“Ah, but you never would have ordered bread pudding. You need me.”
I drum my fingers on the table, then snap. “I almost forgot! Here.” I pull out my black messenger bag. “I needed to pick up a new notebook with graph paper, and I noticed your notebook was almost full, so I . . .” I trail off, holding out a deep-blue, leather-bound notebook. Well, journal, really. Nicer than the one I’d seen him using, but this was so beautiful and when I saw the color I thought instantly of Ry.
“Seriously?” His face lights up, so honestly delighted that I want to laugh. Something flutters in my stomach, and I hope it simply means I’m hungry.
“I’m enabling your antisocial tendencies.” In part it’s an I’m-sorry gift, though I’d never say so out loud. I realized yesterday that he didn’t laugh at me when I said my passion was interior design, but I had been kind of a jerk about his writing. I actually like it about him, like that he has such a bizarre focus and pastime.
He takes the book, flipping through the pages, fingering them gently. “I’m not feeling very antisocial today,” he says.
Neither am I. The waitress comes, and I drown my flutters in herbal tea. And then bread pudding, which is warm and soft, with just the right balance of rich dark chocolate and cool, sweet cream.
Ry laughs, because he doesn’t even have to ask me if I like it. I’ve already eaten the whole thing and am plotting the soonest moment I can come back for another.
“So,” Tyler says, leaning in conspiratorially while Michelle finishes a phone call next to us. “You and Ry have been spending a lot of time together the last couple days.”
“Mmm,” I answer.
“How’s that going?” She waggles her eyebrows in undisguised glee.
“I am more likely to end up romantically involved with his cat than him.”
The glee falls off her face. “You—what? Gosh, if I’d known you had a thing for long-haired Persians, I’d have set you up with my family’s landlord.”
I snort and shove her shoulder. “Seriously. Ry and I are friends. That’s it.”
“Ooookay. Sure. If you say so. Speaking of friends, what are you doing this weekend? I’m thinking a movie marathon. As long as snuggling up on a couch in a dim room next to Ry for hours on end won’t interfere with this whole friends thing you’re rocking . . .”
“Not an issue. But maybe invite your landlord, too, since he’s clearly more my type.”
Tyler jumps in surprise as Michelle lets out an explosive swearing tirade next to me. That much foulness coming out of her tiny body never ceases to amuse me, especially because it so rarely happens.
“The insurers won’t let us set up the pieces until the night before the exhibit opens. They want everything to stay in the high-security storage center until the last possible moment. How are we supposed to get everything ready when we can’t even place the artifacts?”
Huffing, she stomps up the stairs toward the wing we’re going to be using. I haven’t seen it yet.
Really, though, I can’t blame them for being paranoid about security. The poor guard is still in intensive care in the hospital; he’s on several organ-donor lists. They have no idea what happened to him, which makes it all way creepier. And I’m grateful that Michelle was too nervous to give my mother specifics on the attempted robbery, otherwise I’m pretty sure
I’d be on the next flight back to Cairo. It had nothing to do with me, anyway.
Besides, it’s hard to feel threatened here in the daytime, the cheerful, bright warmth pushing out the memory of June gloom and everything else dark or dreary.
The nights are another matter. But sunshine! I will focus on that.
The sunshine I’m focusing on barely makes it into the room Michelle opens. Even I am at a loss as to how they thought this would ever work. It’s not really a room so much as a massive hallway, stretching two-thirds the entire length of the building. It’s got tremendously high ceilings, 3.7 meters I’d guess, but it’s only about 2.5 meters wide.
Half of a wall has the remnants of some ill-begotten mural celebrating Central American indigenous cultures, and the rest of the walls are all splotchy white. A tiny row of windows lined up near the ceiling on the right side lets in a dusty trickle of natural light.
Her rage gone as if it never existed, Michelle studies the room as though her efficient, business-oriented gaze could whip it into shape by sheer force of will. “I still think we should disassemble one of the other exhibits and store it in here. Use a main room.”
“I am not disassembling that gigantic tree of evolution,” Tyler says, setting down a broom and leaning against the wall.
Michelle nods. “You’re probably right. We should have all the other exhibits open to avoid bottlenecking this one.” She gestures to a wall. “We can continue the color scheme from the Egypt wing—greens and purples and maybe a mural, then—”
“For the love of these idiot gods, anything but that.”
Michelle and Tyler both look at me, shocked. I shrug apologetically. “Didn’t mean to say that out loud. No offense, but the Egypt room needs an update. Let’s think of something new.”
Raising an eyebrow, Michelle smiles. “So, what should we do?”