“It’s the traditional French spelling, pronounced ehn-reh.”

“That sounded very French.”

“Oui, mademoiselle,” he says with a smile.

“That sounded very French too.”

“I lived in France after I left here,” he says, and that’s when I realize I don’t even know where Corsica is.

“So you speak French?”

“I do.”

“But I remember you had an accent before.” And, wow. I only just remembered that as I said it. But he did, just a little. It was the way certain words rolled off his tongue.

“I may have,” he says with a little bit of a cringe, like it embarrasses him. “Italian was my first language. My father was in the military and we lived in Italy until I was six. He spoke Italian to us in the home even after we came back to New York.”

“So you speak French and Italian. What else?”

He smiles. “English.”

I roll my eyes at him. “I mean what else?”

His smile turns to more of a smirk and he lifts his eyebrows at me. “That’s not enough?”

I shrug. “I guess. Say something in Italian.”

“Come sei bella,” he says, his smile softening.

“What did you say?”

“You are beautiful.”

I just stare at him for way too long before turning back to Salomé. “Why did you stop drawing?”

I hear him blow out a sigh, but I don’t turn away from the painting. “Things changed. I just didn’t feel . . . inspired. I lost my love of it, I suppose.”

“That’s too bad. You were good.” He saw things that others missed. He saw everything. And then he managed to put it on paper in a way that made it more real than it had been in the moment. Or, at least it felt that way.

The memory that flashes in my head makes me smile.

“What?” Alessandro asks, giving me a curious look.

“Do you remember that day in the park? It was right before you . . .” left, but I can’t make myself say it. “You were drawing me and I grabbed your sketch pad and ran away, and I ran into that totally lame mime guy near the fountain, who kept doing—”

“—trapped in a box,” he finishes for me with a smile and a small shake of his head.

“Yeah. And he got pissed and started cussing me out and then all those little orange-and-black butterflies came, and like, swarmed us.”

“We never did figure out what kind of butterflies those were,” he muses with distant eyes, still smiling.

“It was pretty cool, though. I’d never seen more than one or two butterflies in the park before that.” I remember Alessandro pulling me against him and laughing as they fluttered all around us. And I remember feeling free in a way I never had before, like I was one of them, fluttering above the ground, light as air. I could go anywhere. Be anything. The feeling made me dizzy. Alessandro made me dizzy. I think that’s the second I knew I loved him, because in anybody else’s arms, I felt trapped, but in his, I felt free.

We spend the next two hours in the European painting galleries, looking at super old paintings that seem to be mostly Italian and French, and Alessandro answers all my questions. He gets pretty excited when I ask something, his hands working as he answers, so without even meaning to, I find myself asking a lot. I love watching those hands. But it’s more than that. It’s like his enthusiasm is contagious, because I’m surprisingly non-bored.

We find ourselves in the main stairwell at the end of the rambling galleries and he looks at me a long moment. “You’ve had enough, haven’t you?”

I glance back over my shoulder. “That was actually pretty cool.”

He smiles softly and guides me to the staircase with a hand on my back. “I can see this really isn’t your thing. What do you like to do?”

I shrug as we start slowly down the stairs. “I don’t know. Nothing, really.”

He flashes me a glance. “You must have a favorite place in the city . . . somewhere that’s special to you.”

I shrug again. “I kind of like Central Park . . . and I went to Coney Island once when I was a kid.” Mallory’s dad took pity on me once and brought me with them.

“Coney Island,” he repeats. “What about the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State Building?”

“Never been,” I answer.

“The Museum of Natural History?” he says with a wave toward the park as we reach the ground floor.

“Nope?”

He stops walking and just stares at me. “We need to fix this.”

“I’m not broken.”

His mouth presses into a line. “I didn’t say you, I said this. You’re off on Thursdays?”

“Usually.”

“So, Thursday will be our day to discover the city.”

“I’m pretty sure the city’s already been discovered by the, you know, eight million people who live here.”

“So, here’s the challenge. Every Thursday we’ll find someplace that most of them don’t know about.”

I lift my eyebrows at him. “The undiscovered New York City?”

He nods. “The gems that no one else sees.” He turns and starts walking toward the main doors. “And it’s your turn.”

“I don’t think this counts as undiscovered,” I say, gesturing at the hundreds of people milling around the exhibits.

We shrug on our jackets and I pull my gloves from my pocket as he holds open the door for me. Cold air slaps me in the face as I brush past him on my way out. And mmm . . . he smells like that tangy, spicy cologne that I remember from Club 69.

“Maybe not, but it’s still your turn,” he says in my ear as I pass. His accent is so faint, but it’s there, making his voice purr.

He catches up and we start across the park.

I watch my breath billow in white clouds that break up when I walk through them, and think about where I want to go. “So, I can choose anything?”

He nods. “Anything you haven’t seen already.”

“Well, that doesn’t rule much out . . . unless you had your heart set on the Theater District or Coney Island.”

He smiles. “I’ve already been.”

“Anything,” I say again. I look up as we weave through a group of kids in costumes, moving toward Fifth Avenue. And that’s when I remember it’s Halloween. “Shit!” I yank my phone out of my pocket and check the time. Five.

“What is it?” Alessandro asks, alarmed.

“It’s Halloween. I promised to take Henri and Max trick-or-treating. I’ve got to go!” I bolt across the park for the nearest subway stop, leaving him standing there, staring after me.

I’D PROMISED TO be here by six, but it’s after seven when I sprint up Mallory’s front steps. I ring and Mallory comes to the door with a big smile and a bowl of candy. Her red mane is pulled back in a sloppy ponytail and she’s got a headband on with black cat’s ears. There are messy whiskers drawn on her face with eyeliner. Henri’s handiwork, no doubt.

“Are they ready?” I pant.

Mallory’s smile vanishes the second she sees me. “They’ve been ready for over an hour, Hilary. They’ve been waiting. Jeff just got home from work and took them.”

“Damn!” I’ve been looking forward to this for a month and I blew it.

Mallory moves out of the way and I step through the door. “Don’t worry. They’re used to it,” she says, setting the candy bowl on the hall table and moving into the family room. She drops onto the couch and clicks the TiVo button.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” It pisses me off when she says stuff like that.

Her eyes flick to me. “You’re not the most reliable person, Hilary.”

“I was at the Met and I forgot it was Halloween.”

Her eyebrows shoot into her hairline. “You? At the Met? Who were you with?”

I shrug. “Just a guy.”

A slow smile curves her lips. “A guy got you to go to the Met? I want to meet this guy.”

No, she doesn’t. I move to the kitchen and pull a Diet Coke out of the fridge. “You want anything?” I ask from the door.

“Yeah,” she says as the doorbell rings. “Grab me one of those.”

She pushes the TiVo button again, pausing the TV, then goes to the door while I bring her Coke to the family room and sit. I hear talking and giggling at the door as she hands the candy out. A minute later, she’s back, flopping onto the other side of the couch. “So, is this guy . . . I mean, what’s going on with you and Brett?”