I nodded. “I bet you went to uni.”
“Yes. Oxford.”
“Where else? And I’m guessing you did well.” I took a sip of my cola and silently slid my cup towards Henry. To my surprise, he took it and drank from the same straw. I wasn’t contagious, but sometimes people treated me as though a homeless person could single-handedly bring back the plague.
“Yes. If I’m honest, I was top of my class.”
“Nerd.”
“That’s just what my brother Logan always called me, even though his grade average in school was only slightly lower than mine. Why did you drop out?”
Nervously, I started folding the paper wrapper my straw had come in. “I had to make money. My mum and I weren’t doing sowell financially, and I wanted to help pay rent so we wouldn’t lose our apartment. It didn’t work, obviously.”
“Is your mum homeless too?”
I tightened my lips into a joyless smile. “Not anymore. She lives in an underground two-square-metre apartment.”
“What?” Henry asked, confused, and then it dawned on him. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry.”
I feigned indifference and shrugged. I didn’t like to talk about my mum, even though she was always on my mind. A part of me wished I could take back my macabre comment, because today was a good day, and I didn’t want to ruin the mood.
Henry touched his tie as if he wanted to loosen the knot. But when he noticed what he was doing, he dropped his hand. He had nice hands. I didn’t know if other people paid as much attention to hands as I did, but as a pickpocket, my own were my most important tool. Henry had long, elegant fingers with perfectly filed nails. They were marred only by a scratch on his left thumb.
“How did you get that scratch?” I asked, pointing at it.
Henry turned his hand. “Oh, it’s from bouldering. I slipped.”
“You boulder?” There had been a bouldering society at my school, but I couldn’t afford the gym membership, so I had joined the athletics team for free instead.
“Yes, for a few years now. You sound surprised.”
“I thought people like you played polo or golf.”
He raised his eyebrows. “People like me?”
“Well, rich people.”
Henry snorted. “Not all rich people have the same hobbies.”
“But most of them, right?”
“Yeah,” he admitted reluctantly. “But I’m not like most of them.”
I laughed, although I got the sense that he might be telling the truth. Sure, he was wearing a smart suit and an outrageously expensive watch, but the longer we sat there, the more I suspected it was all for show—another Henry was lurking beneath the layers of fancy fabric.
“Of course not. You’re a very unique snowflake.”
“I am, and it’s high time someone acknowledged it,” he grinned.
“Don’t worry. I see you, Snowflake,” I hammed it up, sliding my hand across the table and placing it on his in feigned sympathy.
I’d intended it as a joke, a casual gesture, but my smile faded when my fingers touched his. An electrifying tingle shot up my arm to my chest, and my heart raced. Taken aback, I looked up at Henry’s handsome face. He was watching me with an odd expression that I couldn’t quite read, which sent the tingle in my chest lower down my body. It threw me. I hadn’t felt anything like it in years—perhaps ever. I was under no illusion that someone like Henry could be attracted to me. I looked all right, aside from the tattered clothes and wonky haircut. But people like him cared about those things. And I was pretty sure I’d read on the cover of some gossip magazine that he was dating the daughter of a famous fashion designer.
Another vibration in my jacket pocket ended the moment. Henry’s phone had been buzzing nonstop over the last few minutes, but so far I’d ignored it. I let go of his hand and pulled out his phone. Olivia Asterdam had messaged him.
“I don’t know how you stand it. Getting constant notifications would really stress me out,” I said, sliding the phone across the table to him.
He looked from me to the phone. “You’re giving it back?”
