“I’M SORRY OUR date night ended up becoming a fashion show,” Avery apologized, stepping into yet another gown—her fifteenth, if she hadn’t lost count.
“Trust me, watching you get dressed and undressed dozens of times is a pretty good date night.” Max looked at her with unabashed approval, and a warm flush traveled from the base of Avery’s spine up to her cheeks.
“Can you zip me up?” She gestured behind her, and Max obediently pulled up the zipper.
They were in Avery’s bedroom, which had been completely taken over by racks of black-tie gowns: her various options for the inauguration ball later this month. Almost every designer in America, and a good number of international designers, had sent over a sample dress for her to try.
Avery wasn’t used to “trying on” dresses this way. Normally when she shopped, she projected clothing designs onto a holographic scan of her body; and then if she liked it, the garment was made to order. This was different, because she hadn’t ordered a single one of these dresses. The designers had custom-made them for her on spec, each hoping that theirs was the gown she would pick.
And Avery had to make up her mind now, because tomorrow a photographer was coming to the thousandth floor to photograph her. Apparently she would be the central image of next month’s Vogue download.
She turned toward the wall of her bedroom, which she’d clicked over to mirror mode, and studied the dramatic runway gown that now spilled over her. It was a bright, fluorescent orange.
“I look like a safety sign.” Avery gave a strangled laugh.
“The most beautiful safety sign in the history of intersections.” Max wrapped his arms around her to hug her from behind. His eyes were warm, catching the scattered light.
“Thank you, Max. For everything,” she said softly. He had been a source of steadiness throughout the turmoil of the campaign.
She was glad that he would be there next week, when she interviewed at Oxford. She could use a little of his unflappable calm.
“I love you,” she said impulsively and spun around to kiss him.
She kissed his cheeks and his forehead and the spot in the cleft of his chin that was darkened by a shadow of scruff: a rainfall of little kisses at first. Then she was kissing his mouth, and his arms had curled around her back, and it wasn’t so light anymore.
The sound of footsteps outside Avery’s door forced them quickly apart. “Mom?” she asked, hesitant.
The footsteps paused. “Did you need something?” she heard Atlas say, and her chest constricted, because she hadn’t meant to invite Atlas in at all.
“It’s fine. Sorry, I—”
But Max had jumped up, throwing open Avery’s door with an eager grin. “Atlas!” he exclaimed, oblivious to the tension between them. “I didn’t realize you were back! How are you?”
Atlas looked distinctly uncomfortable. He’d jetted off to San Francisco earlier this week, ostensibly for business, though Avery felt certain that it was to get away from her. She hadn’t even seen him since their showdown at the Altitude tennis courts.
She made a slow half turn toward the doorway, the voluminous orange skirts swinging widely around her like a bell.
“Hey, Max,” Atlas said evenly; and because she had known him since they were children, because she could read every last shred of emotion in his expression, Avery knew the meaning that Atlas was trying to convey with those two words. They were a peace treaty with her.
Max glanced back at Avery. “Do you mind if I head home now, Avery? I have so much studying to do before exams. Not that I didn’t enjoy the fashion show, but we both know I’m useless at this. You’re in much better hands with Atlas.”
“Of course I understand. Good luck.” She leaned forward to plant a kiss on the corner of Max’s mouth, deliberately ignoring Atlas. “Let me know if you want me to come by later for a study break.” There were volumes of innuendo in the way that Avery pronounced study break.
“Sounds great,” Max said with a wicked grin. Then he was gone, and it was just Avery and Atlas alone in her bedroom.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said quickly. “I’m sure you have more important things to be doing right now.”
“I don’t mind,” Atlas replied. Avery thought she heard a hint of challenge in that statement, but couldn’t be sure.
She glanced away. Her reflection bloomed like a flower from the mirror-screen, garish and repulsive, covered in all those yards of heavy orange fabric. She felt suddenly desperate to get out of the dress, as if it were literally crushing her. Avery reached behind her back to fumble for the zipper pull but couldn’t twist her arm to reach it. She let out a cry of desperation—
“Hey, it’s okay,” Atlas murmured, pulling down the zipper. He was very careful not to let his skin brush hers.
As she turned back around, Avery saw a flash of pink on the flesh of Atlas’s inner arm, and gasped.
“What?” he demanded.
“What happened?” Without thinking, Avery reached out to trace the scar, an angry red half-moon near Atlas’s elbow. He held very still as her fingers brushed over the mark.
She knew his body so perfectly, even after all this time. She had long ago memorized him—every last one of his scars and freckles, on every last inch of his skin. But she didn’t recognize this one.
“I burned myself,” Atlas said quietly.
Suddenly Avery realized what she was doing, touching Atlas in this intimate way. She caught herself and retreated. Her gown was still hanging open at the back; she crossed her arms over her chest. “They don’t have derma-repair in Dubai?”
“Maybe I wanted to leave it. Maybe I think it looks badass,” Atlas said lightly.
Avery rustled into her closet to take off the offending gown, slipping into a robe and sweatpants before returning to the bedroom. Atlas was still there.
“Are you okay, Aves?”
Hearing the familiar nickname made her oddly sad. She swallowed. “Do you remember those forts we used to build when we were little?”
She and Atlas used to construct elaborate forts in the living room, pushing the furniture together, topping it with piles of pillows and sheets. If their mom caught them, she would invariably freak out—Do you know how expensive these silk pillows are? Now they will all need to be dry cleaned!—while Avery and Atlas looked at each other and giggled. When they disappeared into those forts, it felt as if they were able to escape from anything.
“What made you think of that?”
“I just wish that I could go hide in one of our forts right now, to get away from all this.” Avery cast out her arms, indicating the rows of couture dresses, which were all designed specifically for her body and yet felt unbearably suffocating.
Atlas met her gaze in the mirror. “I don’t think I realized how much you hated that Dad is the new mayor.”
Avery struggled to find the right words. “It’s too much attention. I feel like I’m caught in limbo, like I have a constant pit in my stomach. No one sees the real me anymore, not even our parents,” she said helplessly. “Sometimes I think I’m going to snap in two.”
“You know you’re much stronger than that,” Atlas said quietly.
“It’s just that sometimes I think of the version of me that Mom and Dad do see, sparkling and perfect, and I wish I could be that girl. Instead of the flawed person that I really am.”
“Your so-called imperfections are the best part of you.”
Avery didn’t know how to answer that, so she didn’t say anything at all.
“Our parents never saw me for me either, you know,” Atlas went on after a moment. “Through the years, they’ve looked at me and seen a lot of things—a PR stunt, a way to keep you happy, maybe even an asset to the business—but not me, the way that I really am. Trust me when I say that I know how it feels to want to live up to the version of you that Mom and Dad built in their heads. I might even want it more than you,” he added, and the angles of his face changed, became sharper, “because this wasn’t always my life.”
Avery was startled into silence. Atlas so rarely talked about how it had been for him, before he was adopted.
“When Mom and Dad brought me home, I thought I was the luckiest kid in the entire world. I kept worrying that they might wake up one day and decide that they didn’t want me after all, and return me like a pair of shoes.”
“They would never do that.” Avery ached at the thought of Atlas, young and uncertain, afraid of such a thing.
“I know. But unlike you, I remember a time before I had their love. Which is why I hate disappointing them. They expect so much, but they have also given me everything.” He sighed. “That was part of the reason I stayed away so long last year—just to see how it felt, being myself without being a Fuller.”
“And how was it?” Avery couldn’t quite imagine who she would be if she weren’t Avery Fuller. If she could just walk through the world unremarked upon, like any other unremarkable person.
“It felt like a haze had lifted. Like everything was much clearer,” Atlas told her and smiled. “Aves, promise me that you won’t worry about Mom and Dad. That you’ll do whatever is right for you. I mean, for you and Max,” he added awkwardly; and the moment between them was abruptly broken.
“Sorry, I should get going.” Atlas reached up to run a hand through his hair, making it stick up at funny angles. “I’m not any help with this. Besides, you know that it doesn’t matter what you wear. You could show up to that party in a plastifoam box and you would still look perfect.”
Before she could find some way to answer, he was gone. The ripples of his presence seemed to lap through the room like waves, crashing over her.
Why did Avery have to struggle to make herself understood to everyone else in her life, yet Atlas always seemed to get her on an instinctive and elemental level? Why couldn’t she make the rest of the world see her the way that Atlas did?
She collapsed onto her four-poster bed and stared blankly up at the ceiling, which was decorated with a hologram of her favorite Italian mural. Its pixels constantly shifted, so slowly as to be imperceptible, brushstroke by brushstroke; as if an invisible artist was suspended up there, always repainting it into a new arrangement.
She wished she were still angry with Atlas. Because whatever this was, it felt immeasurably worse.