Yusuf couldn’t look at me and guess what I was feeling. Not that long ago I would’ve seen the way his head works as a flaw, or something I had to try to fix instead of just trying to understand him. How he doesn’t play mind games, and how he’s not fumbling through some fog of cynicism like everyone else. How he breaks everything down into particles so he can see and appreciate the smallest parts of the world around him, and only takes the things from his past that he needs. Which made me want to try to do the same. Even if it was weird and hard, I wanted to be honest for him, more than I’d been for anyone else.

I took a pull of wine against the rusty nail I’d dry-swallowed.

“Are we trying too hard to be like Figueiredo and Tiago?” I asked.

“We’re not them.”

And I was back to floating in that warm pool. I had to make everything hard when it didn’t need to be, when it was easy for him to brush aside my worries with facts. We weren’t Figueiredo and Tiago. I had to repeat it a couple of times to shut up the doubt that still wanted to fly out of my mouth. A breeze blew past us. I stared down at the small starburst of a scar by his left thumb. The night before, I’d asked him how he’d gotten it and he told me he didn’t even remember.

“I don’t want to be your mistake,” I told him finally.

He squeezed my hand, turning from the starred sky to meet my eyes. He shook his head, his smile a little wolfy and wild.

“The first second I saw you,” was all he could say. And all he needed to.

12

THE HIGH PRIESTESS

Margarita club was a hit until it very much wasn’t.