is bouncing against her thigh.
“What happened to us, Ames?” I whisper, unable to keep the question to myself any longer. I know that it isn’t the time to ask. I know that this is breaking the rules we set, that I’ve broken nearly every one thus far. But I have to know. “What was it?”
Her eyes open, and her entire body stiffens at my voice. “You’re not serious.”
“I am.”
She sits up. Pins me with her eyes. “That’s a cruel thing to ask, Henry. Especially when?—”
“ I’m cruel?” My voice is soft, but Amelie still flinches. “How? I didn’t?—”
“You didn’t . That’s the thing.” She stands up straight, goes right to her door. “I don’t need this. Not before tomorrow.”
Guilt settles in my chest. “Amelie, wait. I didn’t?—”
“Not. Now.”
She slams the door behind her as she steps out into the hallway.
I don’t follow.