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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