Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(14)
But even if there wasn’t so much as a kiss between us—and there never was—I was still the girl who’d touched him first.
“Hey,” he said, startling me out of my thoughts. “Why you being so quiet, Missy? And you’re not eating anything.”
“Even the culinary treatings of Jasmina the Peerless get old, believe it or not,” I said, shrugging a shoulder. “Unlike her spectacular bitchery. She likes to keep that fresh for me.”
He snorted in sympathy. “She hasn’t eased up, huh?”
“I don’t think she knows how. It was even worse than usual today, there was this . . .” The white flame of Dunja’s hair blazed through my thoughts, followed by my mother’s devastation and her fear. It felt so out of place here in the sunshine, and with pragmatic Luka right in front of me, like a swarm of moths where there should have been only butterflies. I could tell him about it later, once the strangeness had the time to fade. “But anyway, old news. Tell me about Belgrade.”
He whistled low. “I didn’t think I was going to like it, you know? So much space, so many variables, too easy to get lost in. But it’s amazing, Iris, all these sleek modern buildings.” He gave a light laugh. “Even their older ones are fancier than ours—the biggest theater has this glass covering over the neoclassical facade, like a museum exhibit. It’s gorgeous, you’d love it. And they have stands where you can get a hot dog the size of your forearm, and you eat it with kefir.”
I rolled my eyes. “Understood, pretty buildings and delicious food that lends itself perfectly to dick jokes, if I wasn’t such a lady. Tell me about school.”
He gave me a lazy smile, his eyes narrowing. “Well, as we know, the mathematics are inherently sensual when done by me,” he began, and I cracked up despite myself. “But seriously, some of those kids are beyond brilliant. It’s an American international college, so it’s not even just homegrown math geniuses. My second week, one of the study-abroad students corrected the professor as he was writing out a proof, while he was still scratching it out on the blackboard.” He shook his head admiringly. “Jolie’s from Miami, but she thinks I’m exotic. And you should see her—”
“And stop,” I ordered, giving him a mock shudder. “No need to regale me with your exploits. I’m familiar with the basic concept.”
“You know,” he continued, in the fake-casual tone that always raised my hackles, “you could come visit me sometime. There are so many galleries, and sometimes I go in just to see. None of them have anything like what you make.”
“So what?”
“So, you only have one more year of school, and you can’t tell me you want to be stuck here for the rest of your life after that.” He glanced across the bay, resettling himself. “Even if sometimes it does seem like the most beautiful place in the world.”
I followed his gaze to the water, like rippled blown glass from this high up, the mountains across the bay from us looming jagged. The usual ache rose up in my throat when the blue and white refused to form a shimmering mosaic like they once had. I swallowed it back down.
“Exactly,” I said stiffly. “Why would I want to leave all this?”
“How many flowers in the world are you never going to see if you stay here?” he retorted. “And how many techniques are you never going to learn, because Jovan just dabbles in glassblowing and he’s the only game in town? How are you even going to live off that here, anyway? You know Jovan can only afford to run the gallery because he sold his real one in Belgrade to retire here, and he makes those baubles to keep himself busy.”
Anger rose up in me, tiny fizzy pockets like seed bubbles in glass. Those baubles were the only thing I had left of the gleam. And for all that I loved Cattaro, I’d spent so much of my life burning to leave this gorgeous prison, to see the places I’d only seen in books. It made me feel guilty sometimes, how badly I wanted to abandon all this beauty when other people were born trapped in deserts or slums. But our magic wasn’t the Midas touch kind. And even if I somehow scrounged up enough money to spring me free, who would protect my sister from our mother once I was gone?
I began gathering up the remains of the food, crumpling foil and snapping the tops back onto containers. “You know I can’t go anywhere,” I mumbled, my throat aching. “Mama can’t run the café without our help, and Malina won’t leave her.”
“Lina’s a pure sweetheart, but you’re not Siamese twins. Don’t you think Niko and Tata needed me after Mama died? But I still left when I had to, Riss. Because I want to be an engineer, not the future owner of a nargileh café. They understood that.”
“That is not the same!” I shot back. “I can’t leave Lina to handle Mama by herself, and even if I could, you’re forgetting that we. Have. No. Money. The café barely supports us as it is.”
“You could get another job, and then you can save up and travel. There’s backpacking, and hostels.” He fixed his bright gaze on me, eyes earnest, and I felt my usual, dumb little twinge at how symmetrical his face was, that fine, straight nose and sculpted lips, the cheekbones sharp as arrowheads. It made him annoyingly persuasive—you agreed to things just so you could keep looking. “You could see the tree, Iris.”