Chapter 19
Malena
The next day, I set myself up in my usual secluded corner in the library.
Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows and colorful bars lit the otherwise dull timber-framed wall. Here, in the back, behind rows of mahogany bookcases, a few glossy wooden tables were made available.
My fingers ran over the foil-lettered invitation to the annual Diwali party being hosted on campus. I pushed it into a book when I heard movement coming my way and settled back into the rigid seat, breathing in the scent of old paper.
“Holmes.” I closed my eyes briefly. His voice felt like the gentle pinches from the derma roller Cora bought me for my birthday last year. “Any luck?”
I looked over my shoulder and the warm gleam in his cerulean eyes almost held my complete attention.
And they would have, had it not been for the way his dark gray crew-neck sweater fit him just right.
Slightly loose except in certain spots, like the way it snagged on his sleeves and strained with his every move.
Or when the fabric grew taut against his chest when it filled with air.
Like right now, as he smiled at me.
My lungs burned.
“No, not yet.” I scooted over to make space for him on the bench. “But I only started a few minutes ago.”
“Oh yeah?” He sat down and the space between us disappeared. He paged through a book titled American Impressionists he must’ve just pulled from a shelf. “I was sure that you’d be here early.”
He settled in and pulled a folded sheet of paper from his backpack, laying it open. My eyes moved down the list and I made out familiar names. The few I recognized were of painters. With my brain trying to catch up, I managed to spit out, “What’s that?”
“After seeing that piece in the studio, I did a little digging and figured it was meant to resemble an impressionist painting.” He flipped through a few more pages then reached toward my stack from the archives, running his fingers over the spines of both before he nodded and pulled one open.
“I made a list of painters from the late 1800s who had some prominence, then cross-checked their works with what I remembered from the piece in the hazard-taped studio.”
I watched him riffle through the pages, noting how long the list was. At least twenty-five names, which told me he’d likely been working on this since we went our separate ways in town last weekend.
My mouth hung open. “You did all this in five days?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t look up, just kept bouncing his eyes over the pages and scribbling in a leatherbound notebook he’d pulled from his bag. “I was curious.”
Regardless of whether he was helping out of obligation or because he was genuinely interested in the article, it was… ugh. It was cute. And he had no business being cute while looking like that.
“What’s this?” Conrad asked a few minutes later, holding up the invitation to the Diwali event.
He flipped from the English side to the one with The Festival of Lights written in various languages.
At the bottom of the back side, announced in Hindi, was the date and venue—which Conrad appeared to be mouthing.
He looked up after a minute and said, “I went a few years ago.”
“You can read that?”
“I thought we already established that I can, in fact, read,” he noted offhandedly, then grinned to himself in confirmation that what he’d read was translated in his head correctly. When I didn’t answer, an unreasonably charming smile pinched his cheek. “Not just a pretty face.”
“You… can read Hindi?” I amended, still sounding incredulous to my own ears.
“Not well.” He shrugged, attention back on his ancient book, now flipped to a chapter on the early 1900s.
“Isha and I made a bet back at Le Rosey. She bet that I couldn’t make it to the top of the mountain and ski back before class one morning.
” His eyes took on a faraway look, and I noted the fondness in them.
“If she won, I had to learn Hindi. If I did, she had to learn the Viennese Waltz.”
“So, you lost?”
He shook his head.
“She cheated. She had James stop the ski lift I was on.” He thumbed another page and kept reading as though this story wasn’t wild.
“Anyway, we called a draw. I learned basic, conversational Hindi, and she learned the stuffy dance. If anything, I’m the real winner here.
I learned some of a language and she learned a skill only useful in 1700s Vienna. ”
He said it all simply, like the fact that bopping around world-class ski slopes at his boarding school in Switzerland was a regular occurrence. “You went to boarding school with all your friends?”
Was I the only one who showed up to college without a built-in group of friends? I shook my head. Thank God for Cora and Sabrina, or I’d be alone.
“No, just me, Isha, and James. Felix and Lucy we met here. So…” He lifted the card between his fingers. “Are you going?”
“Oh.” I wasn’t planning on it. Cora wouldn’t be around and Sabrina was thousands of miles away.
When I was with them, my world felt full and vibrant, but without them, it felt like…
like a reminder that there was a flaw in my code.
That I didn’t belong. And as much as I loved Diwali, I hated the reminder. “I… um, I’m…”
He looked up from the book and his striking blue eyes managed to once again pull a bizarre stream of consciousness from me.
“I love the holiday. When I was a kid, we used to have a big party with all my cousins. We’d get dressed up and dance for most of the night,” I began.
“I always ended up eating so much jalebi that I got sick…” His mouth curved up in a smile, inviting me to go on.
This time, I blinked it away. “But, no. I probably won’t go. ”
His smile fell. “Why not?”
“I usually go with my friends, but the party is right before fall break and they won’t be around.”
“So you can’t go?”
“It’s…” Irritation crinkled between my eyes.
“Don’t tell me you’re scared to go by yourself.” A light, disbelieving chuckle moved through his lips. “The same person who would have wandered around probably haunted catacombs alone?”
“No,” I retorted, my voice getting louder in the quiet space. “I just… don’t feel like it.”
He wouldn’t understand what it felt like to discover that all the places you should have fit in were in fact inhospitable. “You wouldn’t get it.”
“I was only saying—”
“I don’t fit there.” The words flew out of my mouth, and even though they caused my pulse to hike in embarrassment, I hoped they at least warranted an exit to this conversation. “Drop it, okay?”
“I’m sorry.” The sincerity in his voice made my heart stumble, but I focused my attention on the books in front of me.
“It’s fine.” I swallowed the emotion that clogged the back of my throat and gestured to the table. “We still have a stack of these to get through.”
“Right.”
The tense air dissipated, but we spent the next thirty minutes or so paging through the archives in silence.
After getting through a stack of American impressionists, Conrad leaned back against the bench and stretched an arm out. This close, the cedary scent in his cologne clouded around me, giving me what I was sure was a contact high, because I was suddenly dizzy.
Maybe it was that downright slutty sweater.
He blew out a long breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “They look like Van Holden pieces, but not a single one ticks all the boxes. Matching color palette, slightly different subject. Right subject, slightly different background. Nothing matches exactly.”
“So much for forgeries.” My voice faltered because at that moment, his thumb drew a tiny line up and down along the soft wool fabric of my sweater that hung over my shoulder. I kept my attention ahead. “Why forge something that never existed? Maybe it’s an elaborate prank?”
My stomach see-sawed. Did he realize what he was doing? Either way, I didn’t want it to stop.
I stayed completely still, reveling in the feeling. When Conrad didn’t say anything, I turned my head to look at him. Under the warm yellow glow from our study cubby’s Edison lamp, I could see the exhaustion beginning to line the corners of his eyes as he closed them. “Are you okay?”
“Tired is all,” he answered as his head tilted back against the wall. “We’re training for the Head of the Charles race. Two-a-days. I’m beat.”
“See?” I teased. “Motivation isn’t just for people who plan to die on Everest.”
He shook with a silent laugh, his thumb continuing its up-and-back movement. “Don’t ruin my reputation with all that motivation talk. It’s only for the race.”
A gentle stroke moved along my collarbone, and my breath caught.
“Right.” I nodded, my pulse thrummed. “Boats and paddles and such.”
Bright blue peeked out from beneath his eyelids and he smiled. He sat up and my shoulder immediately missed the light touch.
“Yup. Rowing and oars and such,” he corrected gently. “The Head of the Charles is over in Boston. It’s two days of races. The biggest regatta of the season, and people tend to fly from all over to spectate. Every year around this time is exhausting.”
“That’s pretty cool. Will your family be there?” His dad didn’t seem like the cheering type, but surely there was more to his family. I thought back to his mention of brothers, of his mother who lived in the city.
Conrad chuckled again, but he looked down at my face, entirely serious, and his smile fell. “Oh. No,” he answered indifferently. “But Isha and Lucy always tag along. Some years my mom comes too.”
My brow furrowed. How neglected did you have to be to hear that question and assume it was a joke? Despite how often I felt suffocated, trapped, and perpetually misunderstood by my parents, at least I could never say I was ignored.
“Is she coming this year?”
He opened his mouth then closed it, his eyes dropping to the table. “Probably not.”
“When is it?” I asked, then mentally scolded myself because now I felt like I was prying. We weren’t exactly friends.