by Jill Cox
Maybe that was all they needed to hear, because then they started talking about some blogger who accused the writers of plagiarism during the post-film Q&A. Certainly no one noticed Pete’s eyes locking with mine again, a smile spreading so imperceptibly across his face that I later wondered if I’d imagined it. Pete and I had a secret. Several, actually – each one so irrelevant that it would sound nonsensical to anyone else, but each one belonged to us.
Something about that meant more to me than I could understand.
The Eiffel Tower stood proudly in the distance, floodlit in blue, white, and red to commemorate yet another Nuit Blanche. Sometime in the past few moments, while the six of us sat together on the northernmost bench, the sky had changed from ebony to cobalt to a deep violet blue. None of us spoke. We just breathed in the beauty of Paris at dawn.
After coffee and croissants at Dan and Pete’s apartment, we all trekked down to school. But as we rounded the corner across from the Luxembourg Gardens, my friends’ chatter grew dim against the sound of a taxi idling a hundred yards away at the door of the Centre Lafayette. The driver and passenger argued so loudly I could decipher their words. And even with his back turned, I would have recognized the passenger’s voice in any city, on any continent in the world.
It was Drew.
SIXTEEN
I sprinted down the sidewalk and across the busy rue de Vaugirard to the taxi, begging the driver in French to wait just a minute.
“Fee!” Drew shouted, grabbing and hugging me so abruptly that he nearly knocked the wind out of me. “You have to help me, okay? This guy is trying to rip me off. The meter only said forty euros but he says I owe forty-five.”
The driver, who clearly understood English, turned to me and began explaining in French what I already understood. “Drew, there’s a five euro charge for your duffel bag. He’s not trying to rip you off. It’s right there on the window.”
He glanced at the sign on the cab. “Well, I can’t read that,” he said defiantly. “It’s in French.”
Without hesitation, I grabbed Drew’s wallet out of his hands and gave the driver his forty euros plus an additional ten – five for the extra bag and five for his trouble. The taxi pulled away from the curb just as my friends arrived on the scene.
“Sutton.” Though Pete’s voice was low, surprise was written all over his face. “What in the world are you doing here?”
Drew’s eyes narrowed as he glanced first at Pete, then at me, then back again at Pete. “Oh. Hey, Russell. I forgot you were here.”
“Sure you did.” Pete shot me a look, then narrowed his eyes at Drew. “You’ve got mad ninja timing, bro. I’ll give you that much.”
As they stood across from each other, posturing like a couple of rams, I was fascinated by how slight Drew looked in comparison to Pete, and Drew was not a small guy. The two of them were the same height, but Drew’s lean physique suddenly seemed … well, juvenile. Pete completely overshadowed him. Maybe it was just home court advantage.
“What’s up, Sutton?” Dan stepped forward to intervene, grabbing Drew’s hand in a series of clasps that I assumed was some fraternity handshake. “Man, that flight here is brutal. Hey, Meredith, maybe we could put Drew’s bag in the storeroom for him?”
“Good idea,” I mumbled, grateful for the help. Dan grabbed Drew’s duffel bag and carried it inside past the gardienne’s lair while Pete answered a call on his cell phone and walked away. I sort of wondered if he’d faked it. It was the middle of the night back home.
Somehow I corralled the rest of us inside to the entry hall, and there we stood – Drew, me, and three girls he’d never seen before in his life – an awkward silence sucking the air out of the room until Kelly saved the day.
“Hi, Drew,” she said in her best future teacher voice. “I’m Kelly, and this is Harper and Anne.” They both raised their hands without a word. “Thanks for letting us borrow Meredith this year. Things wouldn’t be the same without her around.”
“I get that,” he said softly, shooting a glance my way that lasted several seconds longer than it should have. What in the world was going on? And how had Drew found enough extra cash in his account for a round-trip ticket to Paris?
“Coffee,” Kelly blurted, grabbing Drew by the shoulders. “You must need coffee after such a long flight. We’ll go get you a cup. How do you take it?”
Drew’s face contorted as he turned to me. “Um… what should…? I’ve never had French coffee before.”
“Black, with extra sugar,” I instructed Kelly, handing her a few euro coins. “Would you bring me one, too? But just black on that second one.”
She nodded her head, winked, then zoomed through the glass doors into the courtyard, with Harper and Anne scuffling behind her without a word, like she was Miss Clavel or something.
And just like that, we were alone. I motioned for Drew to follow me to a faculty conference room just across from the gardienne’s office where I’d never thought to enter before now because it’s restricted. But I closed the long double doors behind us for privacy, then turned back to Drew.
Somehow, in the handful of weeks I’d been gone, the planes of Drew’s face had grown more defined. The sun-washed freckles on his nose were still there, but the streaks of platinum and gold were fading back into his normal tawny color. And he’d clipped it short for once in his life.
But it was his eyes that I knew to avoid if I wanted to stay safe. My whole life, one look into their dark blueness and the left side of my brain stopped working. And today was no different.
Drew Sutton had flown five thousand miles to see me. Only me.
He pulled me slowly toward him, wrapping his arms around me in a way he never had before, his hands cradling me against his chest. “Don’t move,” he whispered, his lips brushing against my hair. “Just give me a minute. I’ve missed you so, so much.”
For longer than I would ever admit, I let myself cling to him while he held me so tight. Drew was here. He was in Paris. And something about the combination of those two things felt … off. So when he turned his head a little and his lips were suddenly against my temple, I pushed myself back. And then I stepped back again two more paces just so I could breathe. “Why are you here, Drew?”
“What do you mean, why?” He sort of half-laughed, half-scoffed. “It’s Friday morning, Fee. We have a breakfast tradition, remember?”
“I remember. But why today? It’s not even your fall break.”
Drew leaned against the conference table behind him, then crossed his arms against his chest. “Did I break a rule or something? Because you’re definitely freaking me out right now.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
“Okay, okay.” He pushed himself upright, then stepped toward me again, the lines at the corner of his eyes twitching in amusement. “Maybe I should have told you I was coming, but the truth is, I’m here to get a status report on Operation: Sugar Daddy. Do you know how disappointed I am, Fee? You promised me an inheritance, and all you’ve actually done is go to school and hang out with your new friends. If you ask me, you’ve only got yourself to blame for this unannounced visit. France needs an heir, you need a pre-nup, and I need that stable boy gig.”
Two months ago, that would have been all it took for Drew to win me over. The flattery, the swoony eyes, the swagger for days… all of it had been my personal Kryptonite. But this? Something about Drew’s timing felt shady. And how had he paid for that flight?
So when his expression softened and he threaded his thumb through the belt loop at my waist, I wasn’t sure how to decipher the haze that fell over my vision. The anger I’d felt just a moment before shifted to confusion. And maybe that all-nighter had taken a greater toll than I’d realized because it felt… well, it really, really felt like Drew Sutton was about to kiss me.
“Mademoiselle?” A female voice said from the doorway behind me. It was the gardienne. And even though he didn’t know a single word of French, the change in Drew’s expression ind
icated he understood the reprimand that followed.
Absolutely no students allowed in this room. Ever.
Especially not those whose fickle hearts swayed to and fro like Foucault’s pendulum.
Just like Drew Sutton.
Or me.
SEVENTEEN
The gardienne held the door wide until Drew and I had both reached the entry hallway. “Whoa,” he leaned over to whisper just above my ear. “Is there a cat around or something? Or does all of Paris smell like this?”
But I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t answer him, because after the rollercoaster of the past ten minutes, I was having a hard enough time putting one foot in front of the other. As we walked down the corridor to meet up with my crew, Drew’s gaze passed from the ivy wallpaper to the half-timbered ceiling above, and then as we passed the Grande Salle, he stood silent in the doorway for a full minute. I had described the Centre Lafayette, room by room, in the one and only letter I’d written Drew during our first week here. I’d hardly expected him to care, but now, as he walked alongside me, it occurred to me that this was Drew’s version of Promenade Parisienne. In the same way my class explored the city through the eyes of the authors we studied, Drew appeared to be exploring my Paris, and in that moment, I felt my resolve begin to crack.
Just then, I saw Monsieur Salinger beginning his lecture out in the courtyard, and I grabbed Drew’s arm with one hand while I dug through my bag for my notebook and pen with the other. We tagged on to the back of the group and marched along behind them all the way out the front door like we’d been there all along. Drew blended into the crowd, head held high, so naturally that Monsieur Salinger probably never noticed the intrusion. He just prattled on, pointing out every nook and cranny on today’s route and its significance in the general literary canon.
Because Salinger had the reputation for putting even the tiniest details on each test, we were all scribbling away. I did my best to stay on task, but having Drew around was too distracting to stay focused for long. Kelly had handed him both our cups of coffee fairly early on in the walk, but he was struggling, staring hard at Monsieur Salinger, like if he tried hard enough, he might understand something, anything. Every couple of minutes, he yawned adorably, which in turn made my classmates yawn, and each time, Drew’s face blazed crimson. Against my better judgment, I found myself grinning like an idiot at all the cute.
At the steps of Ezra Pound’s place on Notre Dame des Champs, my phone buzzed over and over in my pocket. It was text upon text from Kelly, who was standing directly in front of me, typing like she always did into her phone without once dropping her gaze away from the professor. One line at a time, she sent the following message:
what if you + drew = movie love?
major swoon avec sigh
fyi, anne’s staying with us this weekend
NO PROTESTS or drew sees COPACABANA footage
you have been warned
<3 <3 <3
One by one, my friends dispersed at the end of the walking tour, each one vanishing without so much as a quick goodbye to the others. By the time we got back to school, Drew and I were alone again.
My favorite part of the Centre Lafayette had always been the wall of glass that lined the hallway near the entrance. So much light, so much beauty in the courtyard just behind its panes. As Drew shuffled the contents of his bag around right in the middle of the hallway, trying to find space for the jacket and sweater he’d already peeled off, I stood at the glass wall and waited.
Two guys from one of the other colleges walked past Drew and me, ignoring the grunts and the cursing, and headed out the glass door into the courtyard. Because I’d gotten in the bad habit of being nosy, my eyes drifted along with them. As they walked past a bench at the far end of the courtyard, I saw Pete Russell, still talking on the phone, his fingers shoved into his hair in a way that made my stomach clench.
Something was wrong.
The bustle of people walking past must have drawn his attention upward, because at that moment, his eyes connected with mine. And I suddenly realized Pete had been absent from class all morning.
It’s strange. All Pete did was lift the fingers of his free hand a couple of inches, and I knew it was more than a wave. He was answering a question I hadn’t asked. He nodded once in Drew’s direction, then smiled. When I turned, I saw why. Drew’s butt was pushed up against the glass as he struggled to lengthen the strap on his duffel bag.
I zoomed over to Drew and took the strap from his hand. “Here, let me try. Those things can be persnickety.”
“Persnickety?” Drew laughed. “Are you using word-of-the-day toilet paper again, Fee?”
“Don’t mock,” I scowled, twisting and untwisting the strap as I spoke. “You know that toilet paper helped me score fifty points higher than you on the SAT, right, Mister Salutatorian?”
“Exactly, because you’re… hey, do you mind? I’m trying not to take this personally, Fee, but you can’t blame me for feeling slighted when your eyes keep wandering from me to an empty courtyard.”
I followed Drew’s gaze outside. Not one soul remained.
EIGHTEEN
Drew insisted that we follow my normal Friday lunch tradition instead of heading straight to the apartment. So we grabbed a couple of sandwiches and headed over to the central pond of the Luxembourg Gardens. The topaz sky felt huge over the park, but the air felt oddly thin, like it might evaporate and take me with it.
Every quarter hour or so, I’d beg Drew to let me take him sightseeing, but he refused, happy for the moment to fill up this corner of my world. The afternoon sun lit each goldenrod streak in his hair while he rattled on about Highgate and the changing leaves on campus, about Lincoln City and our families. He spent thirty-seven minutes describing the latest Sigma Phi Beta pledge class and how many different shenanigans they’d pulled already.
Thirty-seven minutes. I know, because I timed him. He never once mentioned Lindsay or any other girl. And that was the weirdest thing of all.
In the fifteen years we’d been friends, Drew and I had spent countless hours together under every condition. Working every free hour after school at Sullivan’s. Camping with our families. Laughing in the school library until someone kicked us out. Hanging out in his boat on Devil’s Lake late into the night, plotting what object to swipe from Ian’s old bedroom so he’d freak out the next time he came home.
A few weeks ago, if you’d asked me who knew me best in the world, my answer without hesitation would’ve been Drew Sutton. Before I came to Paris, I would have believed that ‘til my dying day.
But as I watched him, the realization that Drew had never cared about this part of my life hit me with the force of a grenade. I couldn’t begin to count the number of times we’d argued about my studying French. When I’d come home from my trip to Paris in high school, Drew had thwarted every anecdote and ignored every photo. And this past summer, my moving here had hung in the air between us, though he’d done his best to distract me with sarcasm and outrageous flirting.
Which is why, as his beautiful blue eyes prowled over every inch of my new world, my instinct was to march him and his bags to the nearest taxi stand, destination: Charles de Gaulle Airport. Because something did not add up here. Not one bit.
“So this is where you live,” Drew said as he hoisted his duffel bag into Marie-France’s apartment that evening, eyes wide as they took in the room. “No offense, Fee, but this is a little fancier than I imagined from the pictures you posted online.”
“That’s because Anne and I live two floors up in rooms the size of the Highgate dorm closets. At least, that’s how they’ll appear to you since you’re only a Muggle.”
“That I am,” he grinned. “But wait – where’s the famous Marie-France? Still at work?”
“She’s in Venice.” I crossed the room and threw open the windows with ease, smiling to myself that I’d finally gotten the hang of things. “She flies there once a month to visit this Scottish guy she’s seeing
. He lives on some island nearby. It’s called Burano, I think?”
“Scottish? Wait, she flies all the way to Venice just for the weekend? That’s nuts.”
Says the guy who just flew across North America and the Atlantic for unspecified reasons. Just for the weekend.
I walked into the kitchen and filled the tea kettle. Drew puttered around the apartment for a few minutes, peeking into every room like it was a museum. The light outside had faded, and surely Drew was fading, too. There was no way he had slept five minutes on his flight here. So I poured us both some tea and headed back to the living room, where Drew stood at the window.
“I hate to tell you this, Fee, but one of your neighbors on the third floor over there is swanning around in his tighty-whities. Is he… wait, is he dancing?”
“Don’t be a creeper,” I sighed, placing the mug in his hand. A smile spread across Drew’s face, then he started to laugh in his way that always sounded like singing – the same laugh he had as a kid. Everything between us suddenly felt so normal we could have been back in my room at home. Everything, that is, except the way Drew’s eyes kept searching mine.
“That’s Saint-Sulpice,” I said, nodding toward the church across the square. “I like seeing it at this time of day, with the lights, and the sky just this shade of blue.”
“Meredith.” Drew took both our mugs and placed them on the coffee table behind him, then wrapped one hand gently around my elbow. “Tell me the truth: are you angry that I’m here?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“I don’t know. When I got to your school this morning, I felt like I was intruding on your life or something.”
The Drew standing in front of me was the old Drew – the one who’d listened to millions of my stories on the playground and helped me with math homework every night. The boy I knew before the boomerang girlfriend and the mercurial game-playing. And now he seemed so bewildered that I could feel it creep through his fingers up my elbow and all the way into my heart.