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“Which notes?” he asked.

“Latin. There’s supposed to be a quiz, and I need—” Molly broke off and upended the contents of her bag directly onto the floor. Pens, highlighters, folders, and various notebooks landed in a pile in front of her knees. “It’s the tan notebook,” she said, riffling through the pile on the floor. “I haven’t transcribed the last week into my digital notes yet. Do you see it? Tan. The tan notebook.”

At some point, Simon had crouched beside her. She vaguely registered his hands helping her sort through her mess, but the tunnel vision currently focusing her on her own hands as she frantically shifted from notebook to folder and back again kept her from fully acknowledging his help.

Molly sucked in a breath, but it felt like inhaling through a straw. A tiny little stirring straw. A bent one. She was barely maintaining an A in Latin. Of all subjects, it had become her albatross this semester. She’d spent hours in the library the night before making and then drilling herself on vocabulary flash cards.

She’d barely slept, convinced she was one quiz away from wrecking her GPA. Her breakfast that morning had tasted like limestone, her coffee like battery acid.

“I’m not very good at languages. I have to study. I need my—” Molly stopped, breaking off at the sight of a shiny brown leather shoe inside her peripheral vision.

She followed the shoe to its attached ankle, leg, and the body above it.

Bishop’s blond hair fell forward onto his forehead as he looked down at her, both literally and figuratively.

“Lose something?” he asked, lip curling into the tiniest twist of a smile.

Molly scrambled to her feet so fast that Simon had to steady her. Then hold her back as she crowded Bishop.

He stepped back slightly, expression torn between amusement and surprise.

“Give it back,” she demanded, her voice shaking slightly. Though the hallway had begun emptying as a new period approached, enough students remained that several sets of curious eyes landed on Molly.

Bishop’s shoulders rose. They fell. A slow, methodical shrug. Then, as if he simply could not care less, he said, “See you in class,” and walked away.

“Come on, Molly. It’s okay. It’s just some notes,” Simon said in a calm voice, carefully refilling her bag with its contents. She tried to appreciate his steadiness, tried to listen to his reason. But her heart still pounded in the worst sort of way.

“No. They’re my notes. It’s my stuff, it’s—” The bell rang, signifying the start of a new period. Cold anxiety flushed through her. “I’ve never been tardy before.”

Chapter 8

Richard Graham

In the couple of weeks since Aster’s birthday, October had brought with it Molly’s favorite seasonal aesthetic. Roy and Alannah’s town house was as magical in the fall as she had once imagined. A cascade of squashes—Molly assumed mostly pumpkin, but there were shapes, colors, and textures she’d never seen before—littered the handful of steps leading to the front door. The branches of a nearby maple, one of dozens that lined the entire street, arched lazily over the stairs. Its leaves were a kaleidoscope of yellows, oranges, and reds just beginning to drop. Molly suspected she could spend hours perched on one of these steps and reading until there were more leaves in her hair than on the trees.

“Ah, my favorite nightmare,” Aster greeted as soon as they stepped inside. He gave the foyer a stern evaluation. “Interesting how you can’t buy taste with Minor League Baseball fame, isn’t it?”

Alannah sighed and replied without missing a beat.

“And look! Our local robber baron. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have saved some of Thomas’s banana mash for you. I hear that’s about where your spice tolerance lives these days.”

Aster’s head tilted as he turned to look at Molly. “And where might she have heard that?”

Molly suppressed a smile, refusing to meet his eyes.

She needed this. She needed time with these beloved friends. Time in a familiar world that gave her some breathing room from the one she shared with Aster, now even more crowded than before with the question of his disownment poised at the tip of Molly’s curious tongue.

Waiting for Aster to tell her about it in his own time required more self-control than was flattering to admit. There were moments, so many moments, when curiosity nearly got the better of her. But the more she watched Aster and the careful control he employed, the more she saw the differences between what she’d once thought was excessive censorship and what was actually a near-crippling need to get everything exactly right.

She’d almost asked him just that morning. They’d nearly finished drinking their coffee, and the words had almost slipped out. But somehow, she’d managed to pivot inquiry to invitation. “Did your—I mean, did you want to come today? Roy and Alannah won’t mind, and I feel like I haven’t seen much of you this week.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aster had replied. “I think we saw quite a lot of each other last night.”

“Making out with me in the living room for so long that we miss our dinner reservation doesn’t count.” Valiantly, Molly had tried to hide her blush behind her enormous custom mug printed with Pawntès’s beaming little face. Apparently, it had been purchased as a symbol of Aster’s triumph in the hard-fought battle to win him over.

“Perhaps we could agree to disagree?”

He’d smirked, but self-consciousness had flared in the pit of Molly’s stomach when she realized he hadn’t answered her invitation. “It’s, um, alright if you’d rather not join us.”