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Romy
“Everyone’s staring at me,” I mutter, tugging the neck of my jacket up over my chin.
Aisling glances up from a laminated copy of Charlotte’s Web, pinning me with a look that suggests I’m mad.
“First of all”—she jerks her chin toward the play mat in the corner—“those kids are literally, like five. Somehow, I don’t think they have the cognitive maturity to be judging you for browsing the children’s section.” Her dark hair whips around her shoulders as she spins to glare at the three henchmen lingering behind us. “ Secondly, if anybody is staring, it’s because we’re being followed by the three musketeers. Guys, can you back off a little?” she hisses at them. “This is a public library, not the Wild West.”
I can’t help but smirk at how uncomfortable they look. One nudges the others, then they shuffle off to relocate behind the historical fiction shelves.
“Thank you.”
Aisling flashes me a grin. “No, thank you. You’ve been such a good student, honestly. Can you believe you’ve read every single children’s book in our library? You’ll be reading War and Peace in no time.”
“I have no idea what that is, but if it doesn’t have size twenty font and plenty of colorful drawings, I’ll probably struggle.”
Laughing, Aisling cracks open Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, buries her nose between the pages, and inhales deeply. “God, I love books,” she mutters drunkenly. “And I’m so jealous of you. You get to experience all of the classics for the first time. What I’d pay to erase my memory and reread the books that changed my life.”
In the silence, I run my fingers along the colorful spines before I can’t hold my tongue any longer.
“Aisling?”
“Mmm?”
“Has your brother said anything to you about us recently?”
The way her eyes light up raises a flush to my skin’s surface. I haven’t seen him in three days, not since he fucked me over the kitchen counter in silence, ignoring my pleas for him to protect Mak and me. I’ve been on edge ever since, skittering between wanting to throw myself out the goddamn window, simply to escape my own racing thoughts, and convincing myself that he’s just busy.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to him, but I’ve never seen him so happy.”
My heart stutters. “So you’ve seen him?”
“Not in about a week. He’s so busy with all this…” She waves a battered Enid Blyton novel around. “Mafia politics. Want my advice? Stay the heck out of it. Put your feet up, watch a movie. Take a few shopping trips into SoHo. And then when it all blows over, enjoy the tiny slice of normalcy until the next drama comes along.”
My eyes start to water, so I turn away from her before she notices. When it all blows over. It’s not a passing storm, and I can’t hunker down and pretend it’s not happening. It’s literally life or death, and it involves the people I love.
Love.
Oh, god. The word appeared, fully formed in my mind, before I could stop it.
As if a girl like me would know what love is.
Aisling’s dramatic sigh is far too loud for a library, and it brings me back to reality. “You guys are like the characters in my favorite romance novels. Except, you’re not a small-town single mom with dreams of opening her own cake shop, and my brother isn’t an out-of-town hotshot who wants to steamroll your dead father’s land and build a high-rise apartment building.”
I blink. “What?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Never mind. I’m heading over to the romance section. See you in a bit.”
As she saunters off, I turn my attention back to the shelf in front of me and actually read the spines for the first time. The Wind in the Willows, The Witches…I’m ashamed to admit they look a little thick for my current reading level. So I catch the attention of a passing librarian, and she points me in the direction of a younger reading group.
I delve deeper into the library, rounding calf-high furniture and narrowly avoiding squeaky toys strewn on activity mats. I’m flicking through the pages of Where the Wild Things Are when the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
Before I can turn around, spindly fingers dig into my ribs, forcing me into the aisle over.
“What are you doing here, Romashka?” says a familiar voice. A voice that, even when I’m expecting to hear it, makes me sick to my stomach.
I look up into the black coal pits of Belsky’s eyes. His woolen jacket is pulled high up his neck, his red cashmere scarf concealing the lower part of his face.
He could have the best disguise in the world, but I’d recognize this man anywhere.
