Bard trotted down the staircase, winding his way around a couple of other interns with a muttered “’scuse me.” When he opened the glass door at the front of the building, he realized he had no plan. He just wanted to see this boy up close. He debated turning and going back in, but his feet just kept moving him forward, and a bracing wind even picked up at his back as if to propel him along.

Damn it all. He was coming up right behind Cassandra. The boy shifted his gaze from her, looked right at him, and their eyes met. His were hooded, dark brown ringed in amber below heavy, earnest eyebrows that were slightly drawn together in an inquiring rather than hostile manner. Again: gentle. His mouth, though—seeing the full dark pink lips and the suggestion of a smile in the corners is what made Bard’s knees momentarily wobble, his stomach drop, his palms tingle. Words seemed to stop existing. Without them, he was almost immaterial—a transparent organism wiggling on a microscope slide.

So he slid up next to Cassandra, bumped his shoulder into hers, and hoped she’d take pity on him.

She did not.

“Bloody hell, Bard!” she shouted. “You want to give me a heart attack?”

“Aren’t you meant to be in school?” he blurted, amazed that his voice worked.

She looked at him, bemused. “Since when do you care? Anyway, aren’t you meant to be at work?”

“I’m taking a break.”

“Where’s that blonde you’ve been spending so much time with? Conquest? Triumph?”

“Victory,” Bard said, glancing nervously at the boy. “She’s just my work friend.”

“Sure.”

They stood in awkward silence for a beat.

“Is... is this your brother, Cass?” the boy finally said.

“This sodding busybody is. Drawn out into the daylight—which you can see from his pasty visage he doesn’t get much of—by the Machiavellian machinations of our dear pater.”

Bard sighed inwardly. She was showing off, so she must like this boy. 

Cass sighed and then changed her demeanor to one more formal. “Kai, may I introduce my brother, Bard. Bard, this is my friend Kai. He’s from Hawaii.”

Bard expected a nonchalant poking out of the chin as acknowledgment, but the boy straightened his posture—he was indeed taller than Bard—and held out his hand. 

“Good to meet you, Bard. Cass is a smart girl, yeah? Bit of a brat, but smart.” His voice was deep, almost as if the words were coming from inside a cavern, resonating in his chest before reaching the outside air. His accent was American. “I’m not actually from Hawaii. Well, my mother is, but I was born in California—San Francisco. My name—Kainoa—is Hawaiian, though.”

“Erm... yes,” Bard stammered.

Kai’s hand around his was so big—enveloping, soft, callused on the fingertips. Gentle, just as he thought. Bard held on a fraction of a second too long while Kai spoke. 

“Are you—do you go to school with Cass?”

“I go to an all-girls’ school, Bard,” Cass said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, well... what I meant.... You can see how it would be easy for me to forget, seeing how infrequently you attend,” Bard said, finally finding words again.

Kai laughed, his face lighting up in a lopsided smile, his pink lips spread to show impossibly straight American teeth, his eyes crinkling into half-moons.

Bard was completely charmed.

“Yeah, he has you there, Cass,” Kai said. “I’m out of school—I graduated in the States—but now I’m just hanging around, as you can see. Getting a job here is tricky when you’re not a UK citizen. I don’t really know what to do with myself.”

“Ah, yes, same here.”

“I thought I saw you come out of the Palmer building. Don’t you work there?”

He noticed me, Bard thought.

“Just an internship our father lined up to me in hopes it would mold me into a company man.”

“And has it?” Kai tilted his head, squinting into the sun, to listen to Bard’s answer—as if it mattered to him somehow.

“No, that’s not my destiny.”

“What is your destiny, then?” Kai imitated a British cadence, but not in a mocking way—with a renewal of his soft smile, his head tipped back to where it had been.

Cass cut in. “You’re going to be a star, aren’t you, Bard?” She laughed. “A legend in his own time.”

Bard felt the blush rising from his collar. The old ginger curse. He could never hide how he felt.

“We all have dreams like that, don’t we?” Kai said. “All of us worth knowing anyway.”

Bard felt himself smiling but could think of not a single thing to say. 

Kai looked down at the scuffed white toes of his Chuck Taylors. “I suppose you’re here to tell me I shouldn’t be encouraging truancy, huh?” he asked Bard.

“Yes, Bard, why are you here?” Cass asked.

“My sister doesn’t need any encouraging in the delinquency department, I know that. Can’t a brother say hello to his sister without arousing suspicion?”

Bard regretted the word—arouse. Words, his milieu, his consolation, were failing him.

Cass narrowed her eyes. The sun had given her a smattering of freckles across her nose. “Not when the brother is you. Go on, get back to work. You want to lose your job?”

“It’s not a job, it’s an internship, remember? Right, though, got to get back.” He rocked back and forth on his heels, smiling uncomfortably. “Well, goodbye. Good to meet you, Kai.”

Kai, he repeated under his breath as he trotted back across the street. He tried to ignore his heart, the caged bird thrashing against the bars of his ribcage. Stupid. He had promised himself not to get like this again. Nine months ago, after the fire, after his relief had made him forget his fear as he stood in the street in front of Wilthrop for all to see, after his father had beat that fear back into him, he had made himself believe as he could never believe the when he recited the Apostles’ Creed in mass with his mother: Love was just a stop on the way to greater misery—and he was miserable enough already. Who was this American boy to come between him and his convictions? It was as if Bard were being drawn in, and he fought to want to resist. As he ran, he put his hand over the medallion that hung over his heart: St. Christopher Protect Us.