Anna and the French Kiss

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.