I’m strong? I’m the opposite of strong. I’m terrified. I’m—
“I’m falling in love with him,” I admit, the words surprising me. “But that can’t be true, right? Because it’s too soon. We’ve only been together for a couple of weeks. I’ve only known him for—”
“First of all, a day out here is like a week anywhere else. It’s like camp: we spend all our time together; it’s not like regular life. And second of all? If it was casual, you wouldn’t be so terrified he’d hurt you.
“Do you want to tell me what prompted this? Did Zeke do something?”
Did Zeke do something? “He’s been amazing,” I whisper.
“Sometimes that’s just as hard.”
My eyes screw shut because all I can see is the empty hotel room and the bed and I’m scared, scared, scared.
“Abby?”
This time it’s not Alice’s voice in the silence. The voice is deeper, laced with the concern that comes from finding your girlfriend on the floor of a movie theater lobby.
Especially since my eyes are still closed. I must look delightful like this. Just the type of girl every guy wants to have sex with.
Sex.
Eff.
Alice is still quiet and it only takes a moment, but Zeke has pulled my phone out of my hand. “Alice, she’s going to be fine. I’m here.”
But what happens when he isn’t anymore? When he goes back to San Diego? When we’re separated by half a country?
And then his lips are on my forehead, and his hand is in mine. “Let’s go outside, okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper. But I don’t look him in the eye as I stand up.
“What’s wrong, Abby?”
The familiarity of his voice speaking my name cuts to my core. There’s so much that is wrong. There’s the fact that this can’t last, that we’re less than two weeks from this magical bubble popping. No matter what we do, we can’t keep summer in Merritt from ending. So maybe we should take advantage of the empty hotel room and the bed and everything that entails.
But will that make it harder when this is all over?
“Are you worried about tonight?”
We’ve been walking in silence for the past few minutes, allowing the sounds of the city to fill the space between us. Montreal is teeming with pedestrians. The outdoor cafes are filled with people laughing and joking; the smell of cigarette smoke is everywhere.
He can read me so well.
“Yes,” I say. I could have lied. I could have asked in a flirtatious way what he thought was going to happen. I could have played dumb. But somehow that doesn’t belong in this perfect day. Lying won’t make this better.
“Nothing needs to happen.” While his voice is as quiet as mine, I can hear it over the noise of the crowd, the drunken groups walking out of the bars.
An empty room. A bed.
“Do you want to get a drink?” I ask, stepping out in front of Le Vieux Dublin, the Old Dublin, the vague sounds of a fiddle and harmonica peeping out. Montreal has a ridiculously low drinking age and there’s no doubt we could get served, even though we did promise Marianne that we wouldn’t drink.
“Abby,” Zeke says, taking the few steps so he’s back to being next to me, close enough that he can turn me to face him, away from Le Vieux Dublin. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down and I notice there’s a tiny nick in his neck, the smallest dot of red in an otherwise perfect jaw.
I want to kiss that spot. I want to be lying beside him, my hands on his torso, my lips grazing that spot. That spot and the one next to it, and the one beside that.
“We can just go to the hotel,” I say.
“Abby. Just because Julie isn’t staying in your room doesn’t mean I have to.”
I can’t help it; my eyes jump up to his. “She told you?”
He chuckles uncomfortably. “Let’s just say she wasn’t subtle. But she’d also had a lot of wine at dinner. So when she slipped out of the theater a few minutes after you, she loudly wished me good night. And then winked, repeatedly. And then slipped me her room key. And lest I believed at that moment that she was coming on to me, she told me not to do anything that she wouldn’t do.”
“Oh god.”
“It’s kind of a good thing you weren’t in there,” Zeke acknowledges.
It’s all so much. The two plastic keycards in our pockets. The weight of taking that next step. The weight of passing it by. What if there isn’t another time, another night that is just us, alone? What if we don’t do it now and our first time becomes some experience where I’m constantly anxious that Alice will walk into the room?
What if we never get the chance because the summer ends?
I dip my head until it rests on Zeke’s shoulder and close my eyes again. He wraps his arms around my hips, the weight of his clasped hands at the small of my back, his chin resting on my shoulder.
I love Zeke.
I love this guy with all these muscles, this guy who has a closet filled with baseball shirts but hasn’t worn one since I told him that it bothered me, this guy who speaks with me in French nonstop.
Zeke.
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I whisper into his chest. His lips sweep across my temple.
“I just want to say,” he whispers into my hair, his voice low and hesitant, “that if you’re okay with it, I’d like to share your room tonight.”
“I’m fine,” I say quickly, the words so close together they’re practically one word.
“But,” he says, dragging the word to make it so long it’s practically its own paragraph. “As much as I’d love to . . . take things further, what I really want to be able to do tonight is fall asleep next to you in a bed that is actually big enough for our two bodies. And then wake up next to you in the morning. I don’t want the bed to determine what we do tonight, except enable us to sleep together. I mean, in the same bed.”
I drag my chin up so I can see his eyes. “Do you not want—”
“No,” he says. “I want to.”
Je le veux.
I want to.
He wants to.
Il le veut.
“But tonight, let’s just sleep together in the big bed in your room. Just sleep. And maybe make out a bit. Because if you’re wearing anything to bed other than a full-body snowsuit, it’ll be hard to keep my hands off you.”
“But no sexy times?” I tease.
“Temps sexy?” He laughs. “I dare you to put it on our list of words.”
“I’m quite sure Marianne wouldn’t be surprised to see it there.”
“No, she wouldn’t.” Zeke cradles me close and we walk like that all the way back to the hotel. And then through the hotel. And up to our room.
Our room.
TWENTY-ONE
“ABBY.”
The voice whispering in my ear is too deep to be Alice’s. And too close, for that matter. Because the voice seems to come from a mouth that is right near my ear and is probably connected to the two arms that are wrapped around me.
And if it were either of my brothers, they’d have already sprayed me with cold water, wouldn’t have waited to wake me first. And they wouldn’t be holding me quite like this. Like they were both trying to keep me close and to shift slightly.
I wiggle closer to the warm body.
And hear a growl and a deliberate shift backward of the bottom half of the body near me. “Merde,” he says, and I can’t help it. I giggle because all of a sudden I’m completely certain why Zeke is trying to move backward and it has nothing to do with his embarrassment at waking up with our bodies intertwined, my back pressing into his front, and everything to do with . . .
His front.
“Stop laughing,” he says, his growl slightly more ferocious. “When you laugh your body moves more. . . .”
Which only makes me laugh more. Because there’s this absolutely lovely boy in bed with me, around me, holding me. An absolutely lovely boy who can’t quite stop his body’s reaction to me. An absolutely love
ly boy who made me feel beautiful and enticing and so damn sexy last night, but who never made a peep when I said I didn’t want to take things further than we’d already gone.
Even when I changed my mind. And changed it again. All before he even had a chance to speak.
It was only when I apologized that he raised his voice. He stared me down. “Even if I didn’t have a sister who would castrate me with a rusty spoon if she even got a hint that I would force a girl to go further than she wanted to, I would never be that guy.”
“Thank you.” I nod. “But we should probably find out if there’s a French term for castrate with a rusty spoon because that speech would have sounded so much better if you weren’t going back and forth between languages.”
Zeke rolls his eyes. I love the way he looks without his glasses, almost like a little kid. His eyes are so close to mine, those long lashes. “Tu es mignonne,” he whispers, cute, and then bends forward to kiss me and all I can say is I definitely don’t want him to be punished by his sister.
I want to tell him how I feel.
His fingers slip below my camisole and it tickles.
“Zeke, arrête.” I laugh.
“Pourquoi?” Why?
“Parce-que je veux te dire quelque chose.”
It’s hard to be serious when his fingers are driving me mad. But I want to tell him.
“Zeke,” I plead.
“Quoi?” His fingers halt their attack on my skin and his face goes quiet. Not content quiet, but worried quiet. The tiny patch of skin between his eyebrows is furrowed and I cup his jaw with my palms, smoothing his rough cheeks with my thumbs.
“It’s nothing bad,” I promise. “I just . . .”
I’ve never said this. I’ve never—
“I don’t know how to say this,” I struggle, “because you know the French have only one word for like and—”
This is definitely not the right way.
So while it feels awkward, I switch to English. “Zeke, I love you. And I know it’s only been a few weeks, and we barely know each other and that you’re going back to San Diego and I’m in Chicago but—”
The frown lines between his eyes have deepened.
And suddenly my heart is beating way too fast and my lungs are clearly not able to fill properly because this is mortifying, because he’s looking at me with eyes that seem sad. His eyes shouldn’t be sad, should they? I mean, I’ve never said those words to anyone and I clearly botched the lovely moment, but . . .
“You don’t have to say them back,” I squeak, still in English because apparently when I’m embarrassed beyond belief, I can’t think of the right French words. Which is kind of ironic since apparently when I’m drunk, I can only speak French.
I’m rambling in my head. Mostly because Zeke is probably still staring at me with that pitying look on his face, his body so close to mine, and this is beyond what I can handle.
“I should go to the bathroom.”
“Don’t,” Zeke whispers. “Don’t. You’re sad, and I didn’t want to make you sad.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper, and I know tears are gathering and maybe if I make a quick exit, I can clear them before—
“I love you too, Abby.”
Okay, this is actually worse. Didn’t think it could be, but it is. I’m getting the pity I-love-you. I didn’t even know that was possible.
“Stop, Zeke, it’s all right. I’m apparently just the type of person who feels things really intensely and maybe I’m wrong anyway, and I definitely should have waited.”
“No, you’re not wrong.” Zeke’s tone is harsh and, despite myself, I open my eyes. “I love you too, Abby. I didn’t pause because I didn’t feel the same way. I paused because I wanted to say it too, so much. I’ve wanted to say it for days now.”
“Then why . . .” Why the frowny lines? Why the worry?
“I think we should talk.”
Now that’s never a good sign.
And so because I’m coward, a true coward, I make a decision I know in my core is the wrong one. “If this is about what happens after the program ends, let’s just not deal with it. Let’s pretend that all that matters is this lovely little bubble that we’re in right now.”
Zeke shakes his head and I know this is the beginning of the end, and I don’t want it.
“Please,” I beg. “We don’t need to worry about what happens after, not now. Let’s worry about that when it comes.”
Zeke looks away, his eyes focusing on the door to our room, on the sign explaining the evacuation route and the checkout time, and I hope . . .
“Okay,” he says, but his smile is still sad.
Zeke convinces me to leave our room when I can’t hide my growling stomach anymore. We stroll through the early morning streets, the sidewalks deserted but for the storekeepers opening their shops.
I don’t care because it’s warm, but there’s a cool breeze that feels glorious against my sunburned skin. But mostly I don’t care because I’m walking through streets that could be in France, for all I’d know; the language of my dreams is everywhere. It’s like a beautiful alternate universe where everyone is living inside my happy place. I don’t need Amélie or Paris. I am happy right here. My happy place that is made infinitely happier given Zeke’s firm grip on my hand. I want to pull him into an entryway and kiss him; we can melt into the streetscape, melt into this life, right here. There’s no baseball here. No Chicago. I don’t even need to cross the ocean; I can make my life here on this tiny street in Old Montreal, a boulangerie and pâtisserie and dépanneur to keep me fed, a librairie to keep me busy. And Zeke. Zeke for everything else.
Except Zeke isn’t relaxed. His grip is tight, like he’s afraid I’ll take off running. His usual torrent of French is silent. He’s not even peppering me with silly questions.
But I’m pretending that it doesn’t bother me. Maybe it’s just too early in the morning. Maybe we both need more coffee.
“Je pense,” I start, not so much filling the silence as reveling in the morning, “I think that if I can’t go to the Sorbonne, if I don’t get in, I’ll come back here. Apply to McGill or the University of Montreal. My parents can’t get mad at that, right? Aren’t Canadian schools cheaper than American ones anyway? And classes are in English so I can live in French, or take French classes, but be able to do my degree in English.”
Zeke gives me a weak smile. A weak smile that is not even a half smile. But I’m not going to worry.
“Montreal is awesome. I know it’s not as gorgeous as Paris, but it’s a city that couldn’t even support a major-league baseball team, so that makes it fabulous in my books. And I can—”
“Monsieur, je peux donner une fleur à ta belle fille?” A white-haired gentleman in a brown suit has stopped sweeping the cobblestones in front of his store to pick up a fully bloomed red rose. He holds it delicately by the stem and points it toward me, his eyes trained on Zeke.
Zeke nods slowly and the man turns the rose to me. “Une belle rose pour une belle fille.”
A beautiful rose for a beautiful girl.
I’m definitely never leaving.
“Come, take a picture with me and my rose,” I tell Zeke, pulling him close beside me. I extend out my phone and snap the picture, our two smiling faces framed by the dull gray buildings of old Montreal in the early morning, the dark cobblestone street.
With Zeke Martin in Vieux Montreal, I write under the photograph and post it, my first post since I left Chicago. And then I shut off my phone.
We spend the day touring through Montreal, notebook pages filled with the words we look up, the conversations we have. Zeke’s exhaustion must have passed because he’s back to normal, laughing and joking as we take the Metro, hit up a drumming circle on Mount Royal, and eat the fluffiest eggs at L’Avenue. All in French.
We walk through the McGill campus, the run-down student ghetto, taking side streets up through the plateau to St-Viateur Bagel. In a small waiting area with a giant woodburning ove
n, we watch as dozens of bagels come off the oversize spatula, dumped into giant bins. Each of us buys a dozen bagels.
“Où veux-tu aller?”
I’ll go anywhere, I want to say, but instead I shrug. We only have a couple of hours until we’re due back at the bus station in order to make the last bus, and I hate the idea that this is our last weekend together, that in a week we’ll both be headed back home, far away from Montreal, far away from Huntington.
“Un autre café?”
Definitely. Coffee is my official beverage of choice here.
“Oui.” I smile. We pick up extra-large coffees and settle down on a park bench near what seems to be a very hotly contested soccer game.
“Viens ici,” Zeke whispers, pulling me closer, his arm resting across my shoulders. Leaning my head on his chest, I sip my coffee and watch the soccer players. The men, seemingly in their midthirties, are strong and dark, their olive skin painted with a faint sheen of sweat. They race back and forth across the field, unapologetic in their praise and condemnation of their teammates. The crowds sitting around the field follow their lead, shouting jeers at the goalie, who misses catching the ball by a hair.
“What language are they speaking?” I know that French in Quebec sounds different, but nothing has been quite as difficult to understand as their yells.
“Based on the flags the various fans are waving, I’m guessing Croatian and maybe Tunisian?”
An elderly man hobbles over to the shamed goalie and smacks him on the head.
“Oops.” I laugh. “Someone’s in trouble.”
We watch through the last quarter of the game, cheering for both teams until our voices are almost as hoarse as the spectators’. As the crowds disperse, they hand us their leftover flags, each team believing we were on their side.
The clock strikes four, and I groan. “We should probably start heading in,” I say, pulling my phone out and turning it on to check the time.
The Distance from A to Z Page 17