“I hadmultiplenetworking events!”
His hand was still on Ellory’s shoulder. She reached up to pat it. She didn’t know how to explain to him that the problem was probably that he owned a full suit in the first place, let alone more than one. If he wasn’t aware that they were expensive, that most people rented them for prom or thrifted them for interviews, then there was nothing she could do to save him from the undercurrent of resentment this group was sending his way.
He didn’t seem to notice it, at least. She wondered what that was like. Did elevator music play in his head when someone didn’t like him, drowning out the barbs and the side-eyes? Or did he notice the barbs and take the high road, the road that money allowed him theluxury of taking?
The conversation turned to coursework, professors who made them want to give their best and professors who made them want to drop out, and the general lack of time for anything resembling a life thanks to the demands of the Godwin Scholarship. Ellory ate her pretzels and let the words wash over her, trying to stay engaged. But the more they spoke, the more she thought about her constitutional law textbook and the quiz she’d come to the party to escape. So far, she hadn’t seen Hudson Graves anywhere. Maybe he hadn’t deigned to attend his own house party. Maybe that was why he’d scored higher than her.
The pretzels tasted like lead. She handed her plate and empty Corona bottle to Liam. “Is there a bathroom?”
“There’s…” Liam pointed to a door a few feet to their left that had a couple enthusiastically making out against it. One groped for the doorknob behind them, and they tumbled inside, only two hands visible. “Well, there’s another one upstairs, to the right. Oi!”
Ellory left him to deal with that. Upstairs was quieter, cleaner, emptier. The walls were painted a peaceful blue, and the bathroom was white brick and tile with a sunset-orange shower curtain hiding the tub from view. Ellory peed and examined herself in the mirror over the sink as she washed her hands. Her mascara was still impeccable, her dark lipstick only slightly smudged from the beer. She touched it up and then took several deep breaths, shoving con. law to the back of her brain where it belonged. She was at a party. She was having fun. She could talk about schoolwork and make new friends without having a breakdown. It wasn’t even obvious that she’d been crying earlier this very night.
Back in the hallway, she paused. The stairs were ahead to the left, but there was another door between them and the bathroom thatshe’d ignored in her haste to empty her bladder. It was half-open, and she could see bookshelves. Did these people actually have a home library?
No, it was a bedroom, albeit one that seemed stuck in the transitional stage between that and a library. There was a queen-size bed wedged in the corner. There was a desk underneath a window with short cherry-red curtains. There was another door opposite the bed that she assumed led to a closet. Almost every other inch of space was full of bookshelves or books that couldn’t fit on the bookshelves and had instead been stacked unsteadily over the black carpet. There were books on top of the shelves, books in front of the shelves, books on the desk, and books under the desk. There were books on the bed, fanned out across the pillow as if they’d fallen asleep.
It was a literary wonderland.
Ellory forgot about the party, instead losing herself in the cracked and well-loved spines. These books weren’t for decoration. They had all been read, some of them many times. Nonfiction biographies and memoirs. Crime novels and fantasy epics. Essay collections and leather-bound classics. Romance novels piled next to a single self-help book. She gasped and reached for one of the tomes on the desk, a copy ofReel to Realby bell hooks that had been read so many times that the cover had been taped back on. It was her favorite of the author’s works, a series of essays on the influential nature of films—whether they meant to teach a certain lesson or not.
During those first few years after she’d moved to America, television had been Ellory’s gateway to culture. She couldn’t speak like her classmates, and she didn’t grow up with the same references, but she kept a list of the things she overhead so she could diligently catch up. Then Aunt Carol bought her a copy ofReel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Moviesfrom the bargain bin at the Strand, and Ellory devoured the analysis, pored over the highlighted stereotypes, and took a more critical eye to all the media she consumed from then on.
It was as if she’d been asleep, and bell hooks had been her gentle awakening to a world that said so much more than she had been picking up.
She traced the cover with loving fingers, a small smile on her face. The pages were dog-eared and annotated with thoughtful comments and questions that made it clear the owner had really engaged with the text. She flipped to the chapter onCrooklyn, her favorite of the essays, almost eager to get their thoughts.
“Of course,” said a bored voice behind her. “With an entire floor of food and festivities, whywouldn’tyou instead break into my bedroom?”
Ellory dropped the book. Her smile went with it.
Standing in the doorway was Hudson Graves.
5
Hudson was dressed like he had come from the party: loose black jeans and a slate-gray crewneck sweater, black high-tops, and a Natty Ice. It was the kind of frat boy beverage she would have thought was beneath him, but then again, she would have thought that crime novels were beneath him, that romances were beneath him, that bell hooks’s film criticism was beneath him… If she hadn’t held the evidence of a book read over and over, full of written notes and taped edges, she might have still thought that. The callous, condescending reality of him usually shattered whatever soft illusion she pieced together in his absence.
“The door was open,” Ellory said. “I’d hardly call itbreaking in.”
“There was a rope blocking off the second floor.”
“Has that literally ever worked?”
His lips twitched like he wanted to smile. “No.”
“Well, you can blame Liam Blackwood. He said I could use the upstairs bathroom.”
“This isn’t a bathroom.” Hudson’s eyes fell to the book at herfeet. An expression bolted across his face, there and gone too quickly to read. “But you seem to have made yourself comfortable.”
“I love this book,” she gushed as she retrieved it. “I love bell hooks, butthisbook—” It took all she had to stop herself from being vulnerable in front of someone who had consistently preyed on her weaknesses. He was staring at the battered paperback, a frown heavy on his face. Ellory had the sudden strange feeling that she was the one who had caught him in a weak moment, but that was ridiculous. “I mean, when she talked aboutTarzanas a white savior fantasy…”
It was a test, one she didn’t feel good about but needed him to pass. She thought she knew his handwriting as well as she knew her own by now, but this could be someone else’s copy. Liam’s, perhaps, or maybe a paramour had left it behind. Maybe it had come with the room, and he’d simply been inspired to create a great wall of other books around it.
“I thought she stretched the white-daddy metaphor a little too far in that chapter, but yeah.” Hudson stepped farther into the room. “She made really interesting points about the way society—and we ourselves—view Black and white masculinity, and how it’s further colored by an unfair portrayal across film and television.”
“What, did your film and media studies major fall through so you had to settle for poli-sci?”
“Hilarious.” Hudson joined her at the desk, setting his can of Natural Ice on the only free area he could find. The stacks around it wobbled but ultimately remained standing. “I actually want to be a lawyer, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have other interests.”
