I take a bite of my panini. Marvelous gooey, cheesy flavor explodes in my mouth. Cat laughs. “Good, huh?”
I nod and take another bite, my eyes rolling back in bliss. They flutter open and land on a group of boys gathering at the table behind Cat. They are all wearing matching shirts with their names written above a bright red number. I am unsure if their clothing marks them as uniformed guards or a band of students unable to remember their own names, but I am fascinated, staring at the writing and dreaming up possible meanings. A boy with the name Daniels written above the number thirty-two slaps the boy beside him on the back, jostling him forward, and I catch a flash of blond curls at the table beyond.
An eerie feeling crawls in my chest.
Bobbing and weaving my head around so I can see past the boy’s massive arm, I struggle to get another glimpse.
“Less?”
Can it be possible?
A hand waves in front of my eyes, and I crane my neck, knowing it cannot be him, but excitement spurs me on nevertheless.
“Earth to Less, come in, Less.”
A faint, familiar rumbling laugh reaches my ears. Cat tenses across from me, then twists her head. The boys take their seats, my line of vision clears, and I gasp.
Lorenzo.
Confusion colors my world. Cat turns back to face me, and I stammer, “H-how is he here?”
She gives me a wobbly smile. “Less, that’s not Lorenzo. It’s Lucas.”
“Lucas?” I shake my head.
“Lucas Cappelli, to be precise. Apparently Lorenzo is Lucas’s ancestor.” Cat’s voice wobbles, and she looks down at her hands. “Freaky, ain’t it?”
I turn back to the boy who could be Lorenzo’s twin and nod. “The word freaky seems to fit the situation amazingly well.”
Lucas is two tables away, but even so, I can clearly distinguish his dark brown eyes, curly golden locks, and the dimple slicing through the bronze skin of his cheek.
Across from me, Cat pulls apart her sandwich, shredding the crispy bread into minuscule pieces. The slight tremor of her hands and the unnecessary mutilation of her food are the sole indicators that she is upset—otherwise her countenance remains as cool and collected as ever.
Unsure if I should pry or leave it be, I take a bite of my still intact panini and wait.
I do not have to do so for long.
“I met him at my sweet sixteen a few weeks ago.” She glances up, and I am struck by the vulnerability in her gaze. My cousin is never vulnerable. “He’s a junior, a year older than us. His family just moved back here from Milan, and Jenna’s planning his sister’s party.” She pauses. “Angela’s sweet. You’d like her.”
She stares intently at her tray, and I do not rush in to fill the silence. I do not ask what happened at the party or any day since. Instead, I watch her lick her lips and crack her knuckles.
Though I want to scream for her to finish her tale, I want her to want to tell me.
Finally, Cat breaks the silence. “We danced…”
My stomach turns, remembering another dance, one I witnessed her sharing with Lorenzo. Cat’s ball was magical for many reasons, but seeing the way they looked at each other that night changed something inside me. I have always wondered what it would be like to be on the receiving end of such adoration.
Cat drops her head and scratches her neck, using the action to steal a subtle glance at Lucas’s table. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she says, “And now, it’s like he’s everywhere. I can’t escape him, Less, and believe me, I’ve tried. I even went to my nana’s house in Mississippi for Christmas break, but distance doesn’t stop him from texting or calling.”
A stunning blonde in a short skirt bounces up behind Lucas and brazenly wraps her arms around his neck. I hear my cousin’s sharp inhalation as the girl leans in to whisper in his ear, blocking Lucas’s face from our view. Cat emits a close impersonation of a growl.
Though I feel fiercely disloyal to my friend back home for doing so, I have to ask. “Cousin, perhaps this is another cultural thing I do not understand, but why are you so desperate to avoid him?”
Cat slaps the table in clear frustration. “Everything’s just so confusing. I mean, he looks like Lorenzo, but he isn’t. And I get that I’m never gonna actually see Lorenzo again, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less, you know?”
She shoves both hands through her hair, and I nod in encouragement, because I do understand.
But then she says, “I have to tell you, though…there’s a part of me that wonders if Lucas being here, looking so much like Lorenzo, if it’s like a cosmic sign from Reyna, telling me I need to move on. That it’s okay. That it’s not horrible to like him and I should go for it. But then, I don’t know.” She laughs humorlessly. “Maybe it is just a random, crazy fluke. And I’m just pathetically fickle.”
Her eyes are dark brown pools of self-condemnation and confusion, imploring me to give her an answer I simply do not have. So I shrug, as clueless about gypsy magic as she is, even as I wish I could do so much more.
At the back table, the blonde raises her head and says, “Oh, Lucas,” giggling in such a way that manages to sound girlish and incredibly annoying at the same time. Cat grits her teeth, intentionally avoiding the scene behind her. “Plus, all of it…it just feels wrong, you know?”
I push my tray away, no longer having any interest in food, cheese-filled or not. “What feels wrong?”
“You know.” She swallows. “Having feelings for someone else. At the party, when Lucas asked me to dance, I honestly didn’t see the harm—it would’ve been rude to say no, and it was a chance to kind of relive my dance with Lorenzo at the ball. But it ended up being more than that. And then it got weird.” She bites her lip and squints at me. “There was…a connection.”
I cannot help it; I flinch.
Cat hangs her head. “I know! After an entire month of not being able to think about anyone else but Lorenzo, all Lucas had to do was slide his arms around me on the dance floor and my insides melted like in a freaking romance novel.”
Shoving her own plate away, she bangs her head onto the table in an obvious display of berating herself. My heart feels torn. I so badly want to ease her distress, to pat her shoulder and say everything will be okay. But my hand hesitates midair.
Since Cat transported through time, Lorenzo has been my only real friend. Granted, he was and will always be more my brother’s friend than my own, but he has looked out for me, protected me. And I know he would be devastated to know another man was trying to steal Cat’s heart—much less someone who looks so much like himself.
But Cat is my family.
I stare at her long brown hair for a beat and then place my hand on her shoulder.
From the table behind us, a bubbly giggle breaks out. Cat twists around in time to see the blonde practically throw herself into Lucas’s lap.
“And that would be Desiree. It took her long enough to find the fresh meat. School started what, a whole three hours ago?”
My cousin shakes her head in disgust and turns back to me. “Here I am all conflicted on what I should do while there’re girls like her around, more than willing to introduce him to American ways. And I swear, it’s like he’s everywhere. I can’t even get a moment to think, to process, without turning around and finding him behind me. Lucas is even in my art class, my sanctuary, of all places. And of course he’s awesome, which means we have that in common, too. You should’ve heard Mr. Scott going on and on about how impressive Lucas’s technique was and his stupid use of negative space.”
She plucks the straw from her carton and attempts to snap it. When it refuses to break, she tosses it down the table. “If the boy’s not teaching the class by the end of the year, it’ll be a freaking miracle.”