“I kind of grew up with classical music,” Alex said as he stepped onto the escalator. “My mom used to be a concert pianist, until she married my dad. And my sister plays the flute. And I used to play violin.”
“Really? The violin? Why’d you stop?”
Alex looked at her as they traveled upward on the escalator. “When you’re a guy and you’re kind of small for your age and you’re getting beaten up on a regular basis, you stop playing the violin as soon as possible.”
“Oh, right,” she agreed.
On the second floor, another usher directed them through a set of doors.
“So, do you have season tickets or something?” she asked as they walked into a large, wood-paneled auditorium that glowed with soft amber lighting.
“Nah, this is free,” Alex said, making his way into an aisle. “Every Wednesday some of the Juilliard students perform for school credit. Anyone can come to see them. Except no one really knows about it.”
“But you do,” Carina said as they sat down.
Alex unbuttoned his coat. “And now you do, too.”
As Alex took off his coat, she snuck a quick glance at his clothes. Instead of his usual T-shirt and thermal combo, he wore a collared, gray-striped button-down shirt. And she definitely smelled hair gel.
“What?” Alex asked, catching her stare.
“Nothing,” she said, red-faced, turning back to face the stage.
What is going on? she thought. Did he like her or not? The old Carina would have made a joke to find out. Something like Where’s the Smiths T-shirt? Or is this a date? But she was a different person now. The sort of person who didn’t know how to crack jokes and flirt with guys anymore. Or maybe she was just that person around Alex. There was something about him that made her feel like she had some growing up to do.
“This is a string quartet,” Alex whispered into her ear. “Two violinists, one cellist, and a violist. I think they’re playing Beethoven.”
The lights dimmed and two girls and a guy, wearing dark blazers and jeans, walked onstage carrying what looked like violins. A fourth guy walked out, carrying a cello.
“What’s a violist?” she asked.
“It’s someone who plays the viola,” he said.
“Oh.” She’d never heard of a viola. As far as she could tell, it looked just like a violin.
The audience’s applause died down and the lights dimmed all the way. And then they began to play.
Carina sat there in the dark, ready to listen politely for the first five minutes and then discreetly take a nap. But from the sound of the first note she was completely transfixed. Instead of lulling her to sleep, the music actually woke her up. It was invigorating and relaxing at the same time.
“Close your eyes,” Alex whispered into her ear.
She did. The music filled the space around her. She remembered what Alex had said to her about music having a landscape. She could hear it now—the different parts separating and coming together. Like waves, it washed over her, calming her. All of the things she’d said to her dad, all of the questions that had been racing through her mind, quieted down. There was nothing in her mind right now but the music. Until she felt Alex’s arm press up against hers.
She opened her eyes. There it was: his arm, nestled right up next to hers, the skin of their wrists just barely touching. The contact sent a current of prickly heat right up to her shoulder.
But Alex seemed oblivious to it. He sat watching the musicians onstage, totally absorbed in the music.
Carina tried to refocus on the music, but she couldn’t. Was this an accident? Or did he mean to be touching her arm? The old her would have done something to find out, like reach down to grab his hand or tickle his palm. But now she just sat there motionless, feeling the warmth from his skin seep right through the sleeve of her turtleneck.
The old her wouldn’t have been surprised that he liked her. But the new her was. Alex knew the new her. And he liked her anyway. And now, as she sat perfectly still amid the swelling music, her heart pounding like crazy, she realized that she liked him, too.
chapter 21
When the concert was over and they stood up to pull on their coats, Carina wondered if things were going to be a little awkward after more than an hour of semi-accidental arm touching. But Alex didn’t seem the least bit weirded out.
“Pretty cool, huh?” he asked on the escalator as he buttoned up his coat. “I can’t believe those guys are still in school.”
“Amazing,” she agreed. “Do you think you’d like to go to Juilliard, too?”
“Sure, but I missed my chance,” he said. “I stopped playing a couple years ago.”
“So start now. I’m sure you can catch up. I mean, if that’s really where you want to go.”
Alex gave her a playful nudge as they walked off the escalator and into the now-crowded lobby. “Thanks for the life coaching. Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think somewhere in Colorado so I can go hiking. That’s what I really love to do.”
“What does your dad think about that?” he asked as they walked out onto the street.
“My dad?”
“I just figure he’d probably want you to go into business, right? Go work for him or something?”
“Well, I don’t want to work for him. How would you feel if someone told you what to do?”
“I’d love for my dad to tell me what to do,” Alex said.
Carina walked beside him in silence. It sounded like Alex’s dad wasn’t in the picture anymore. Suddenly she felt embarrassed for complaining so much.
“So just tell me what he did that made you so angry,” he said. “You know, that thing you did to piss him off.”
“It’s a long story,” she said, fumbling for her gloves in her coat pocket.
“Just so you know, I don’t have Page Six on speed dial or anything.”
“I know you don’t. But I actually know a girl who might.”
“I’m serious,” he said, giving her a probing look. “Tell me.”
“Okay. My dad cheated on my mom,” she said bluntly. “He was seeing some other woman and my mom left him. She wanted me to live with her but my dad threatened to sue her for custody. And she didn’t have any choice but to do what he said. Like always.”
Alex walked quietly beside her. “That’s what you’re still mad about?” he asked.
“He’s so obsessed with his company he doesn’t even know I exist. And I just have to wonder why he wanted me so bad. If it had anything to do with me, or just, you know, winning.”
Alex was still quiet as they passed a row of dark brownstones.
“You can’t tell anyone that, by the way,” she added. “I mean the cheating part. Anybody.”
“I won’t,” Alex finally said. “And that sucks. Really. But at some point, you’re just gonna have to get over it. You can’t spend the rest of your life hating your dad for something he did.”
“So I’m just supposed to forget about it?”
“No. I’m just saying there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s over. Now you have to figure out how to live with the guy. And it’s not all up to him to make sure it’s easy.”
“What do you mean, it’s not all up to him?” she asked, starting to get angry. They turned the corner onto Central Park West. A bus was lumbering toward them down the street, and for a moment, Carina thought about jumping on it.
“I’m just saying that you need to meet him halfway,” Alex said. “You have to try to get along with him, too.”
“Look, you don’t know the situation.”
“And what about the other woman?” Alex asked. “Is he with her now?”
“No,” Carina said.
“Well, who was she?” he asked. “Did you meet her?”
“No, but who cares?” she asked, truly annoyed now. “It still happened. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, at least she’s not in your face the whole ti
me,” he said, shrugging.
Carina stopped walking and turned to him. “What’s your problem?” she asked.
“My problem?” he repeated.
“Why are you trying to make me feel like I don’t have a right to be upset?” she asked.
“Carina.” Alex sighed. In the glow of the orange streetlight above them his gaze was intense and direct. “I’m just saying that you have to move on. This is your life, too. You can’t give it all over to something that happened in the past.”
Carina stared at him, biting her lip in frustration. “Thanks for being so understanding,” she grumbled. “I think I’m gonna go.” She turned back in the opposite direction down the street.
“Hey, wait!” Alex grabbed her arm. Despite her anger, her knees went weak at his touch. “I’m sorry,” he said, smiling as he turned her around to face him. “I’m on your side. I am. I just have kind of a big mouth sometimes. Just ask my mom and sister.”
“I will,” she said, trying to resist a smile.
“In fact,” he said, pulling out his phone, “you can ask them right now.” He started typing out a text. “You want to meet them?”
“Now?”
“I’m on my way to meet up with them,” he said, pointing up the street.
Carina squinted as she looked uptown. In the distance, she saw crowds, lights, and what looked like giant buildings hanging suspended in midair. “What is that?” she asked, staring. “Oh my God,” she said, as it dawned on her. “It’s that!” They were blowing up the balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on Eighty-first Street, just across from the Museum of Natural History. It was a New York tradition, but one that she’d never seen in person. “I’ve never gone to this!” she squealed.
“You’ve never come here with your parents?” Alex asked.
“Nope, but I’ve wanted to,” she said. She didn’t want to explain that her two best friends were the daughters of Katia Summers and Holla Jones, who could probably start a stampede in crowded public places like this. “Come on! Let’s go!”
They half ran, half walked up Central Park West toward the surreal sight of a gigantic Kermit the Frog bobbing up and down in the sky, tied down with ropes. They turned onto Eighty-first Street. “My mom should be right over here,” he said, taking Carina by the arm and pulling her into the crowd massed behind police horses. “We sort of always have the same spot.”
“Alex!” a girl yelled, just as they were halfway down the block.
A girl Carina’s age elbowed her way out of the crowd and skipped toward them. She had a brilliant stripe of purple in her hair, a mess of earrings all up and down one ear, and a charcoal wool dress with big red buttons and black-and white-striped tights.
“Thank God you showed up,” she said desperately, taking Alex’s arm. “Mom’s hijacked about twenty people so far, and she’s invited half of them over for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Help.” She nodded toward a short, dark-haired woman a few feet away, busily chatting up a young couple.
“Carina, this is my sister, Marisol,” he said. “Who also thinks I have a big mouth.”
“God, does he ever.” Marisol laughed pleasantly as she shook Carina’s hand. Alex’s sister shared his large, wide-set brown eyes and graceful cheekbones, but she was even artsier-looking than her brother. “So nice to meet you. My brother’s told us a lot about you.”
“He has? Like what?” Carina asked, shaking her hand.
Alex gave his sister a hard nudge, and she gave him one right back. “Um, only that you’re really cool,” she said brightly. “So what happened? Did he say something stupid to you?”
“No, not at all,” Carina said, feeling herself blush a little. He’d told his sister about her? She’d never expected that. “Cool dress. Where’d you get it?”
“The Williamsburg Goodwill. It cost five dollars, which was, like, superexpensive for that place. You ever been?”
“Uh, no,” Carina said. “But I’d like to check it out.”
“I can take you there sometime,” Marisol said. “You’re so tiny, you’d probably find more stuff there than me.”
“Wait, before you get further into girl talk, Marisol, did you get us the tickets for Texas?” Alex said.
“Mom got them,” Marisol said. “We leave the day before Christmas Eve. That okay with you? Or do you have another fancy DJ gig?”
“What are you guys doing in Texas?” Carina asked. “Do you have family there?”
“We’re going down to build houses for Habitat for Humanity,” Alex explained. “We started doing it a couple years ago. It’s actually really fun.”
“Because my brother likes to hog all the good jobs,” Marisol put in, nudging him again. “I just get stuck with carrying all the lumber around.”
“Oh come on, you’re in charge of the best part,” he said. “My sister’s an artist,” he said to Carina. “So she gets to boss us all around when the time comes for painting the houses.”
“Wow,” Carina said, genuinely impressed.
“You know, I was thinking,” Alex said, rubbing his hands together, “you still need to get flowers for the party, right?”
“I do.” She’d almost completely forgotten about the party.
“Well, Marisol does these really cool flower sculptures she paints by hand,” he said. “They might be a little more unique than real flowers.”
“Could we use them?” Carina asked.
Marisol tugged at the purple stripe in her hair. “As long as they don’t get torn apart by the end of the night, sure.”
“And maybe she can go to the dance,” Alex suggested. “Everyone’ll be around her age, right?”
Marisol blushed as she swatted her brother. “Alex,” she said.
“No, no, I’m sure that would be fine,” Carina said, trying to picture someone as edgy as Marisol trying to fit in with Ava’s crowd. “I can get her a ticket. And I’d love to use the flowers.”
“Great,” Marisol said, beaming. “And I can help you pick out something to wear.”
“It’s a deal,” Carina replied just as the small, dark-haired woman Carina knew was Alex’s mom stepped out of the crowd and threw her arms around Alex.
“Hello, honey!” Mrs. Suarez was so petite that she had to stand on her tippytoes to plant a big kiss on Alex’s cheek. She had a neat shoulder-length bob and doe-shaped eyes, and Carina could see that ten years ago she would have been astonishingly beautiful. “How was the concert?” she asked.
“Amazing,” Alex said. “Mom, this is Carina.”
“Hi, Mrs. Suarez,” Carina said, putting out her hand.
Alex’s mom waved her hand away and threw her arms around her, too. “Oh, your face is freeeeezing,” she said, patting Carina’s check. Mrs. Suarez reached down and put a cup of something dark into Carina’s hand. “This’ll warm you up.”
Carina took a sip. It tasted like a latte but it was sweeter and stronger. “Thanks,” Carina said. “What is this?”
“Café con leche,” Mrs. Suarez replied. “But don’t worry. It’s decaf. When Alex’s father was still alive, we used to go to the Macy’s parade and I’d bring a whole vat of this I’d wheel around like a suitcase,” she said. “But caffeine didn’t agree with him. And he’d start telling terrible jokes,” she laughed. “So now, decaf.”
So Alex’s father was dead, she thought, sipping her drink. No wonder he’d said that he’d love for his dad to tell him what to do, and no wonder he’d been so kind about the Jurg. She felt so bad for him that she wanted to hug him right there in front of his family.
“Mom, you can stop monopolizing my friend now,” Alex said, touching Carina on the shoulder. “We gotta go.”
“Do you have plans for the holiday tomorrow?” she asked Carina. “Please! Come over.”
“Oh, I would love to,” Carina said genuinely. “But I’m going to be out of town.” Or imprisoned, she wanted to say.
“Well, if you change your mind, we’ll have enough food to choke a horse!” Mrs.
Suarez said as Alex steered Carina away.
“Sorry, my mom can be a little overbearing,” he said.
“That’s okay, I see where you get it now,” she said, smiling. “But I should probably get going. My dad likes to leave for Montauk at night to avoid the rush-hour traffic. But thanks so much for the concert tonight.”
“Sure thing,” he said, leading her out of the crowd and into the park in front of the glowing pink ball of the Hayden Planetarium. “I think my family wants to adopt you.”
“Well, they can,” she laughed. “You’re really lucky.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “But you know how it is. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.”
They came to a stop under one of the large elms in front of the planetarium, and Carina hugged herself to stay warm. “I’m sorry about your dad,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Alex nodded and looked down at the ground. “It’s not my favorite topic,” he said.
She reached out and touched his arm. “You know, you can tell me stuff, too,” she whispered. “If you need to.”
Alex looked up at her, and she could tell from the way his brown eyes took in her entire face that he was surprised by what she’d said.
“Okay,” he said under his breath.
They were only a few inches apart, and in the darkness, she felt that familiar, pre-kiss adrenaline begin to course through her body. She stepped closer to him and closed her eyes. This was it, she thought. They were going to kiss. She held her breath, waiting for him to make his move… when she felt his hands gently squeeze her arms.
“Have a great Thanksgiving,” he said.
She opened her eyes. It was as if a splash of cold water had hit her in the face.
“Yeah. You, too,” Carina said, stumbling over a rock in the dark. “Have a good time in Texas.”
“That’s not this weekend,” Alex said. “That’s Christmas.”
“Oh, right.” She stumbled again. “Well. Happy Thanksgiving. Bye.”
“Bye.”
She gave him a silly, halfhearted wave and walked to Columbus, thrilled that the dark was hiding her burning face. All of her instincts had been wrong. He didn’t like her. Tonight had just been a friendly hangout. Maybe he talked about all his friends with his sister. She’d read him wrong this entire time, she thought, with a panic that gripped all of her internal organs and turned them inside out.