“I think after today I’d probably like to avoid writing anything with crime or murder,” Anwar said with a smile.
“What about a romance?” Evie said. “Those are usually nice and tragedy-
free.”
Anwar winced. “I think I’m the last person who should be writing about romance right now, with my own love life so tragically screwed up,” he said. Romeo watched as Anwar couldn’t help but look up in the direction of where Bilal was—just outside of the archway in that hall that led into the dining room.
Evie followed his gaze, raising an eyebrow when she saw who he was gazing longingly at like a lovesick puppy. “Are you dating Bilal Button or something?”
Anwar didn’t answer at first, just continued frowning in the general direction of Romeo’s eldest brother, who was too busy brooding alone to notice. He shrugged, tearing his eyes away from Bilal. “I don’t know anymore.”
“You don’t know? How is that possible?” Evie asked in a way that might have sounded judgmental in any other context, but with prodigies every question was a genuine inquisition.
“I don’t know because Bilal never speaks to anyone about anything. He’s a really closed-off person and he almost never discusses his feelings. It’s one of the reasons we broke up in the first place. In the beginning we used to talk a lot more, but toward the end he’d completely closed himself off and would never tell me his true feelings on anything. Last night was the first we’d even spoken since March, and now so much has happened in the last day and everything feels so strange and uncertain…” Anwar’s voice trailed off as he ran his fingers through his curly black hair in frustration. “I don’t know. What wouldyoudo ifyouhad an ex-boyfriend who you werecertainhated you, but then you happened to hook up with out of the blue after months and months of silence?”
Romeo wasn’t sure that this question was for him since this was clearly about his brother’s sex life, but he cleared his throat and tried to give an answer anyway. “I would, uhm, just go and ask.”
Anwar raised an eyebrow. “Ask what, exactly?”
“I’d ask the person what we meant to each other, rather than fermentingin my own conspiracies and theories about the situation. I feel like we create a lot of messed-up scenarios that are nothing like the reality of things in our head,” Romeo said. “I think Bilal would probably respond well to you just telling the truth.”
Anwar looked pensively at the ground.
“Well, I don’t really know Bilal that well, even though we kind of grew up in the same space, so I am admittedly not the best person to answer this,” Evie said. “But I remember how intense Bilal used to be about fencing; it used to take precedence over everything in his life. He would eat, sleep, and breathe fencing. I’m kind of surprised Bilal even had time for a relationship.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice about that. I am very used to coming second to his first love,” Anwar muttered bitterly.
“In defense of my brother, he’s only like that because it’s how we were raised. It’s messed up, but we were raised to be machines, and so machines we became,” Romeo said, which was the sanitized way of describing it.
What he didn’t mention washowthey were forced to become machines. He didn’t go into the specifics of the Button Method in all its gory detail. How he and his siblings would spend eighteen hours a day being rigorously trained in their chosen specialty. Their father would hire the very best in their fields of study from all over the world and would have them locked in a laboratory, trained and trained like they were robots or some artificial intelligence program instead of children. Romeo remembered those grueling years he was seated in front of a typewriter in a room with some Ivy League English professor who’d yell at him for hours about his spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and general lack of perception. He was meant to be a writing prodigy, meant to have written several literary masterpieces by now, maybe a bestseller or two. He was meant to be just like Anwar. But instead, he was a failure. Romeo’s father had apparently “saved” him when he adopted Romeo, but Romeo couldn’t do the one thing that was expected of him. There was so much effort put into all of them, and sometimes he felt guilty for even existing.
“Mr. Button trained me too. And my brother, Adam, he… took us both under his wing, made us both into so-called geniuses. In a way, I became a ballet machine because of him,” Evie said, her eyes unfocused and her voice wispy, like her mind was elsewhere. Then she blinked and refocused her gaze on Anwar. “I guess… if Bilal is like a machine, maybe he just needs you to tell him how you feel in the way a scientist might condition a computer.”
Anwar’s brows were drawn together. “So you’re saying I should lock him in a room and shout at him that he needs to learn to communicate and that I want us to be together?”
“That’s not exactly what I meant… no…,” Evie began, but Anwar was already up on his feet, his tea abandoned on a side table, a new determination settled onto his face.
“I’ll be back,” he said, and then strode right over to where Bilal was standing out in the hall. Bilal looked up in alarm as Anwar grabbed the arm of the fencer and dragged him away into the ether.
“I don’t think he’s coming back,” Romeo muttered.
Evie laughed. “I don’t think so either. Hopefully our advice was somewhat helpful. I’m no romance expert. Admittedly, I haven’t been in many romantic entanglements with boysorgirls for that matter.”
“Neither have I… with girls, that is. I don’t have much interest in boys,” Romeo said, then quickly followed up with, “Not that there is any problem with liking both boys and girls… and everyone else.”
Evie only smiled at him.
“Anyway, what I mean to say is, I haven’t really had many options, with being homeschooled and all,” he finished, his face warmer than it was before.
“Same, though I did have a crush on this one girl in my ballet company. Nothing ever came of it and since I left Italy last year, nothing ever will,” Evie said.
Romeo blinked.Last year?
“I thought you’djustbeen promoted to the principal dancer?” he asked, confused.
Now Evie was looking at him strangely. “Did I say that?”
“I think so… You said my father helped you out with the promotion recently? Maybe I misunderstood or something,” he said, even though he knew he was definitely remembering correctly. The memory of the night before on the yacht flashed into his mind.
