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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