He stood, and I wanted to pull him back to me but stopped myself, my hands falling weakly into my lap.

Then I felt him walk behind me again. His body grazed my back and lowered—settling behind me on the bench. I slid forward to make room as his legs swung over, framing mine.

“I keep thinking about . . .” Oscar’s warm breath swept my neck, shooting shivers along my skin. “How much I’d like to see you like that, pure emotion—but happy. I . . .”

His arms crept forward, around me.

“I want to be the one to make you feel that.”

I waited for his fingers to move onto the keys, to compose something for me, the Happy Ruby Suite. But his hands landed on my knees, covering the green fabric of my dress and then slipping under, cool against my bare skin.

“Can I try, Ruby? I . . . I really want to try.”

“Okay,” I said, my own whisper shaking hot, as his fingers tingled up my thighs and higher. Then he kissed my neck and I couldn’t say anything at all.

Higher still. And even more under.

My nerves skittered and settled.

This is new. It should be scary. After all, my prior experience consisted of a few underwhelming kisses from a Wildwood boy or two. But the scariest thing right now was how relaxed I felt. It was like I was alone in my room thinking about Oscar. But better. And better.

I let my eyes fall shut, my mind quieting to a sweet hum as I leaned against him and let his mouth find mine—maybe not pure emotion, not completely, but closer with every touch.

20.

the sky was ferociously blue, a brisk breeze softening the sun’s blaze. It looked and smelled like France here.

“I feel like a bad influence.” I glanced behind us, seeing only a docent and an elderly woman meditating on a bench. “Encouraging truancy.”

“I told you, it’s a sick day.” Oscar spun. “Cough-cough.”

“I just hope you don’t get caught.”

“What, here? In the year of our Lord eight hundred and seventy-eight?” Oscar kneeled to read a placard poking out of the monastic herb garden: Pimpinella anisum.

I stepped back, scanning the low-arched pink colonnade, tiled rooftops, square stone tower, cheerful little fruit trees, remembering the last time I was at the Cloisters—Mom, Nora, a swirl of adults, starlit, bleary. Visitors were sparse today, so I could do what I used to do as a little kid—imagine something parallel, better.

Me and Oscar in a world apart.