17. Amalia
It’s been five days since Professor Vaughn missed class, and even though we were told he had a few days off, I can’t shake the feeling there’s something else going on. That man doesn’t strike me as someone who knows what a vacation is.
The substitute teacher finishes writing the formulas on the board, so I copy them quickly and close my notebook.
I promised Lupe we’d have lunch together at the cafeteria, so I rush to grab a table in a corner where we can actually hear each other over the noise.
Once I’ve secured a spot, I open my laptop and read ahead for tomorrow’s lecture, losing track of time entirely the way I always do when the material actually interests me. I’m three chapters deep by the time I feel a kiss dropped on the top of my head.
“Ame, stop scowling at that screen or it’s going to crack from sheer terror,” my twin says, dropping into the chair across from me.
I shake my head at her, close my laptop, and feel a quiet wave of guilt that I haven’t spent more time with her lately. Between her schedule and mine, plus the small jobs I do for se?or Gustav, we barely exchange a few words in the evenings.
“I’m seeing Alek today,” she tells me in a low voice because she already knows what I think about this Alek situation.
“Lupe, are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Ame,” she sighs. “He sees me. He actually listens to me. And for the first time I feel like I matter to someone in that way.”
“You matter to me,” I murmur, but I know that’s not what she means.
She takes my hand in hers and her eyes are bright, her smile wide, and even if I don’t like the guy, I have to admit that my sister is happy.
“Promise me you’ll be careful. Promise me that if something feels off, you’ll call me.”
“?Te lo juro!”
We go quiet for a moment, and then I ask the question that keeps me staring at the ceiling most nights.
“Do you think we’ll ever find her?”
Julia has been gone for thirteen years. The police file has long since gathered dust, and no matter how many times we’ve tried to reopen the case, there’s no evidence to go on.
Our parents were killed, the house burned down, and our sister disappeared off the face of the earth. And nobody knows anything.
I keep my fingers laced together, trying not to look at Lupe.
I know what this subject does to her. She’s never said it out loud, but I see the guilt in her eyes every time we bring it up.
She still blames herself for asking Julia to return to that house to help our parents.
“I don’t know,” she answers quietly, and I just nod.
Even though neither of us is responsible for what happened that night, the guilt that we couldn’t do more still eats at us both.
“I could try to get into the police database,” I tell her quietly. “See what suspects they had, and maybe...”
“Amalia, have you lost your mind?”
“The police gave up too easily, Lupe, and you know it. Maybe if we had more leads...”
“It’s too dangerous, hermanita. Those people buried the case, destroyed our family, took Julia, and nobody did a thing about it. If the justice system couldn’t touch them, we don’t stand a chance.”
I know she’s right. I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m not doing enough. That I could have tried harder with the new technical skills I’ve built up.
We close the subject and spend the rest of our time together talking about everything and nothing — her exams, what new plants tío Felipe has started potting around the house, an energy bill that needs to be paid soon.
I wish we had more time, but the break ends and we both go back to our usual routines. I head toward the library, where I can find enough quiet to finish the projects I still have pending.
The university has one of the largest libraries in the city, spread across two floors and covering everything from architecture to aerospace materials.
It’s the perfect place to disappear for a few hours.
Not that anyone would be looking for me.
It’s more the comfort of it, the silence, the warm lamplight, the smell of old paper that settles over me the moment I walk in.
I finish jotting down the last ideas for the weather forecasting algorithm I’m working on when my thoughts drift back to Lupe. I don’t like Alek, and if I want any peace of mind, I need more information.
I try to remember exactly what Lupe said his name was. And so I find myself typing Rastovski into the search engine.
A few photos come up, but they’re not of Alek, they’re of an older man at several events in Moscow.
The family apparently owns a sprawling range of businesses, from petroleum to real estate to gambling, but what frustrates me is that there’s nothing beyond the surface level.
Alek’s name appears in exactly one article, in which his uncle Ivan mentions that he’ll be overseeing a company expansion into the United States.
Then I feel it. Like a shift in the air, the way a room changes when someone walks into it with enough presence to rearrange the atmosphere. My laptop is shut in an instant, my eyes dropping back to my notebook like it’s been there the whole time.
A second later, the scent reaches me. Soap, mint, and something fresh, citrusy, unmistakable in the still air of the library.
Of course it’s him.
“What gave me away?” he asks, and my skin breaks out in goosebumps because his voice is low and unhurried and it works on my nerves like a charm.
If I were being honest, I’d tell him that between these walls it’s impossible not to feel him when he moves toward you. He has a gravity that draws people to him, the kind that makes a room feel too small, too tight to contain him.
But my mind picks up the signal and answers before my mouth can do something foolish.
“My notes on Thales’s theorem began trembling before I even turned around. So, good entrance.”
I can’t see him, but I know he’s smiling right now, and my heart has doubled its pace.
“Thales has always struck me as overrated,” he answers, and now I’m the one who can’t hide her smile.
There’s a comfort in his presence I haven’t felt with anyone else, and that’s a bad sign, because he’s my professor.
Because I don’t need to get tangled up in a scandal involving him, but I can’t stop myself from responding.
He’s the only person, I think, in whose company I’d let myself make these nerdy jokes, because he actually gets them.
Because he doesn’t make me feel like a weirdo for saying them.
Out of the corner of my eye I watch his hand move toward my notes, and now I feel slightly ridiculous about how the entire page is color-coded in about six different markers. It looks like a kindergartener got hold of my notebook.
Not to mention the small drawings in the corners, but my mind empties when I feel the warmth of his body behind me. Without meaning to, a shiver moves through me.
“The Fine Arts department is pulling its hair out over the talent it lost to mathematics,” he says, and maybe it’s just me, but he sounds amused.
I feel heat rise in my cheeks, and I wish this interaction didn’t feel so completely natural.
“Maybe you could write me a recommendation,” I say a little sulkily and close my notebook.
He sits down across from me at the table, opens a book, and just like that, as if this were some kind of study session, he starts reading.
Something in the air smells like...tea? I watch him take a sip from a thermos, and I almost roll my eyes because of course this man drinks the kind of drink that keeps you alive until you’re a hundred.
I turn back to my notes, and then I hear him mutter, “I would never hand you off to another department, Amalia.”
Even though he can’t see my face, I give a small shake of my head and have to bite my lip to keep from smiling too widely.
I’m not sure how long we sit like that, both of us reading in silence, but my phone buzzes, a reminder that I need to leave for a lecture.
And I don’t want to. I don’t want to break whatever this is, this moment where he isn’t Professor Vaughn, I’m not Miss Sanchez, and the only thing I care about is the warmth sitting in the middle of my chest.
Without looking up from his book, he says, ”You have your database systems lecture, Amalia. Cristobal doesn’t appreciate latecomers.”
I don’t ask how he knows. My class times aren’t exactly a state secret, though something tells me he doesn’t make a habit of keeping track of every student’s schedule.
The old Amalia would have said goodbye five minutes ago and been halfway across campus by now. Part of me is tempted. But I stay because something tells me I’d regret leaving, and I’ve never been good at making peace with regret.
Without moving from my chair, I answer.
“Good thing I’m not planning to be late, because I’m not going at all.”
His eyes lift from the book then, and I have to draw a slow breath because there’s something in them — a curiosity, a quiet satisfaction.
I know I chose correctly because I have never felt for any person what I feel for Silas Vaughn, and even if he’s never going to be mine, I can allow myself a few extra minutes in his presence.
The next moment, my phone rings, and se?or Gustav’s name appears on the screen. His eyes go to it automatically, and his posture shifts into something tighter.
I stand and move to a corner to answer so I don’t disturb his reading.
“Se?or Gustav, is something wrong?”
“Amalia, I need you to go into the database for Leo’s store and update some prices urgently. They have an inspection in ten minutes, and the invoices don’t match their website prices.”
“Why can’t they just update the prices themselves?”
“Because they forgot the password and locked themselves out of the account,” he exhales, audibly irritated.
He knows I don’t usually take rush jobs, only ones planned in advance, but I have my laptop with me anyway.
“Send me the products that need updating.”
“What would I do without you, Amalia?”
“You’d probably have to give up those silk ties,” I tell him, laughing softly, because he’s as close to me as tío Felipe.
He’s the first person who ever saw something in me beyond the nerdy girl image and helped me make real money using my brain.
I hang up and turn back with a smile still on my face, only to nearly walk straight into Professor Vaughn, who I could swear is grinding his teeth right now.
“Who is se?or Gustav and why are you smiling like that after talking to him?” he asks, and a strange warmth settles low in my stomach.
“A professor from high school. And as for the smile, some people trigger this reaction in my brain where endorphins are released, and my mouth just goes up automatically, like this,” and my fingers move toward his mouth and lift the corners of it.
The moment my fingers make contact with his face, I feel a tingling at the tips of them, and only then do I realize what I’ve just done. The tension drains from his expression, and he catches one of my hands.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
His eyes drop to my mouth, and I know I’ve forgotten to breathe.
This is not okay. Amalia, stop. Except that, for the first time, that voice goes nearly silent, and something closer to instinct takes over.
“Silas, I don’t think...”
Something that looks like surprise crosses his face, and I don’t understand why his name, coming from my lips, does that to him.
“Say my name again,” he murmurs, too close to my mouth.
I could step back. I could push him away. I could call him Professor Vaughn, but no one has ever reacted this way when I said their name, and my heart has taken the wheel from my head.
“Silas.” I swallow.
His eyes give him away. Just for a second, just a crack, but I see it, something vulnerable beneath all that composure, and the urge to pull him close hits me harder than I expect. I want to wrap my arms around him. I want to stand between him and whatever he’s carrying.
What is going on with me? Sweet Gauss, I think I need to be evaluated.
“Don’t let me get any closer, Amalia. For both our sakes.”
Then he turns and leaves me in that corner of the library, where anyone could have seen us. Where my heart is pounding at an alarming rate. Where the only thought in my head is that I should have closed that distance between us.
The old Amalia would never have done any of that.
No. But this Amalia would have.