Radiant (3 page)

CLARA

It takes a few minutes to extricate myself from Angela’s grandmother. Angela’s already in bed when I arrive upstairs, covers pulled up to her chin, eyes closed. I get in my pj’s and slip into the creaky metal-framed bed next to her, then turn out the light and wait for her to say something. Anything. But she turns her back to me. We both lie there in the dark and listen to the sounds of Rome, the mopeds on cobblestones, car horns, people shouting, the snatches of laughter and fragments of Italian from down the street.

This is not a city that goes to bed early.

After a while we hear Rosa shuffle into her room for the night. Angela sits up. She slides out of bed and moves toward the door, not stopping to get dressed, which means that she never got into her pajamas in the first place. She’s like a cat burglar as she pads her way silently down the hall and sneaks down the stairs. I hear the creak of the front door. And then she’s gone.

Suddenly I’m wide awake.

I wonder if there was something I missed on the train, a secret conversation that said,
Meet me later, at that place
, or if she simply knows where to find him; or maybe she’s randomly gone to look for him in this city of a little less than three million people. Or I guess it’s possible that she’s not with him at all but wanted to be alone so I wouldn’t see how upset she is, so she wouldn’t have to talk to me about it. I’d understand that. I know that love can hurt.

All I know is, she could hardly wait to get out of here.

It’s not fair, I think. Angela always pushes me to tell her everything that happens to me, and if I hold anything back and she finds out about it later, she gets all miffed and hurt and stuff. But when it comes to her own life, oh no, that’s personal. No secrets in Angel Club, she always used to say. Whatever. So yeah, as her official best friend, I’m offended.

But then there’s the part where I don’t tell her things, either.

Two hours pass. Three. It’s now two in the morning, and still no Angela. I get up, pour myself a glass of water, drink about two sips and dump it, stand and stare out the window onto the empty street below. The city’s quieter now. A cold draft moves across my bare feet and I shiver. I tell myself that Angela’s tough. She knows how to take care of herself. She’s been coming here every summer for her entire life, without incident. She’s probably fine. I force myself to lie down again, but sleep’s not happening. I keep coming back to that memory of hers I caught earlier, a moment away from being kissed. The anticipation of his lips on hers. The charged space between them. The sharing of breath. The look in his eyes as he decided to throw caution to the wind, and kiss her.

Which she wanted more than anything.

Someone looked at me that way once.

Tucker.

I close my eyes. It’s so easy to call up the way his hands felt cupping my face. He kissed me so many times, more than I could count, but each time it was like this wonderful surprise. He always got this I-want-to-kiss-you expression in his eyes, right before he’d draw me in. My throat aches as I remember the agonizing joy of those few seconds before his lips touched mine. The rioting drum of my heart. His smell, a mixture of grass and sweat, a hint of fish and river water from our afternoons on the lake, maybe lemon that he’d sliced to put on some trout for dinner, and that smell all his own, man-and-sun-and-cologne. The sheer warmth of him, his skin, his hazy blue eyes, the dimple in his cheek.

I open my eyes.

This is not healthy, I think. This is not good. It’s over. I need to get over it.

Over him.

Why is that so freaking hard?

I miss Mom. All of a sudden missing her hits me like a never-ending wave. I try not to dwell on it, but her absence is always here, like I’m walking around with a big open hole in my chest where my mother used to be. I wish I could call her. She’d know what to do, what to say to make everything all right again. She always did. She’d say something witty and true, make me a cup of tea, hug me, smooth my hair down, and tell me something to get me laughing.

She’s never going to do that, ever again.

Cue the big old lonely lump in my throat.

When I open my eyes again it’s morning, and Angela’s still not here. I get dressed and spend a few minutes pacing around the room trying to come up with some kind of plan. Maybe I can slip out and look for her—not that I have any clue where to look—before anybody else knows she’s gone.

But I have no such luck with the sneaking. Rosa’s already at the stove, and to make matters infinitely worse, Angela’s snotty cousin Bella is sitting at the kitchen table. They both turn to stare at me when I come down the stairs.

“Too much wine last night?” Bella looks me up and down. “These American girls never know how to drink wine,” she says in Italian.

Rosa eyes me with a mournful expression that totally reminds me of Angela’s mom. I don’t know if she’s sad about the way I look or the idea that I can’t hold my wine.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I say as an explanation. “I thought I might take a walk this morning, clear my head.”

Smooth, Clara. Yeah, get some of that superfresh Roman air.

“Where is Angela?” Rosa asks as I reach the door.

I’m a terrible liar. I’m going to come up with something brilliant like
She’s sleeping in
, and what this sharp old lady is going to see all over my face is
She didn’t come home last night
, and then all hell is going to break loose.

My mouth is suddenly dry. I let go of the doorknob, start to turn around. “Um,” I say, about to blow it, but I’m saved, because right then Angela comes in the door.

“Good morning, Nonna,” she chirps, going straight to her grandmother and kissing her on the cheek. “I was out for a walk and thought I might bring you back some apricots from the fruit stand on the corner.” She hands over a small brown paper sack. Rosa takes it and empties the fruit into a bowl on the table, beaming that Angela is so thoughtful.

“
Grazie
, sweet girl,” she says.

“I never knew that Americans liked walking so much,” sniffs Bella, but she reaches and snags an apricot. Bites into it noisily.

Angela dares to meet my eyes for the briefest of moments. I wonder if anyone else notices that she’s still wearing the same clothes as last night.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” she says, and her smile is full of secrets.

ANGELA

I wake up in his arms, a ray of morning sun cutting across us in his tangled-up bed. Wow, I think. That was . . . wow. Totally worth the wait.

For a minute I keep perfectly still, savoring the feel of his body against mine, the hair on his legs a delicious counterpoint to my smooth skin, his breath in my hair, the steady thump of his heart under my cheek. I lift my head to look at him. He’s awake—he’s a morning person, one of his many flaws. His eyes are warm as he gazes down at me.

“Morning,” I say, my voice rough with sleep.

“Yes,” he says, an affirmation,
Yes, it is morning
. He reaches to brush away a strand of damp hair that’s stuck to the side of my face. I wonder if I was drooling on him.

His fingers trace the outline of my ear.

“You were whimpering,” he says. “What were you dreaming about?”

I dreamed about my vision. The guy in the gray suit. The steps. In the dream I climbed the steps and stood behind him, waiting, afraid to do what I was meant to do. I was supposed to touch him on the shoulder, I think, and then he would turn (and I would finally get to see his face!) and I would deliver my message. But I didn’t. In the dream, my hand lifted, hovered near his shoulder for several seconds, then dropped.

I don’t know the words, I thought. I’m not ready. I’m not prepared.

Panic seized me. I took a step back, then another, and another, then turned and fled down the steps, leaving the guy in the gray suit behind. The bright sunshine darkened into a storm. I ran, and the skies opened and poured rain down on me, chilling me, soaking me to the skin.

I’d chickened out. I’d failed my purpose. I had the sense that I’d lost everything, everything that was important to me, every hope, every dream.

I shiver. “Nothing,” I say.

A lie.

He raises his eyebrows the tiniest bit.

“It was a performance-anxiety dream,” I explain, “like my equivalent of one of those showing-up-for-class-naked dreams.” I glance at the clock on the nightstand. It’s almost seven o’clock. I sit up, drawing the sheet around me. “I have to go. My grandmother’s an early riser.”

“All right, just love me and leave me,” he says with a playacted sadness, folding his arms behind his head and watching me as I go around gathering up my clothes.

No, that’s what you’re going to do,
I want to say, but I don’t. This is supposed to be casual between us.

I’m not supposed to love him.

“Sorry, babe,” I say as I slip on my shoes. “I gotta run.”

He smiles at the word
babe
, so American, then slides out of bed and starts to get dressed quickly. “I wish you could stay for breakfast,” he says. “I’m getting good at making eggs.”

“Rain check,” I say. “I’m going to have to think fast to explain things to Nonna as it is.”

“Will Clara tattle on you?” he asks.

This stops me. We haven’t talked about Clara, not this time. I guess I told him enough about her last year that he was able to recognize her on the train. She’d freak if she knew how much I told him, all about her and Jeffrey and her perfect Dimidius mother, although I knew pretty much squat about the real situation last summer. I didn’t know about Christian. Or Mr. Phibbs and Billy and the congregation. Or about Michael.

“No,” I say to answer the question. “She’ll cover for me. She’s the loyal type.”

“I’d like to meet her,” he says softly, like he knows this may upset me. “Why don’t the two of you come to dinner this evening? I’ll make something nice for us.”

My stomach clenches at the thought of Clara here, in his apartment, her wide blue eyes taking it all in, taking him in.

She’s prettier than I am.

An utterly stupid thought to have, I realize. I’m no plain Jane. I know that. I don’t have trouble getting a guy’s attention if I want to. But my mind jumps instantly back to British History, junior year, Clara and me standing in front of the class, Clara in her Queen Elizabeth getup for our class project. Christian Prescott in the front row. The way he looked at her like she was the most gorgeous creature he’d ever beheld in his life.

Or Tucker at prom that same year, gazing longingly across the room at Clara as she stood next to Christian daintily sipping her punch. I might as well have been invisible next to her.

They talked about me, that night. Christian said, “You’re friends with Angela? She’s kind of intense.”

Intense. That’s the word for me. Not beautiful. Intense.

There’s something about Clara that pulls boys in like a magnet—something to do with her vulnerability, I think. The heart-on-the-sleeve stuff. It makes them want to protect her. Guys always want to be the white knight.

It’s kind of pathetic.

“Sure,” I say now, lightly, as if I couldn’t care less about it. “I’ll invite her.” I button up my shirt, then pull my hair out of my collar and give it a little shake so it tumbles all down my shoulders, turn, and meet his eyes. He starts to pull a T-shirt over his head, those plain white tees he wears, sexy as hell, but I put my hand on his arm to stop him. I lean to whisper in his ear, “But I’d rather be alone with you.”

The truth.

CLARA

“He wants to meet you,” Angela says later, when we’re alone. No explanation—nothing—just “he wants to meet you,” with the dramatic voice.

“Who?” I say sarcastically, and when she doesn’t answer, “Aren’t you even going to tell me his name?”

“No.” She’s determined to be mysterious about the whole thing, but I’ll take what I can get. I’m that curious.

“All right,” I say. “Introduce me to Mystery Guy.”

We leave around sundown, ride the metro to the Spanish Steps. Angela keeps running her fingers through her hair, reapplying her lipstick. At the door of his flat, she turns to me and puts on her this-is-serious face. “Try to have an open mind,” she says.

She knocks. Somebody inside turns down the music, a slow and mournful kind of blues. Footsteps. Then the door opens and there he is again, the guy from the train, smiling broadly.

“Buongiorno,”
he says. He leans over like he’s going to give Angela a brief kiss on the mouth, the kind a man might give his wife before heading off to the office, but she turns at the last second so his kiss glances off her cheek. She murmurs something I don’t quite catch. He looks at me. “Hi. Come in.”

We follow him into the apartment. It’s a small place, but cozy and well decorated. Right off it’s obvious that he’s some kind of artist or art collector. There are paintings everywhere, mostly in a type of impressionism, I think, although I don’t know much about art.

An artist, I think. How perfect that Angela would fall for an artist.

He leads us to the living room and a green velvet sofa.

“Have a seat,” he says, and we sit.

He reminds me of Orlando Bloom, I decide, slender and soulful-eyed, a relatively tidy mop of dark, curly hair, fine-boned face with distinctive crinkles around his eyes when he smiles. He’s older than I first thought, maybe even thirty. I wonder if that’s what Angela meant by me keeping an open mind.

An awkward minute passes where we all basically look each other over. Then Angela forces her gaze away from him, looks at me, clears her throat. “So. Um. This is Clara Gardner.”

“Good to finally meet you,” he says warmly. “Angela’s told me so much about you.”

That makes one of us, I think. He doesn’t have an Italian accent, which surprises me. There’s something foreign about it, soft
r
’s like he’s British, maybe faintly Middle Eastern, but definitely not Italian.

“Clara,” Angela says then, a nervous tremor in her voice. “Meet Phen.”

Wait.

I know that name.

I glance from him back to Angela. “I’m sorry. Did you say . . . ?”

“Phen,” he says, louder, like I’m hard of hearing. “It’s actually Penamue, but I go by Phen. With my friends, anyway.”

Right. Phen. As in, the guy who Angela met two years ago, who told her about the angel-bloods.

That Phen.

Angela’s in love with an angel.