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He shifts me against his hip afterwards, smiling crookedly. His hair is so wet it looks almost black. “I want to see where you live,” I say.
He raises an eyebrow. “I think that can be arranged.”
“I’m curious, you know, what a hotel emperor’s apartment might look like.”
“It has a throne, for one.”
“Of course it does. Dungeons, perhaps?”
“No, that would be a bit gauche,” he says, eyes sparkling. “And unnecessary. The moat already keeps out all the rabble.”
I laugh. “I’m so grateful you’re considering lowering the drawbridge for a lowly commoner.”
“It’ll always be lowered for you,” he says. “Let’s do an evening this week.”
I nod and lean back against the wooden backing. “Isn’t this so much better than the sushi lesson you bid on, too?”
He chuckles. “I would have paid more money just to getoutof that one.”
We stay as late as we can, that day, until we have to leave the secluded Connecticut getaway. Isaac lifts both of our bags into the trunk of his car. In a wool sweater and a down vest, he looks relaxed. At ease. Another version of himself, one that’s just as competent in the forested expanse around us as he is in the concrete jungle back home.
“I’m glad we have another full week,” I say.
He smiles, and reaches out to brush back a strand of hair from my face. It’s still damp from our shower. “Yes,” he murmurs. “So am I.”
I kiss him, just because I can, and vow to myself that I’ll make the next week the best one I’ve ever had.
20
ISAAC
I lean against the closed door of my apartment and watch Sophia walk down the hall, one foot carefully placed in front of the other, like she’s intruding.
“You can snoop,” I say with a grin. “Go ahead.”
“This place is yourhome?Like, your actual home, home?”
“Yes.”
“It looks like a museum!”
“The first couple of rooms definitely do.”
She peers into the study, off the main hallway. It’s a massive space with three of the four walls clad in built-in-bookcases.
“Wow,” she breathes, and runs a hand over leather-encased books. “Have you read these?”
“No. Most were printed half a century ago.” I look at the giant desk in the middle of the room, with the dark wood and the leather inlay. “My grandfather was the first to live in this apartment.”
“This was his study?”
“Yes.”
She pauses at three framed portraits. They’re ostentatious, commissioned for vanity, and yet I’ve never been able to take them down. To change anything in these rooms. My father had felt the same.
Sophia walks past the one of my great-grandfather, coming to a stop at my grandfather’s, with the giant moustache and the pronounced frown lines.
“Anthony Winter Senior,” she says. “Right?”
