French Kiss

by Aimee Friedman

  By then, their stomachs were rumbling, so Pierre suggested putting together a picnic. They bought two baguettes, a variety of cheeses, juicy tomatoes, and a bottle of sparkling water from Monoprix and carried everything to the manicured gardens of the Tuileries, where they now lounged on a bench.

  “Alors, what do you think of Paris so far?” Pierre asked Holly, once they’d established that she was having fun. He shaded his eyes from the sun as he turned to look at her.

  Holly brushed her bangs off her forehead, gazing across the park at the huge palace that was the Louvre. “It’s not what I expected,” she replied thoughtfully. “I mean, the whole stereotype of the French being rude—that’s not true. Your friends are so great—”

  “Merci,” Pierre said graciously, pouring himself more Perrier.

  “But then there’s the dog poo,” Holly added, shooting Pierre a mischievous grin.

  “Quoi?” Pierre asked, the bottle pausing in midair. He shook his head and laughed.

  “You know,” Holly giggled, feeling strangely carefree. She leaped off the bench and began pantomiming the frantic side-stepping they had been doing all day. Holly had quickly realized that everybody in this city seemed to have dogs but nobody seemed to clean up after their pets. As a result, one had to walk around Paris with a careful eye toward the ground. Back home, Holly was obsessive about picking up after her yellow Lab, Mia.

  “’Olly, you are so funny,” Pierre said. Holly tried not to notice the tenderness in his voice—or in the way he was studying her. Then, to her surprise, Pierre put down his plastic cup and also jumped to his feet. He came close to her, and for a crazy split second Holly wondered—no! yes!—if he was going to kiss her.

  Instead, Pierre poked her in the ribs, his naughty smile once again reminding her of a rakish pirate. Holly shoved him away; she was insanely ticklish, and once she’d been attacked, she couldn’t stop laughing. Pierre, clearly picking up on that weakness, jabbed Holly in her side again, so she shrieked, darting away.

  “Don’t—you dare!” she told him, scurrying across the grass. Leaving their food for the time being, Pierre chased her, but even with a semi-injured ankle, Holly Jacobson was not an easy girl to catch.

  Hair flying behind her, she sprinted through the Tuileries, down the long walkway that was flanked by trees, with Pierre on her heels, as an old woman reading a book on a bench shot them a scowl. The pain in her ankle seemed to disappear entirely—had she really been in Wimbledon at all?—as Holly raced past the tinkling fountains and ornate statues and then doubled back toward their picnic bench. Suddenly, she felt Pierre’s arms encircle her waist from behind. He tackled her, and they tumbled backward onto the grass, eliciting glares from buttoned-up, well-behaved passersby.

  “Ah, maintenant I have you,” Pierre declared, tickling Holly’s ribs as she collapsed with helpless laughter. They were so close, Holly could feel the heat radiating from Pierre’s body and smell his spicy-clean scent. Even though she was struggling against him, Holly was also loving the feel of Pierre’s fingers running up and down her sides. She wasn’t used to tussling with a boy like this—with Tyler, it was all gentle cuddling—and she enjoyed the challenge.

  “Stop—stop!” Holly finally gasped, and Pierre did stop, releasing her and rolling onto his back. Holly inadvertently fell forward, landing on his chest, and Pierre’s arms went around her, keeping her there.

  Oh…my…God, Holly thought, as she and Pierre grew silent, their faces inches apart. She studied the pure blueness of Pierre’s eyes, the fullness of his upper lip, and was unable to beat down the desire building within her. To make matters worse, Pierre slowly moved one hand up her back, and over to her face, where he carefully traced the shape of her lips with one finger.

  The ringing of her cell phone from deep inside her Vans tote jerked Holly back to reality. Abruptly, she she pulled away from Pierre, her cheeks flaming.

  “I—um, I need to get that,” she muttered, lunging like mad for her bag on the bench.

  Could it be Tyler? Holly wondered, her stomach tightening with dread. Did he somehow know that I just almost kissed another guy? Squeezing her eyes shut, she put the phone to her ear without even checking the caller ID.

  “Holly Jacobson, why aren’t you back yet?” Meghan cried, over the blare of car horns on the other end.

  Holly sat down shakily on the bench, trying to come to her senses. Hearing her best friend’s voice in the middle of the Tuileries, moments after play-wrestling with Pierre—and when she’d been expecting Tyler—defined disorienting.

  “Oh, Meggie—it’s—you,” Holly stammered, watching as Pierre got to his feet, brushed off his jeans, and grinned at her. Suddenly, realizing why Meghan might be calling, Holly felt a surge of panic. “Did—did something happen?” she whispered, pressing the phone hard against her ear. “Did Coach Graham find out?” On cue, she felt a sharp stab in her left ankle, as if her body were reminding her that, yes, Wimbledon had happened all right.

  A burst of static on the line left Holly in tortured suspense for a second, and then she heard Meghan’s hesitant “No.” Holly let out the breath she’d been holding, but Meghan continued, her voice tense. “Not yet, anyway. Jess and I have used every excuse in the book—”

  “Including problems at home?” Holly whispered, thinking back to her cheery conversation with her parents that morning.

  “Yup,” Meghan said grimly. “So now Coach Graham thinks you’ve got food poisoning from bad shepherd’s pie, chronic headaches, and, like, clinical depression or something.” Meghan paused for effect, while Holly’s stomach twisted. “Obviously she’s getting a little suspicious.”

  “Merde,” Holly whispered, using her favorite new French curse word, as Pierre sat back down on the bench and cast her an amused glance.

  “Huh?” Meghan asked.

  “Nothing,” Holly replied.

  “Anyway,” Meghan went on in a rush. “Thank God today’s our free day, so Jess and I have been hiding out in London. We’re totally paranoid, though—I’m calling you from a phone booth in Leicester Square, and Jess is standing guard outside in case Coach Graham happens to be around somewhere.” She sighed. “I don’t know what we’re going to tell her tomorrow, and if you’re not here for the final meet on Friday…” Meghan trailed off threateningly.

  Holly looked at Pierre, who was carefully slicing into one of the ripe tomatoes with a plastic knife, his dark hair tumbling over his forehead. He looked up briefly and smiled at her. The rational part of Holly—the part that usually dominated her every move in life—told her she should go back to the apartment, pack, and catch a Eurostar train to England today. But really, how could she leave Paris so soon? She’d only just gotten to know this wondrous city. And how could she leave Alexa now, when they hadn’t even spent a full day together?

  And, okay, maybe—just maybe—she couldn’t leave the French boy at her side.

  “I need to stick around for at least another day—Alexa’s still in terrible shape,” Holly fudged. She pictured her friend twirling around in some designer dressing room, and bit her lip.

  “I hope she isn’t, like, making you sleep out on the street with her,” Meghan said bitterly, clearly assuming that evil Alexa had dragged Holly into Paris’s dark underbelly. “I can just see her doing that.”

  “Meggie, Alexa’s not stranded anymore,” Holly replied, rolling her eyes. “We’re staying with her cousin Raphaëlle.” Even though she felt Pierre’s eyes on her, Holly deliberately didn’t mention him to Meghan. She was worried that her voice might crack on his name again, and Meghan would guess that something was up.

  Not that anything was.

  “But I promise I’ll be back by Friday,” Holly added firmly. “Didn’t I say I would before I left? There’s no way I would miss our final meet, Meggie.”

  Holly took a deep breath, trying not to get too nervous. It would be okay. She’d catch a train to England tomorrow evening, arrive in Wimbledon by night, and be there to cheer
her team on at the ten A.M. meet on Friday. Coach Graham would be none the wiser.

  As long as Meghan and Jess could keep up the charade until then.

  After thanking her friend over and over, Holly clicked off and turned to face Pierre, who was regarding her with unabashed curiosity. He doesn’t know I’m an outlaw, Holly realized with a shiver. Hoping to keep her Wimbledon breakout as quiet as possible, Holly had begged Alexa not to tell her cousins about it. So Pierre and Raphi assumed that Holly had just hopped over from England for the heck of it.

  “Everything is fine?” Pierre asked, passing her a slice of tomato and, to Holly’s relief, not mentioning their tickle fight. “I did not intend to listen to what you were saying, but I could not help hear that, perhaps, you will leave tomorrow?” There was an unmistakable flash of disappointment in Pierre’s eyes, and Holly glanced away from him, biting into the tomato.

  “Um, yeah,” she mumbled, not wanting to elaborate. “There’s just…some stuff I need to…I can’t really…”

  “Ça va,” Pierre interrupted, resting a hand on her shoulder—which, of course, gave Holly heart palpitations. “I understand.” Holly glanced back at him, and his smile was too tempting for words. “You are a…how you say? A woman of mystery.”

  I am a woman of mystery, Holly thought, her pulse quickening, as she and Pierre cleaned up the picnic and made their way toward the big glass pyramid in front of the Louvre. She continued to savor this new idea for the rest of the afternoon, while she and Pierre swept through the Louvre in a whirlwind—Holly, unlike Alexa, wasn’t much for museums, but a peek at the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo made her feel extremely cultured—and then swung by the Eiffel Tower.

  Holly snapped shots of the tower from the Champ de Mars but told Pierre she had no desire to visit the very top, because she was terrified of heights. So after Pierre had bought Holly a miniature Eiffel Tower from a street vendor—he insisted that she needed a cheesy souvenir to commemorate their touristy day they rode the Métro back to Le Marais. As Holly, drained but content, resisted the urge to drop her head on Pierre’s shoulder, she reflected that she’d always remember this day—and Pierre—with or without a souvenir.

  But their adventure wasn’t over just yet. When she and Pierre emerged from the St-Paul station into the softly falling twilight, Pierre asked Holly if she’d be up for a quick dinner at his favorite neighborhood spot. “If you are not tired of me,” he added, laughing.

  Like a date? Holly thought, gulping. No—it couldn’t be. Despite that almost-maybe-kiss in the park, Holly was sure that Pierre only saw her as a friend. Holly generally assumed that most boys did. Which was the opposite of how Alexa operated.

  At the thought of Alexa, Holly wondered if her friend had wanted the two of them to have dinner. But Alexa hadn’t called all day—probably because she was still holding a grudge. Figures. Holly pictured Alexa holed up in the apartment, sullenly waiting for Holly to return. Normally, Holly would have been psyched to spend the evening with Alexa, but she knew that tonight, her friend’s prickliness would only ruin her sublime mood.

  And that made up Holly’s mind.

  She looked back at Pierre. “No,” she told him truthfully, with a bashful smile. “I’m not tired of you at all.”

  As they chatted easily about the events of the day, Pierre led her down a series of intricately winding streets until they reached one very long, very narrow street that, according to a small, dark blue sign Holly spotted on the corner, was called rue des Rosiers. “The street of the rosebushes,” Pierre translated, gently taking her arm and steering her toward the right. “Even though we will not see any here today.”

  The rue des Rosiers was unlike any street Holly had been on. It was packed tightly with food shops that overflowed with pita, falafel, hummus, and other Middle Eastern treats. A bustling deli was on one corner across from a chic shoe boutique. Many of the stores, Holly noticed, had bright neon signs that were written in Hebrew; she recognized some of the letters from her Hebrew school days, when she was twelve. The people spilling out of the shops and cafés were a mix of trendy Parisian teens and bearded old men in black hats who looked as if they’d stepped out of the past.

  “Where are we?” Holly asked Pierre, as she accidentally slipped off the thin sidewalk into the street.

  “This was the old Jewish quarter,” Pierre explained, helpfully guiding Holly back up on the sidewalk as a man on a moped roared past. “It’s interesting, non? In the Middle Ages, most of the Jewish people in Paris, they lived here. But today, it is all these different shops and restaurants.” He gestured down the length of the street, his smile tinged with nostalgia. “My mother, she used to always bring Raphi and me here to buy sweets before Rosh Hashana.”

  “Wait, you’re Jewish?” Holly asked, almost stumbling again. Alexa wasn’t Jewish, so Holly hadn’t expected any of her extended family to be.

  “Oui. Well, my father, Alexa’s uncle, he is Catholic, like most Frenchmen,” Pierre explained, stopping in front of a restaurant whose window was emblazoned with a genie’s lamp and the name Ali Baba. “But my mother, who is from Tunisia, she is Jewish, and so—how you say—technically, I am as well.”

  “I’m Jewish, too,” Holly said, as Pierre pushed back the heavy drapes—the restaurant didn’t have an actual door—and motioned for her to enter. Holly felt a smile playing on her lips as she thought of her parents, who—despite adoring Tyler—were always saying that Holly should find, as her mother put it, “a nice Jewish boy.” So they’d certainly approve of Pierre, Holly realized as she ducked through the drapes. Then, her cheeks flaming, she dismissed the notion. Why was she even thinking that way? It wasn’t like she and Pierre were going to get married or something.

  Right?

  Stop it! Holly ordered herself, as she stepped inside the restaurant, which, Pierre explained, was Tunisian as well. Holly admired the dazzlingly exotic space; instead of tables, there were low, candelit banquettes with overstuffed pillows as seats. Lush velvet tapestries hung from the ceiling, and a sultry belly dancer performed on the opposite end of the room from where Holly and Pierre stood.

  Well, Holly decided, as she and Pierre settled down on pillows at one of the banquettes, this sure isn’t Applebee’s.

  Ever since her traumatizing meal at the St. Laurents’, Holly had been a little wary of the food in Paris. But, she reasoned, as a waitress set a bowl of shiny black olives on their table, Pierre hadn’t let her down so far today, and the scents streaming from the kitchen were fragrant and rich. Pierre recommended the couscous with meatballs, and when the steaming dish arrived, Holly discovered that the fluffy white couscous—mixed in with chickpeas, carrots, and pumpkin—and the spicy-smoky meatballs were mouthwatering. She and Pierre, famished from their full day, dug in with gusto.

  “I wish Tyler liked this kind of food,” Holly mused aloud between bites of couscous.

  “Who is this Tyler?” Pierre asked casually, reaching for his water glass.

  Oh, no. Holly’s stomach tightened as a coldness washed over her. Although Tyler had flitted in and out of her thoughts all day, Holly hadn’t ever brought him up in conversation. It wasn’t like Holly had gone out of her way to avoid talking about her boyfriend with Pierre; it just hadn’t felt necessary. And since Holly hadn’t been gabbing to Alexa about Tyler, either, she was sure her friend hadn’t mentioned him to her cousins.

  So, for all Pierre St. Laurent knew, Holly Jacobson was absolutely and completely single. And for some bizarre reason Holly wasn’t yet able to articulate, she didn’t want him thinking otherwise.

  Grateful for the darkness of the restaurant, Holly glanced down and twisted the napkin in her lap. “Tyler? I—um—well, he’s…nobody,” she whispered, feeling her gut wrench at the lie. “Nobody important.” Only my boyfriend of a full year. She lifted her burning face to see that Pierre was studying her, his blue eyes bright with intrigue.

  “Ah, oui?” he murmured, giving her a slow smile. “More secrets from
the mysterious woman?”

  Holly shook her head, sighing. Between Wimbledon and Tyler and Alexa and Pierre, she was sick of all the secrets she had to keep track of. But then, as Pierre moved his plate aside and slid his hand across the table toward her, Holly wondered if Pierre found her secretiveness…kind of hot.

  Confirming her suspicions, Pierre took her hand in his, and then slowly, ever so slowly, traced one finger up and down Holly’s open palm.

  Holly closed her eyes, shivers of pleasure rippling through her body. She didn’t want Pierre to stop touching her. When she opened her eyes again, her breath caught as she met his gaze. Okay, Holly realized. Maybe he does see me as more than a friend. And maybe Alexa had been right that morning when she’d said that Holly was crushing on Pierre. Holly couldn’t ignore it anymore: The attraction between her and Pierre was mutual—palpable.

  In the weirdest way, Holly realized that she was only able to flirt with Pierre…because of Tyler. Holly had never before considered that ironic bonus of having a boyfriend: It gave her a new self-assurance that allowed her to loosen up around guys she might normally feel intimidated by. Why did life have to work that way?

  Suddenly, with Pierre holding her hand, but Tyler on her mind, Holly felt as if she were on a crazy seesaw—literally caught between two boys. Caught between the familiar and the new, between Oakridge and Paris, between a guy who’d recently rejected her advances and a guy who—if Holly was totally honest with herself—made her feel like the sexiest girl alive.

  Did she have to choose?

  As if he intended to make up her mind for her, Pierre leaned across the small table, coming so dangerously close that, had Holly leaned in, their lips would have surely met. “’Olly,” he murmured, his frustratingly kissable mouth mere inches from hers. This felt ten times more intimate than that moment in the Tuileries. “Perhaps you have not noticed this, but I think that you are…merveilleuse.”