He’s not the first to accuse me, but this time I genuinely played it straight. I didn’t count cards, I simply observed.
It’s not my fault it’s written all over them when they’re waiting for a specific card. It’s not my fault I have every possible combination and its probability memorized.
His hand lands on my shoulder, and in that moment I pray he does something stupid. I pray he gives me one more reason to be even more irritated, and the Universe obliges.
He spins me around, but before his fist can make contact with my face, I drop and make sure I get to his midsection first.
He doubles over, face going red, but I can’t stop myself and I land one more into his ribs.
“Come on, Si. I don’t want blood on these new shoes.”
I turn to my best friend, who looks mildly bored though I don’t miss the irritation that he lost that money.
“They’re black.”
“They’re Cucinelli.”
I don’t know who Cucinelli is, but given how offended Andreas looks, I let it go.
On my way out, Charly hands me a thick fold of bills. I count them with my eyes, slowly, then lift my gaze to his sweating face.
“SeñorSilas, it’s all in there. I swear.”
I pocket the cash without a word and head for the exit.
The cold air outside makes me pull my coat tighter around myself, trying to generate some warmth.
“What are you going to do about Amalia?” he asks once we’ve put a decent stretch of distance between ourselves and the club.
“I don’t know, but if tonight confirmed anything, it’s that neither punching things nor the concentration a poker game demands can get her out of my head. Do you think she put a hex on me?”
Andreas’s laugh fills the entire street in the middle of the night before he answers.
“Silas, it would take an entire coven to make your brain focus on one single thing at a time. Whatever she did, it’s something else entirely.”
“Is it reversible?”
“Falling in love? Who the hell knows, you haven’t exactly found the right person to ask. But the diagnosis is clear, my friend.” He holds up a finger for each letter, slow and deliberate, eyes on mine the whole time. “L. O. V. E.”
And I have a feeling I’m not going to find antibiotics strong enough to cure it.
Two weeks. Two weeks of turning the same memory over and over in my head. I’m fairly certain my neurons have hanged themselves from sheer boredom at how obsessed I’ve become with the library incident.
And now, when I close my eyes, I see the look on his face when I said his name. I see the surprise and the wonder in it, and a shiver moves through me before I can stop it.
I’ve seen him every week in class, but I could count on one hand the words we’ve exchanged in these fourteen days.
And that’s for the best. Because Silas is exactly the kind of headache I don’t need if I want to finish this degree.
I can only imagine the scandal and the gossip that would take off if anything between me and my math professor got out.
“That’s why she has perfect grades.”“She definitely gets the exam topics in advance.” “He put in a good word with Professor X so she’d finish with a better average than everyone else.”And I wouldn’t be able to shake any of it until graduation.
Clouds are gathering outside and I can smell rain in the air, so I decide to spend the next few hours studying. On days like this the library is almost completely empty. The moment I walk in I head straight to my corner, tucked between the economics reading shelf and the international policy section.
I’m working through my second set of course notes when a shadow appears behind me, and without meaning to, I flinch.
My eyes land on a pair of brown eyes I don’t recognize, and without thinking, I pull my notebook to my chest.
