“I wanted to thank Mr. Button for helping me out in Italy. I had a really tough time the last couple of months and he stepped in with this complicated situation I was dealing with at the ballet company. He even helped me get promoted to principal dancer.”
Eviedidsay that.
“I’ve never been the principal ballerina. You probably did misunderstand,” Evie agreed. “I should go and check on my mom, see if she needs help. She’s making dinner for everyone. I’ll steal something for you if I can,” she said with a smile.
“Thanks,” Romeo said, but for the first time he did not return her smile.
Instead, he watched as Evie left the dining room, the ghost of her words both past and present echoing loudly in his brain. If she’d left Italy last year… where had she been this entire time if not with her ballet company?
An uncomfortable chill settled over his shoulders then.
Romeo kept looking at her,through her, like it was the first time he was really seeing Evie Gray.
7:18P.M.—THE BUTTON MANOR
One minute Bilal had been standing outside the dining room, the low hum of voices surrounding him as he had his seventh existential crisis of the day.
The next moment he was being dragged away by Anwar into one of the empty rooms by the library that was once used as one of their classrooms. Orlaboratories, as his father liked to call them. There was nothing remotely lab-like about the room though; it looked much like every other communal area in the house. Dark woods, vintage damask wallpaper, and the chopped-off heads of taxidermized animals on the walls.
Bilal was so tall that he was often eye to eye with his father’strophies, like he was right now, staring directly into the pupils of a dead bull, the animal’s large horns nearly poking him in the face.
“We need to talk,” Anwar began, breathless. “I know now is probably not the right time given that we are literally in the middle of a murder investigation, but I don’t knowwhenthe right time will be. I don’t even know when next we’ll see each other after this is over—are you even listening?”
Bilal’s vision quickly moved away from the soulless eyes of the bull and down to the wide, vulnerable gaze of Anwar. “I’m listening,” he said, and he really had been, even with the brief bull distraction.
“Okay, well. I lied earlier… about the Duolingo notification.”
Bilal hadn’t been expecting to hear that. “So you’re not actually learning ancient Sanskrit?” he asked in a way he hoped would lighten the mood. Anwar blinked at him unsmiling. “I’m sorry, go on.”
“It was my family trying to get in touch. They’re throwing this party for me because of the Prodigy of the Year award… I was meant to be on my way there, hours ago. I missed my train. In fact I think I’ve probably missed the last direct train back to Boston tonight.”
Bilal raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting but this wasn’t at all what he’d thought Anwar was going to say.
“The party will be over by the time I arrive home, which I honestly don’t mind at all,” Anwar continued. “I don’t mind because out of all the places I could be today, I wanted to be here with you.”
Bilal realized then what Anwar was saying. His ex-boyfriend had skipped his own celebration because of him. “You shouldn’t have done that,” Bilal said quietly, feeling like the worst person on earth. He’d been so caught up in himself and his own feelings, he didn’t ever question why Anwar was still here, despite being dismissed. He didn’t think that he’d be the reason.
“I wanted to do it, I wanted to stay. But not only because of you; I wouldn’t throw everything away over a boy, you know,” he said, a glint of something lighter in his eyes. “I honestly didn’t want a party, but you know how my parents are.”
Bilaldidknow how Anwar’s parents were. When Anwar’s mom found out that they were dating, she threw an actual dinner party for the pair. Anwar was embarrassed about her dramatics, but Bilal thought it was really nice having parents be that proud of you, so willing to celebrate all your wins. Parents who didn’t constantly put you down for not being good enough. He loved Anwar’s parents, and it had been another loss when they broke up, not being able to go back to visit them in Boston.
“But Ididstay partly because of you, and maybe that was silly of me to do, seeing as I have no idea if you even like me anymore,” Anwar said.
This surprised Bilal most of all, so much so that he literally startled. “Of course Ilikeyou,” Bilal said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Anwar folded his arms. “Well, you have a very strange way of showing it.You never talk to me,” Anwar continued. “At those rare events that we both happen to attend, you avoid me. You don’t answer my texts. When we broke up, I thought we agreed to be friends, but friends don’t avoid each other like the plague.”
Bilal hated hearing the hurt in Anwar’s voice. Hated that he was the reason that hurt was there in the first place.
“Youbroke up with me,” Bilal pointed out.
“No, I told you that we couldn’t work out the way we were going. I told you that I could not date someone who I hardly saw or who never told me what he was thinking and feeling. I told you that for us to work, all of this would need to change, and if it couldn’t change, then there was no point in us trying, andyouagreed. You ended things when you didn’t fight for us.” Anwar angrily wiped his eyes.
Bilal looked away for a moment; he couldn’t bear to see Anwar cry. But when he looked back at the boy, he was no longer crying. Instead he had a serious expression on his face, the same serious expression Bilal’s tutors used to give him in this very room when he’d get a B on one of his assignments.
On Anwar this look was at once terrifying but also really adorable.
“I know this weekend has been really difficult for you. Losing your dad… the police being here, this entire investigation in general… and I know it is probably really selfish of me to be bringing up all of this now, when you’re grieving and probably dealing with some really dark feelings…”
