Sophie’s face changes quickly. Anger sharpens her mouth first, then discipline reins it in. She has never liked Ethan the way Ethan thought she liked him. She was charming to him because Sophie can be charming to a hostile witness if the lighting is decent.
“What did you say?” Sophie asks.
“Nothing.”
“Good,” Sophie says immediately.
I smile faintly. “I thought you might enjoy that.”
“I enjoy very little about this, but I do support silence as a weapon.”
“I’m not using it as a weapon.”
“You are allowed to, Serena.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
The city noise rises from below the balcony: a scooter, footsteps, a man calling to someone across the street. I turn my pen once between my fingers.
“I’m not interested in punishing him,” I say.
Sophie’s face softens again, but the anger stays in her eyes.
“That’s because you are kinder than you pretend to be.”
“I’m not pretending not to be kind.”
“You are absolutely pretending not to be kind. It’s one of your more elegant lies.”
“Sophie.”
“I’m right,” Sophie says.
“You make all that sharpness look like armor, but half the time it’s just how you keep from bleeding on people who didn’t cut you.”
I look away from the screen. The room has grown too warm. The air-conditioning hums near the ceiling, but Rome keeps finding its way in through the balcony glass, through the seams, through every place the hotel fails to be sealed against the city.
“I don’t want to talk to him,” I say.
“Then don’t.”
“I’m not.”
“Good.”
“I also don’t want him to become the center of this assignment.”
“He won’t unless you let him.”
“I’m trying not to.”
Sophie leans closer. “Look at me.”
I do. Her face on the screen is beautiful in the careless way that has nothing to do with symmetry and everything to do with animation. Sophie is never still unless she means to be. Right now, she means it.
“He doesn’t get Rome,” Sophie says.
