Anna and the French Kiss

  The January sun peeks out and warms my cheeks. Two men carrying what can only be described as man-purses stop to admire the sky. A trim woman in stilettos halts in wonder. I smile and move past them. And then I turn another corner, and my chest constricts so tightly, so painfully, that I can no longer breathe.

  Because there he is.

  He’s engrossed in an oversize book, hunched over and completely absorbed. A breeze ruffles his dark hair, and he bites his nails. Josh sits a few feet away, black sketchbook open and brush pen scribbling. Several other people are soaking up the rare sunshine, but as soon as they’re registered, they’re forgotten. Because of him.

  I grip the edge of a sidewalk café table to keep from falling. The diners stare in alarm, but I don’t care. I’m reeling, and I gasp for air.

  How can I have been so stupid?

  How could I have ever for a moment believed I wasn’t in love with him?

  chapter thirty-one

  Istudy him. He bites his left pinkie nail, so his book must be good. Pinkie means excited or happy, thumb means thinking or worried. I’m surprised I know the meaning of these gestures. How closely have I been paying attention to him?

  Two elderly women in fur coats and matching hats shuffle past. One of them pauses and turns back around. She asks me a question in French. I can’t make the direct translation, but I know she’s concerned if I’m okay. I nod and tell her thank you. She flashes me another look of unease but moves on.

  I can’t walk. What am I supposed to say? Fourteen consecutive days of telephone conversations and now that he’s here in person, I doubt I can stammer a hello. One of the diners at the café stands up to help me. I let go of the round table and stumble across the street. I’m weak in the knees. The closer I get, the more overwhelming it gets. The Panthéon is huge. The steps seem so far away.

  He looks up.

  Our eyes lock, and he breaks into a slow smile. My heart beats faster and faster. Almost there. He sets down his book and stands. And then this—the moment he calls my name—is the real moment everything changes.

  He is no longer St. Clair, everyone’s pal, everyone’s friend.

  He is Étienne. Étienne, like the night we met. He is Étienne; he is my friend.

  He is so much more.

  Étienne. My feet trip in three syllables. É-ti-enne, É-ti-enne, É-ti-enne. His name coats my tongue like melting chocolate. He is so beautiful, so perfect.

  My throat catches as he opens his arms and wraps me in a hug. My heart pounds furiously, and I’m embarrassed, because I know he feels it. We break apart, and I stagger backward. He catches me before I fall down the stairs.

  “Whoa,” he says. But I don’t think he means me falling.

  I blush and blame it on clumsiness. “Yeesh, that could’ve been bad.”

  Phew. A steady voice.

  He looks dazed. “Are you all right?”

  I realize his hands are still on my shoulders, and my entire body stiffens underneath his touch. “Yeah. Great. Super!”

  “Hey, Anna. How was your break?”

  Josh. I forgot he was here. Étienne lets go of me carefully as I acknowledge Josh, but the whole time we’re chatting, I wish he’d return to drawing and leave us alone. After a minute, he glances behind me—to where Étienne is standing—and gets a funny expression on his face. His speech trails off, and he buries his nose in his sketchbook. I look back, but Étienne’s own face has been wiped blank.

  We sit on the steps together. I haven’t been this nervous around him since the first week of school. My mind is tangled, my tongue tied, my stomach in knots. “Well,” he says, after an excruciating minute. “Did we use up all of our conversation over the holiday?”

  The pressure inside me eases enough to speak. “Guess I’ll go back to the dorm.” I pretend to stand, and he laughs.

  “I have something for you.” He pulls me back down by my sleeve. “A late Christmas present.”

  “For me? But I didn’t get you anything!”

  He reaches into a coat pocket and brings out his hand in a fist, closed around something very small. “It’s not much, so don’t get excited.”

  “Ooo, what is it?”

  “I saw it when I was out with Mum, and it made me think of you—”

  “Étienne! Come on!”

  He blinks at hearing his first name. My face turns red, and I’m filled with the overwhelming sensation that he knows exactly what I’m thinking. His expression turns to amazement as he says, “Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”

  Still blushing, I hold one out. His fingers brush against my palm, and my hand jerks back as if he were electrified. Something goes flying and lands with a faint dink behind us. I open my eyes. He’s staring at me, equally stunned.

  “Whoops,” I say.

  He tilts his head at me.

  “I think . . . I think it landed back here.” I scramble to my feet, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I never felt what he placed in my hands. I only felt him. “I don’t see anything! Just pebbles and pigeon droppings,” I add, trying to act normal.

  Where is it? What is it?

  “Here.” He plucks something tiny and yellow from the steps above him. I fumble back and hold out my hand again, bracing myself for the contact. Étienne pauses and then drops it from a few inches above my hand. As if he’s avoiding touching me, too.

  It’s a glass bead. A banana.

  He clears his throat. “I know you said Bridgette was the only one who could call you ‘Banana,’ but Mum was feeling better last weekend, so I took her to her favorite bead shop. I saw that and thought of you. I hope you don’t mind someone else adding to your collection. Especially since you and Bridgette . . . you know . . .”

  I close my hand around the bead. “Thank you.”

  “Mum wondered why I wanted it.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That it was for you, of course.” He says this like, duh.

  I beam. The bead is so lightweight I hardly feel it, except for the teeny cold patch it leaves in my palm. Speaking of cold . . .

  I shiver. “Has the temperature dropped, or is it just me?”

  “Here.” Étienne unwraps the black scarf that had been tied loosely around his neck, and hands it to me. I take it, gently, and wrap it around mine. It makes me dizzy. It smells like freshly scrubbed boy. It smells like him.

  “Your hair looks nice,” he says. “You bleached it again.”

  I touch the stripe self-consciously. “Mom helped me.”

  “That breeze is wicked, I’m going for coffee.” Josh snaps his sketchbook closed. I’d forgotten he was here again. “You coming?”

  Étienne looks at me, waiting to see how I answer.

  Coffee! I’m dying for a real cup. I smile at Josh. “Sounds perfect.”

  And then I’m heading down the steps of the Panthéon, cool and white and glittering, in the most beautiful city in the world. I’m with two attractive, intelligent, funny boys and I’m grinning ear to ear. If Bridgette could see me now.

  I mean, who needs Christopher when Étienne St. Clair is in the world?

  But as soon as I think of Toph, I get that same stomach churning I always do when I think about him now. Shame that I ever thought he might wait.That I wasted so much time on him. Ahead of me, Étienne laughs at something Josh said. And the sound sends me spiraling into panic as the information hits me again and again and again.

  What am I going to do? I’m in love with my new best friend.

  chapter thirty-two

  It’s a physical sickness. Étienne. How much I love him.

  I love Étienne.

  I love it when he cocks an eyebrow whenever I say something he finds clever or amusing. I love listening to his boots clomp across my bedroom ceiling. I love that the accent over his first name is called an acute accent, and that he has a cute accent.

  I love that.

  I love sitting beside him in physics. Brushing against him during labs.
His messy handwriting on our worksheets. I love handing him his backpack when class is over, because then my fingers smell like him for the next ten minutes. And when Amanda says something lame, and he seeks me out to exchange an eye roll—I love that, too. I love his boyish laugh and his wrinkled shirts and his ridiculous knitted hat. I love his large brown eyes, and the way he bites his nails, and I love his hair so much I could die.

  There’s only one thing I don’t love about him. Her.

  If I didn’t like Ellie before, it’s nothing compared to how I feel now. It doesn’t matter that I can count how many times we’ve met on one hand. It’s that first image, that’s what I can’t shake. Under the streetlamp. Her fingers in his hair. Anytime I’m alone, my mind wanders back to that night. I take it further. She touches his chest. I take it further. His bedroom. He slips off her dress, their lips lock, their bodies press, and—oh my God—my temperature rises, and my stomach is sick.

  I fantasize about their breakup. How he could hurt her, and she could hurt him, and all of the ways I could hurt her back. I want to grab her Parisian-styled hair and yank it so hard it rips from her skull. I want to sink my claws into her eyeballs and scrape.

  It turns out I am not a nice person.

  Étienne and I rarely discussed her before, but she’s completely taboo now. Which tortures me, because since we’ve gotten back from winter break, they seem to be having problems again. Like an obsessed stalker, I tally the evenings he spends with me versus the evenings he spends with her. I’m winning.

  So why won’t he give her up? Why why why?

  It torments me until I cave, until the pressure inside is so unbearable that I have to talk to someone or risk explosion. I choose Meredith. The way I see it, she’s probably obsessing over the situation as much as I am. We’re in her bedroom, and she’s helping me write an essay about my guinea pig for French class. She’s wearing soccer shorts with a cashmere sweater, and even though it’s silly-looking, it’s endearingly Meredith-appropriate. She’s also doing crunches. For fun.

  “Good, but that’s present tense,” she says. “You aren’t feeding Captain Jack carrot sticks right now.”

  “Oh. Right.” I jot something down, but I’m not thinking about verbs. I’m trying to figure out how to casually bring up Étienne.

  “Read it to me again. Ooo, and do your funny voice! That faux-French one you ordered café crème in the other day, at that new place with St. Clair.”

  My bad French accent wasn’t on purpose, but I jump on the opening.“You know, there’s something, um, I’ve been wondering.” I’m conscious of the illuminated sign above my head, flashing the obvious—I! LOVE! ÉTIENNE!—but push ahead anyway. “Why are he and Ellie are still together? I mean they hardly see each other anymore. Right?”

  Mer pauses, mid-crunch, and . . . I’m caught. She knows I’m in love with him, too.

  But then I see her struggling to reply, and I realize she’s as trapped in the drama as I am. She didn’t even notice my odd tone of voice. “Yeah.” She lowers herself slowly back to the floor. “But it’s not that simple. They’ve been together forever. They’re practically an old married couple. And besides, they’re both really . . . cautious.”

  “Cautious?”

  “Yeah.You know. St. Clair doesn’t rock the boat. And Ellie’s the same way. It took her ages to choose a university, and then she still picked one that’s only a few neighborhoods away. I mean, Parsons is a prestigious school and everything, but she chose it because it was familiar. And now with St. Clair’s mom, I think he’s afraid to lose anyone else. Meanwhile, she’s not gonna break up with him, not while his mom has cancer. Even if it isn’t a healthy relationship anymore.”

  I click the clicky-button on top of my pen. Clickclickclickclick. “So you think they’re unhappy?”

  She sighs. “Not unhappy, but . . . not happy either. Happy enough, I guess. Does that make sense?”

  And it does. Which I hate. Clickclickclickclick.

  It means I can’t say anything to him, because I’d be risking our friendship. I have to keep acting like nothing has changed, that I don’t feel anything more for him than I feel for Josh.Who, the next day, is ignoring our history lecture for the billionth class in a row. He has a graphic novel, Craig Thompson’s Goodbye, Chunky Rice, hidden on his lap. Josh scrawls something into the sketchbook beneath it. He’s taking notes, but not about the storming of the Bastille.

  Josh and Rashmi had another blowup at lunch. No one is worried about Étienne dropping out anymore, but Josh is ditching with an alarming frequency. He’s stopped doing homework altogether. And the more Rashmi pushes him, the more he pulls away.

  Professeur Hansen paces the front of the classroom. He’s a short man with thick glasses and wispy hair that flies out whenever he bangs our desks for emphasis. He teaches the dirty parts of history and never makes us memorize dates. I can see why Étienne is interested in the subject when he’s had a teacher like this for four years.

  I wish I could stop bringing everything back to Étienne.

  I look at the juniors surrounding me, and discover I’m not the only one ravaged by hormones. Emily Middlestone bends over to pick up a dropped eraser, and Mike Reynard leers at her breasts. Gross.Too bad for him she’s interested in his best friend, Dave. The eraser drop was deliberate, but Dave is oblivious. His eyes glaze over as they follow Professeur Hansen’s pacing.

  Dave notices me staring and sits up. I quickly turn away. Emily glares at me, and I smile blandly back. She returned to school with a stripe in her hair. It’s pink and the rest is blond, so it’s not quite like mine. Still.

  Professeur Hansen relays the details of Marie Antoinette’s execution. I can’t concentrate. Étienne and I are going to the movies after school. And, okay, Josh and Rashmi are also coming—Mer can’t because she has soccer practice—but that still makes this week’s score: Anna 4, Ellie 1. The teacher bangs another desk, and the redhead to my left jumps and drops her papers.

  I lean over to help her pick them up, and I’m startled to discover an entire page of doodles of a familiar skull tattoo. I look up in surprise, and her face burns as red as her hair. I glance toward Josh and then raise my eyebrows at her. Her eyes widen in horror, but I shake my head and smile. I won’t tell.

  What’s her name? Isla. Isla Martin. She lives on my floor, but she’s so quiet I often forget about her. She’ll have to be louder if she likes Josh. They’re both shy. It’s a shame, because they’d look cute together. Probably fight less than he and Rashmi, too. Why is it that the right people never wind up together? Why are people so afraid to leave a relationship, even if they know it’s a bad one?

  I’m still contemplating this later, while Étienne and I wait outside Josh’s room on the first floor, ready for the movies. Étienne presses his ear against Josh’s door but then shoots back like it’s on fire.

  “What is it?”

  He grimaces. “They’ve made up again.”

  I follow him outside. “Rashmi’s in there?”

  “They’re having it off,” he says bluntly. “I’d rather not interrupt.”

  I’m glad he’s ahead of me, so he can’t see my face. It’s not like I’m ready to sleep with anyone—I’m not—but it’s still this stupid wall between us. I’m always aware of it. And now I’m thinking about Étienne and Ellie again. His fingertips stroking her bare shoulder. Her lips parted against his naked throat. Stop thinking about it, Anna.

  Stop it, stop it, STOP IT.

  I switch the conversation to his mother. She’s finished treatments, but we won’t know if the disease is gone until March. The doctors have to wait until the radiation leaves her system before they can test her. Étienne is always trapped between worry and hope, so I steer him toward hope whenever possible.

  She’s feeling well today, so he is, too. He tells me something about her medication, but my attention wavers as I study his profile. I’m jolted back to Thanksgiving. Those same eyelashes, that same nose, silhouetted against t
he darkness in my bedroom.

  God, he’s beautiful.

  We walk to our favorite cinema, the one we’ve dubbed the “Mom and Pop Basset Hound Theater.” It’s only a few blocks away, and it’s a comfortable one-screener run by the gentleman who walks Pouce, the dog from the pâtisserie. I don’t actually think there’s a “Mom” around—Pouce’s owner is more likely a “Pop and Pop” kind of guy—but it’s still a fitting nickname. We walk in and the friendly, dignified man behind the counter calls out, “Jo-ja! Atlanna, Jo-ja!”

  I smile back. I’ve been practicing my French with him, and he’s been practicing his English. He remembers I’m from Atlanta, Georgia (Jo-ja!), and we have another brief chat about the weather. Then I ask him if Pouce is a happy dog and if he, the gentleman, likes to eat good food. At least I’m trying.

  The movie this afternoon is Roman Holiday, and the rest of the theater is empty. Étienne stretches his legs and relaxes back into his seat. “All right, I have one. Being bad has . . .”

  “Never looked so good.”

  “Yes!” His eyes sparkle. This is one of our favorite games, where one of us creates the beginning of a clichéd tagline and the other finishes it.

  “With friends like these ...”

  He matches my darkened voice, “Who needs enemies?”

  As my laughter bounces off the curtained walls, Étienne struggles to keep his expression straight. He fails and grins wider because of it. The sight makes my heart skip a beat, but I must make an odd face, because he covers his mouth. “Stop staring.”

  “What?”

  “My teeth.You’re staring at my bottom teeth.”

  I laugh again. “Like I have the right to make fun of anyone’s teeth. I can shoot water incredible distances through this gap, you know. Bridge used to tease me all the ti—” I cut myself off, feeling ill. I still haven’t talked to Bridgette.