Page 43 of Nowhere to Hide
I decide this is her best angle, because it’s her.
No mask.
All Sloane.
I drag my attention back to chapter seven, because even after playing a game tonight, there’s no escape from international finance. But I can’t focus, because every time I reach the bottom of a paragraph, my eyes drift to her.
I’m lucky Bellamy’s second floor at ten thirty on a Friday is abandoned, because otherwise someone might catch me looking. As it is, there’s nobody else here in the silence of abuilding about to close. I just hope I can knock out chapter seven before then.
But when I look up, she’s watching me.
Busted.
“What?” I say.
“You moved my highlighter,” she says. “It’s now parallel to my notebook…”
“It’s perfect now,” I say.
“You also squared off my books.” She nods at the stack of books near my elbow, spines flush. “I was hoping you might organize my notes.”
I smile, and she smiles back, then leans forward and goes back to her article. After holding my gaze on her, I try chapter seven again. I get half a page before I feel her watching, and when I look up, she holds it a beat too long, then drops her eyes to the page.
The pencil goes back into her mouth, and I track her lower lip instead of reading a word. When she leans over the article, my eyes drop to the neckline of her sweater before I drag them up, and catch her catching me. She doesn’t look away this time.
“You’ve read that page four times,” she says, smiling. “Either it’s very difficult, or I am.”
“Definitely you,” I say. “Tell me about the article.”
She turns the article so I can see it. “Narrative framing. She argues that institutions don’t have to lie about what happened when scandals strike. They just have to tell the story in the right order, even if it means victims are silenced and perpetrators are excused.”
“Go on.”
She pauses, an eyebrow climbing slightly, skeptical. “Really?”
“I’m sitting here pretending to learn about exchange rates.”
“Well, in that case…”
She gives me that smirk again, then lights up, hands moving and voice picking up speed on a section that makes her angry, then going quieter on a part that makes her think. And I decide I was wrong, because her study face isn’t her most beautiful angle.
This is.
She talks with her hands like she can’t stop herself — quick, sharp gestures, like she’s cutting the argument into pieces and rearranging them in the air. She tells me about the article, running the seminar, and Moreno asking her to be a research assistant.
I watch her try to swallow the pride and fail.
“That looks good on you,” I say.
Her eyes narrow. “What does?”
“Pride,” I say. “Confidence.”
“Thanks.” She gives me a little smile that she can’t put away, then goes back to her page.
We work in quiet after that. The good kind. The comfortable kind. She tucks her feet up under herself on the chair, and the smallness of the gesture — the way she doesn’t stop herself, or force herself to be proper — tells me she’s not performing right now.
Then her hand slides across the table and settles on mine, and she closes her book with the other. “Tell me about exchange rates.”
