“I was nervous and trying to sound cool in front of her,” he said, looking a little sheepish as he said it, which made me stop in minor shock right before I could drop another example. Kris, admitting he didn’t have game? Before I could tease him about it, though, he added, “You’ll never let me live that down, will you?”
“Grace is still demanding a formal apology.” The line moved and I stepped diagonally so he could come up alongside me. I looked him up and down out of the corner of my eye. The fencing thing explained why he was so toned for a political geek, even though his choice of a snobby sport wasn’t surprising.
“And you?”
“I’m reserving judgment until I hear why you’re here instead of visiting one of the icons of baseball history.”
“Honestly, I have better things to do than look at the dugouts for a team that isn’t even from Philly.” He bumped my arm as we moved forward and I was glad for my jacket because of all the little shivers that ran through me in that second. “Is that a good enough answer?”
“Let’s see. Supporting Philly teams and commonsense about what’s interesting. Works for me.” Red handed us both tickets and reminded us to be back at the entrance in three hours.
As we entered the hall, our group stated breaking into smaller groups, but I noticed that Kris kept pace beside me, not joining anyone else. He turned the museum map around in his hands like he was trying to get his bearings. “So, where are we headed?”
“We? Now you’re hanging with the competition?”
“Um, everyone here is my competition.”
“True. So why aren’t you bothering the rest of them?” I jutted my chin at the girl from New York, who didn’t seem to have seen us yet.
Kris didn’t even bother to look. “It’s nice to be around a familiar face for a little while, even if it’s yours.” There was that smile again, and another shiver ran from the base of my neck and down my spine. This was an act. I was just getting into character so much that feeling attracted to him only made sense. It was like when I wore floofy fifties dresses while we worked on West Side Story or lots of dance clothes when I was in A Chorus Line. I was inhabiting my role a little too well.
I narrowed my eyes at him, but opted for tossing back my hair and opening my own map. “Fine, but if you don’t like ancient cultures, you’re out of luck.” Mom and Dad would both kill me if I didn’t visit the Ancient Greek collection and I couldn’t miss Egypt and Africa. “That’s Mom’s specialty.” Without waiting for a response, I walked towards the stairs. Plan “Mess with Kris’ mind” would only work if I wasn’t constantly fawning over him—making them chase me a little bit always worked with the guys I liked. I had to make Kris keep following me.
He tugged at my jacket’s sleeve so we were back to walking side-by side. He leaned in close enough that his breath tickled my cheek and sent another shock through me. “Love them.” He then pulled ahead while I was frozen for a second so I was the one following him.
So, he was going to ratchet up the game? My worry faded to the back of my brain and a grin spread across my face, so wide it almost hurt. Sometimes love and war were the same thing, and, if he was going to try to mess with me, anything was fair.
I leaned closer to the glass to get a better look at the vase with a bunch of training athletes. “Mmm, look at the muscle definition on that javelin thrower.”
The disgust on Kris’ face was pretty obvious, even in his reflection. “So…if it’s ancient, it’s okay to just have naked people running around on stuff? Because nowadays we’d call it porn.” He poked me in the shoulder, but I purposely ignored him.
“You’re just prejudiced towards athletic people. Besides, this is history and art. Think of it: Someone in 430 BC painted this. Two thousand, four hundred years ago.” I glanced back at him for only a second, then moved around to see the other side of the vase. “And, damn, they were hot even back then. Like this discus thrower’s butt. Nice.”
“You’re making me rethink this ancient world thing.” He put his hands on my shoulders and I let him pull me away from the vase. “What would your parents think of you staring at a discus thrower’s butt?”
I waved my free hand dismissively. One problem at a time. “That I have good taste in art?”
“You’re…” He shook his head, so obviously trying not to laugh that it made me laugh, and slid one hand down my arm so he now pulled on my wrist, right at my jacket cuff. A part of me wondered what it would feel like if his hand slipped a little lower and touched my skin. “I don’t even know what you are.”
“A history genius.” “I’m getting you out of here and into Ancient Egypt before they kick you out for molesting the statues or something.”
I faux-pouted, then something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye and I rotated my wrist so now I held his. I pulled him over to another display case. “Wait.” A delicate gold wreath made to look like olive leaves sat in the case. It was so amazing, down to the little veins detailed into the leaves, I could stare at it forever. “What do you think? I could totally rock this at school.” I let my fingers linger on his arm for an extra second before letting go, but his grip on my wrist didn’t change.
“If anyone could make it work, it would probably be you.” He sounded sincere, but this was Kris. He was as good at looking like he cared as I was at becoming another person onstage.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He pulled again, but a little gentler this time. “Now, c’mon, Ancient Egypt. Maybe the mummies will give you nightmares and you’ll be too tired to give a decent speech.”
“Diabolical plan. But I thought everyone was your competition?”
“Well, some people are tougher competition than others. We’re products of the same school system. I expect you to make me work for first place.”
The challenge warmed me instead of the annoyance I expected. Maybe I really was becoming immune to his ego. “I’ll take that as a compliment, too.” I let him keep a constant pull on my arm as we walked, especially since his thumb kept rubbing over my cuff and sliding closer and closer to my skin. “But I bet it’ll backfire on you, especially when I tell you about the hooks they used to take out the mummies’ brains through their noses.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Who’s going to have nightmares now?” When he turned his head to look at me, I winked. “Just call me the queen of diabolical. I receive tributes in the form of chocolate, golden wreaths, and first-place scholarships.”
He tugged my arm so we were nose to nose and, looking into those gold-flecked eyes, my lungs stopped working. “Chocolate I can do. Golden wreaths might be a little Mission Impossible for me, but not totally impossible. But we’ll see who gets the scholarship.” Before I could respond, he pulled ahead of me and I had to focus on breathing and moving my legs to keep from being dragged across the museum floor.
One point to Kris. Crap.
“Oh. My. God.” I craned my neck back and stopped mid-step, grabbing the staircase bannister. The skylight above us almost blinded me until my eyes adjusted to take in the paintings and columns surrounding it.
I tilted back a little too far and Kris reached an arm around my back to steady me. “Whoa, careful. I want to get you up to the rotunda in one piece.”
“This is so seriously amazing. Look, that’s Apollo,” I pointed at the mural above us, “and Atlas holding up the world, and Perseus killing Medusa. On Pegasus.” I couldn’t help but grin at the familiar winged horse. My eyes dropped to the mural directly in front of us. “And those are the Danaïdes. See how they’re trying to fill a bowl but the water keeps pouring out of the bottom?”
Kris followed my finger with his head, eventually turning his attention back to me with a surprised look on his face. “How do you know all this?”
“Like I said, my mom is a history professor—I was practically born knowing about ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Western and Southern African civilizations. If you didn’t n
otice this whole time,” I nudged him in the side, bringing myself a little closer. “Also, my dad’s from Greece, so I couldn’t get away from all this growing up.”
“That explains your name.” His smile was weak, almost sheepish. “Meanwhile, my family’s been in Lambertfield as long as anyone can remember. I think my great-grandmother was a Quaker from Philly, but that’s about as foreign as we get.”
“You know, even though they were a small group, lots of Quakers were really active in abolition and suffrage. I even got to see the actual Germantown petition against slavery from 1688 where they argued for equal rights for everyone.” I said, starting up the stairs again. “Not a bad background to have.”
“Huh.” Other than that, Kris kept silent and kept pace with me, his head also tilted up to take in the awesomeness above us.
We reached the rotunda and I leaned against one of the pillars, purposely trapping Kris’ arm behind me. I may have been stunned by the beauty of the place, but I was still on a mission.
“Okay, you’re right. I’m glad I survived to see this.” The rotunda was stunning, skylights illuminating the John Singer Sargent murals and plaster reliefs on the ceiling. It took my breath away, and I couldn’t help but lower my voice to a whisper, like we had stepped into a cathedral.
Kris pulled out his phone to take a video of the scene and it was cute seeing him fumbling with it one-handed. “Definitely better than a dugout,” he said under his breath.
Trying to keep from smiling, I focused instead on the murals above us, my eyes drawn to one of a boy with wings. “That’s Eros and Psyche.” My standing-ina-church behavior slipped for a second and I pressed my lips together in embarrassment as my voice carried across the rotunda. I toned myself down to an indoor volume. “It’s one of my favorite stories,” I said, tilting my head so I could get a better view of the painting meets sculpture-like raised plaster. Eros was flying down to embrace Psyche, both forever frozen in an almost-kiss.
“Eros?” Kris asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed his head tilt toward mine in what had to be an attempt to copy my angle.
“Cupid, but not the baby version. Aphrodite’s son?” I turned my attention back to Kris and noticed how incredibly close we were, partly because I’d sort of trapped him in that position. Not like he had tried to move or free his arm or anything. I pushed through the tight feeling of my breath catching in my throat and tried to sound as normal as possible. “His mom got jealous of Psyche’s beauty, so she sent Eros to go make Psyche fall in love with some really ugly guy so she’d be miserable. Instead, Eros ended up stabbing himself with his own arrow and falling in love with her.” The heat from his arm and shoulder seeped through my shoulder and into my back.
Kris snorted. “Talk about a massive screwup. Let me guess, they lived happily ever after anyway?”
“Eventually. First, she was sent to the top of a mountain and the winds carried her to this garden, where she thought she was married to some sort of monster. Then Eros had sex with her in the dark for a whole bunch of nights until she got curious and found out his identity. After that, he banished her back to earth, where she was tortured by her mother-in-law, before he forgave her and they lived happily ever after.”
“And this is one of your favorite stories?”
“What can I say? I’m a romantic.”
“Sounds like it. Pornographic pottery and stories about anonymous sex. Kinky, Katsaros.”
I tried to give him the stink eye, but one look at his face made me laugh instead. “You’ve blown my cover, Lambert. Just don’t tell the teachers or it’ll ruin their image of me as an innocent little flower.”
“You trust me with this information? I could use it as blackmail material, you know.” The rest of his face betrayed the smile he was definitely trying to hold back. “Judges, Em was trying to corrupt me with her wanton ways.” The smile finally broke through, developing slowly across his lips, like he was sharing a secret with me.
That smile combined with him standing so close did things to my stomach and skin, fire and ice alternating though me in mini-shocks. I stepped a fraction of an inch closer to him, freeing his arm, but he just moved it with me so his hand now touched my waist. “Wanton ways? Judges, Kris has absolutely no proof. I think he’s just trying to besmirch my pristine reputation.”
“I think you’re trying to influence the jury with SAT words.” His voice became softer and it was like the rotunda grew smaller around us, the other people fading away.
The pressure of his hand on my back made me lean forward the tiniest bit more. I rested my fingers on his other arm for balance. “We did decide that I am the queen of diabolical plans, remember?” That fire and ice swirled together, starting with the spot where his hand touched my waist and shooting to where my hand touched his sleeve. Damned character acting made my heart speed up to hummingbird pace. His exhale danced across my cheek, then chin, raising goosebumps on my whole body.
“I can be just as diabolical,” he whispered, and leaned his head down.
My reflexes took over and I closed my eyes and tilted up my chin. Every piece of me wanted to reach up and seal the space between us where we stood in a frozen millisecond, like Psyche and Cupid. His arm pulled me even closer, fingers tightening into my side, and his body heat filled the air between us, warming me until my jacket felt too hot. His hand brushed a stray curl from my forehead and rested oh-so-lightly on my cheek.
“It’s nice seeing the real you, Em.” His words brushed over my lips and I caught my breath.
Just as our lips whispered against each other, my eyes shot open and the ice took over, reminding me I wasn’t supposed to want this. I wasn’t supposed to let the game get this far. I stepped sideways, breaking contact with Kris’ arms. Shocks ran through my whole body and I resisted the urge to jump him. Crap, crap, crap. “I…I need to go take care of something. My mom wanted me to see…something…” I waved vaguely at one of the hallways leading from the rotunda and backed away.
Kris blinked at me, confusion and concern written all over his face. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, I’ll be right back. I just have to take care of this one thing.” Before he could protest, the guys from California, Colorado, and Arizona wandered into the rotunda. They headed toward us and I said a silent thanks to whatever greater being might be out there. “You guys all go ahead, I’ll meet up with you at the bus.” I then rushed off, ignoring Kris’ voice behind me and totally unaware of where I was headed.
He said he was also diabolical. I already knew he was trying to mess with me by not acting like himself. Was this almost-kiss another part of the act? His last whisper echoed in my brain and it was like I had my own heart and organs torn out to put in the mummy jars. Painful and empty and nauseating. “The real you…” It was one thing to play mind games with Kris, but kissing him was different. I’d almost crossed a boundary I couldn’t. But I couldn’t ignore that there was something about how I felt when he was that close that had nothing to do with acting.
Our sort of, maybe, almost-kiss still tingled on my lips, even though it was the barest brush, like the flutter of Psyche’s wings. I brought my fingers up to my mouth, trying to remember and press the feeling away at the same time. A statue blocked my path. I froze and looked up into a face composed of pure sympathy. The placard said she was Guanyin, the goddess of compassion. Even though she was made for a temple in ancient China, she looked like she was reaching across the centuries just to comfort me.
“Help,” I whispered to the statue. I had to stop lying to myself. This was more than getting into character, and I didn’t know how to stop wishing all this was real. Fear and a suffocating helplessness broke me at that moment and I just sat where I stood, dropping my head onto my knees and drawing solace from a piece of stone.
By the time Kris found me heading back to the museum entrance, I was already back to my usual composed self. We avoided talking about what happened in the rotunda and I was happy to latch on to Ann
the second we found the others. Kris kept throwing me weird sideways looks, but I was just too tired to care.
Ann narrowed her eyes at me and pulled me over to the side. “What happened?”
I composed my features into a blank, happy slate. That was one thing I was good at, unlike, oh, not almost kissing the guy I was supposed to be crushing. “I think we just fought over whether an Egyptian soldier would beat a Navy seal or something stupid like that.” I added an unconcerned shake of my head, like the answer was obvious.
“If you two didn’t fight every second, I’d be worried. School has to be a nightmare for both of you.”
“It’s a really big school.” I looked over her shoulder, noticed Louisiana looking our way, and quickly changed the subject. “So, why is Geoff looking at us like he’s been stranded in an all-boy’s school for years and just saw a girl for the first time? Is there anything you want to tell me?”
Ann’s cheeks turned a pretty pink and she pulled her hair forward to play with it. For the first time today, I noticed she had it loose instead of in the usual bun or braid she wore outside of our room. “We just checked out the Textile collection. He wasn’t even bored while I talked about sewing and how the clothes were constructed.”
“I bet,” I said, teasingly. I turned slightly so I didn’t have to see Kris out of the corner of my eye. At least matchmaking was something I did really well. Grace would probably say I was trying to deal with my own out-of-control life by trying to control someone else, and this time, she’d be right.
“There’s a jacket from the sixteen-hundreds, and you should see this one dress from the seventeen-hundreds. The embroidery is amazing.” Apparently, sewing was Ann’s passion in addition to music. I needed to introduce her to Phoebe’s sister. “And then we went to the musical instrument wing and you should see the flutes they have here. They’re gorgeous.”
Dramatically Ever After Page 18
