It troubled her. Why wasn’t he more … distraught? There should have been a follow-up.
Someone like Catrine or Margaux would tell her that Romeo was just afraid of feeling too much. But Juliet always thought that was the mantra of girls who’d been dumped. He feels too much? What lies women could tell themselves.
Juliet didn’t want to admit it to herself, because it felt petty and common, but she supposed she wanted a side effect of her no-show to be that Romeo worried. That he might make clear that Rosaline was nothing. (Though the flip side of her mind said that if he were to make a big deal of saying Rosaline meant nothing, then it perhaps meant more than Romeo’s failing to mention her altogether.)
So today she was a little early for school. She’d go to her locker and take her time. She’d avoid Catrine and Margaux outside and just let herself wait. For what, she didn’t know. It wasn’t as though Romeo could walk right up to her at school without starting rumors.
But if she could catch his eye in the hall, she’d know whether he felt her absence—and the loss of time with her—as acutely as she did.
Sharing a gaze would not be the same as sharing a hotel room, but it would be something.
The problem was that, when she walked up to her locker, someone was standing near it.
His back was to her, and it wasn’t Romeo. She’d recognize Romeo’s form anywhere. But, she surprised herself to note, she recognized this form instantly, too.
Jim. He wasn’t wearing his leather jacket—it was warm today. Juliet herself had on a wispy babydoll dress over a pair of cognac-colored cowboy boots that were extremely well trod-upon. His shoulder blades pressed against the back of his faded black T-shirt, which looked like it had been washed so many times she would bet it felt like velvet by now. Juliet had a penchant for worn-in clothing. It became part of the wearer.
“Hi,” she said, to his back. He hadn’t heard her come up.
When he turned around with that sure American grin on his face, something sparkled beneath her breastbone. But she told herself it was just that flash of seeing something agreeable to the eye.
“Hi,” he said to her, but then he looked away, to her hands turning the dial on her locker. As she opened it, she was relieved to have nothing too embarrassing in view. A class schedule taped to the door, a hairbrush with tangles of her hair in its bristles, a near-gone bottle of Juliet by Capulet perfume, a battered copy of a dog-eared romance novel she, Catrine, and Margaux had been passing around, making notes in the margins of the juicy pages.
The halls were filling up more now and there was that feeling of eyes upon them. The watchfulness of other teenagers had a weight to it that alerted you to its significance, the same way a coat draped over your shoulders told you it was winter. Only in this case the weight told you that everything you did could be multiplied by hundreds of voices, repeating and interpreting it.
He still hadn’t said anything beyond his greeting. “So,” Juliet tried, “are you finding things okay here?”
Jim looked at her for a second, as if the “here” she asked him about was somehow on her face, instead of the school, or Paris in general.
“Oh … yeah. It’s good. Great.”
He smiled then, and it wasn’t his cocky American smile but something softer. He looked down at his shoes as if he felt … shy?
“Actually, you and … our mutual friend … are the only people I know here so far.” The bell for their first class chimed and Jim looked up toward the ceiling, as if something would be there to remind them to start walking. Their shoulders almost touching, Juliet and Jim made their way along the now-teeming hallway.
“Our mutual friend?” Juliet raised an eyebrow, catching Jim’s eye in her peripheral vision. She knew Jim was talking about Romeo, but something in her wanted to hear his name, gain more information.
Now Jim grinned his usual grin. “You know, Benedict,” he said. “It’s why I’m here. He was … worried about you.”
Something like relief flooded Juliet’s insides but it was mixed with irritation. Was sending a messenger as concrete a gesture as Romeo could make when they were not alone?
“There’s an issue. It’s with my brother,” Juliet said. She noticed other students’ eyes quickly raking over her and Jim. Her friends, and many other girls at Lycée Louis-le-Grand, were already in agreement that Jim was the hottest thing to hit the school in a very long time. It bothered her a little, on Romeo’s behalf, but she couldn’t argue Jim’s attractions.
Jim’s forehead crinkled in a question. “Your brother? Did he … find out about you and … our mutual friend?”
Juliet shook her head. “No, no, nothing like that.” They’d arrived at her classroom but Jim showed no indication that he cared about the class he had to get to. She wondered if it was an American thing or a Jim thing. Leaning closer to him, she whispered near his ear. “He’s had some problems with drugs in the past. There was an … incident … a few days ago, but I’m helping him get better.”
Jim’s face fell. “And that’s why you couldn’t meet Romeo?”
Juliet put a finger to her lips to signal Jim to be quiet. Her and Romeo’s coupledom getting out in the halls of this school would be as bad as a legitimate gossip columnist hearing about it.
“Yes. I wanted to be there more than anything,” she whispered. “But my brother needed me.” She looked around as she spoke. Her brother’s travails were better not mentioned in these halls, too. A slipup would become something major to use against Henri and the House of Capulet.
“You’re a good sister, then,” Jim said, his eyes kind. “I mean, from what I can gather. I don’t have any siblings.”
“You’ll tell him?” Juliet asked quietly, as students were starting to funnel into the door past them. She wasn’t normally the girl to linger outside class with a boy.
“Tell who what?” Catrine’s voice rang behind her. Juliet cringed. Catrine and Margaux were her friends, for all intents and purposes, but she didn’t like them, not really. They were climbers and sycophants at best, and Juliet always felt they would sell her out in a second if it assured their own rise.
It was yet another reason she and Romeo understood each other so well. They both knew what it was like to grow up not trusting that anyone really liked you so much as what you could do for them. Romeo had his cousin Benny, though, who anyone could see would take a bullet for Romeo. Juliet often wished she had a loyal girlfriend. Gabrielle she thought she could trust (she was an in-demand supermodel and had too much pride to rely on favors from anyone) but Juliet had grown habituated against the secret-sharing that was a hallmark of female friendship.
Juliet caught her mouth from hanging open. Thinking fast, she said, “Tell his driver to arrange to bring him to the party this weekend. You’ll come, oui?”
She put a hand on Jim’s arm and urged him with her eyes to please understand what she was talking about.
“The party, yeah … wait, the address?” Jim got it instantly, which had the double effect of flooding Juliet with relief and of making her feel that Jim might be someone she could befriend.
“Here,” Juliet said, scribbling down her address on a piece of paper peeking from her class binder. She tore off the corner and gave it to him. “Two o’clock. It’s a birthday party for my cousin Thibeau. Don’t bring a gift. He’s awful.”
Jim laughed at Juliet’s wry delivery as Catrine absorbed the exchange with hunger. She was like a vulture in Dior eye shadow.
“I’ll be there, too,” Catrine said to Jim, putting her face right in front of him. “It’s sure to be a good time.”
Jim’s flirtatious smile to Catrine wasn’t lost on Juliet.
And neither was the fact that it bothered her.
Just a little.
CHAPTER 16
JIM
HE’D BEEN TO parties before.
And not just boarding school parties in someone’s room with pilfered pills and illegally bought beer.
He’d been t
o big-deal parties, parties his dad hadn’t wanted to take him to, parties where the chances were fifty-fifty that he’d either sit silently in a corner all night or go to bed with some undulating cougar who’d try to give him money on his way out of her single-occupancy honeymoon suite.
He knew instantly that the Capulet party was completely different. And he was way out of his comfort zone. Even though Juliet had invited him as a cover for their conversation, he’d taken the event fairly seriously. He’d changed his outfit three times—and he didn’t even have that many clothes. She hadn’t said anything about a dress code, so he hoped a button-down shirt with rolled sleeves was formal enough.
At ten minutes after the 2:00 p.m. start time, he rang the doorbell to the Capulets’ brick mansion on the Avenue Montaigne. He could hear music and laughter inside and noted the tastefully rendered BON ANNIVERSAIRE banner over the door. He held a bottle of Dom he’d taken from the fridge at home. He didn’t expect Juliet to be impressed by it, but he couldn’t come empty-handed. And he hadn’t brought a gift for her cousin Thibeau, just as she’d instructed.
A petite Asian woman answered and looked him up and down. There are people in this world who you know on sight can kick your ass. This woman was no doubt one of them. Something in her flinty eyes told him to stand up straighter. So he did, and held out his champagne-free hand for her to shake. She definitely wasn’t someone you greeted with the customary French double-cheek kiss.
“Who are you?” The woman gestured toward him with her chin, like he wasn’t worth the effort to point at him.
“Jim Re—Gardner.” He caught himself about to say his father’s last name and corrected it, but did he see a flash of suspicion in the woman’s eyes? “I’m a friend of Juliet’s from school. She invited me.” He realized his hand was still extended toward her.
“Lu Hai.” She didn’t take him up on the handshake, just pulled him inside. “A friend of Juliet’s from before you were born, Mr. America.”
They were in a huge entryway that sprawled out into two enormous rooms on either side of a circular staircase. The two rooms were like mini extensions of the Palace of Versailles. Matching chandeliers hung from the ceilings like upside-down crystal wedding cakes. The walls were coated in golden brocade wallpaper festooned with velvety silhouettes of birds and flowers. He almost wanted to run his hands over it. The marble floors were the color of a Tiffany box, and in the center of each were matching rugs that showed off clusters of flowers, threaded through with golden embroidery.
Compared to the modern loft he shared with his father, this place was like living in some kind of Marie Antoinette–style dream sequence. But not in an old-lady way. It was cool, like he’d entered some kind of magical fairy-tale world. It suited Juliet.…
Juliet, who was impossible to hide even in this sea of people. He noticed her shiny dark hair immediately, her head tucked near that of her friend. Was it Margaux? Or the other one. Catrine. Ugh. He wasn’t sure who was who. He only knew that they wore the same perfume and had been vying for his attention ever since Juliet had extended the invitation.
Now Juliet looked up and spotted him. A smile lit her face and sent an electric charge from his brain to his stomach. But wasn’t that just him being glad to see a familiar face?
“Jim,” Juliet said, practically floating over to him. She looked like a punk-rock fairy amid this setting. Her long hair was loose and a little messy, spilling over a brown leather jacket worn atop a navy shirtdress cinched at the waist with a wide necktie. On her feet were a pair of deep-cherry combat boots. Woven through her tresses were leather strings with charms on the ends of each. Any girl who saw her would want to copy the look immediately, but no one could pull it off with Juliet’s effortless ease.
By contrast, Margaux and Catrine—now he remembered: The brunette was Catrine, the redhead Margaux—looked like sugar-drenched desserts in pastel dresses that, while not ugly, lacked magic. They were following Juliet over, their eyes locked on Jim as if he was a quarry they’d been waiting to spot. While normally the attentions of two pretty girls at a party would have at least struck him as the beginning to a fun game, he really wasn’t up for their attentions at the moment.
“Here, let me take you around,” Juliet said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him into the crowd. She lifted a finger over her head in some sort of silent signal to her friends to fall back, and they did.
Now she bent toward Jim. He could smell her light perfume—fresh and citrusy, not floral. In her melodic French-accented English, she said, “There’s really not that many people worth meeting here, but you should talk to my girlfriends—in a little while. They’ve been panting about your arrival all morning and I can’t bring up our mutual friend, Benedict, in front of them. Besides, it’s better for you if they can’t get to you right away. Believe me, absence makes the heart more eager, if not fonder.”
Jim raised an eyebrow. “Are you speaking from experience?” Across the room, Catrine and Margaux stood in wait, flutes of pink champagne held aloft. When they saw him look their way, both girls offered the same beckoning smile, and yet he was happier here, talking to Juliet. About her boyfriend.
But that was why he was here, wasn’t it? To help his good friend Romeo clear up whatever misunderstandings were ailing his relationship with Juliet.
Juliet looked around the room and spoke in a low tone as if afraid to be caught. “It would be much easier not to love him.”
“I don’t think he’d like that at all.” Jim had to edge closer to Juliet as an older woman passed behind his back.
“Sometimes I’m not sure,” Juliet said, and her eyes flashed with a question. She really wasn’t sure. He couldn’t believe it.
“Romeo loves you,” Jim said, his voice low.
But Juliet’s eyes widened like a cartoon’s. “Don’t say his name here! Someone might drop a chandelier on you for treachery.”
She pulled him through the crowd, stopping to introduce him as her new friend from school to a few people—cousins, family friends, an aunt here, an uncle there. Her life was so full, Jim thought. He came from a world where a family gathering meant he and his father would be in the same room for several minutes.
“Ugh, there are so many of them, non?” Juliet rolled her eyes as she bid farewell to a sweet-seeming uncle who’d asked Jim a series of questions about what to pack for a wintertime trip to New York. “Is your family so, how do I say it … on top of you?”
Jim thought of Jennifer, his father’s assistant, and her seductive overtures a few days before. That it was the closest he’d come to something resembling familial affection was entirely disturbing.
“Yeah,” he lied to Juliet. “It’s kind of nice to leave that all in the States. But your family seems nice.”
While he knew a lot of their peers hated to deal with family obligations, he meant this. Her family did seem nice. To always come home for a beer that no one would even scold him for taking, to play video games without limit, to do whatever he wanted because he could be certain that no one much cared—well, it would be a dream come true for plenty of guys his age, but it got old fast. He wondered if he’d ever enjoy a relationship with his father so good that he could almost take it for granted, the way Juliet seemed to. If he delivered on the information his dad wanted, would something good come of it? He really hoped so, because it wasn’t easy to feel like he was lying to Juliet’s perfect face.
Juliet had brought him to a table with a big birthday cake covered in a fondant that seemed to match the wallpaper. Around it were platters of lobster tarts and speared vegetables, fancy cheeses and pieces of crusty bread. Platters of sushi lay on beds of ice, around a raised table where a sushi chef was creating rolls by request.
“I bet you want a hamburger,” Juliet said, looking at Jim as he surveyed the food.
“I like sushi.” He honestly hadn’t had a lot of it, given that his many northeastern and English boarding schools were more likely to serve clam chowder and fish and c
hips when it came to seafood. Still, Juliet’s satisfied smile as she plucked a piece of sashimi with chopsticks and ate it in one bite convinced him he would like it.
“I only eat fish—I mean, of the previously living creatures.”
Jim laughed, thinking of the steak dinner that was his father’s idea of family time. “My father would hate you.”
“Oh, really, and why is that? Who is your father to judge me?”
They were treading in dangerous territory, Jim thought. One wrong word and why wouldn’t a smart girl like Juliet put it together that James Redmond had strolled into town around the same time Jim Gardner and all his rich-kid vehicles had shown up at her high school? His body gave him signs that he wanted to tell her the truth—the tense pull in his stomach, the guilty sweat that sprang from his pores when he even mentioned his father. Really, besides financially, his dad had barely been part of his life. He honestly felt closer to Juliet than he did his father. Still, there was all that blood-was-thicker stuff to think about, and he grew woozy wondering how his father would act if Jim sold him out and blew the mission.
“Just your average American. A heartland kind of guy,” said Jim, even though his father was from New Orleans and was of questionable heart.
“Well, he can have his heartland,” Juliet said with a mischievous glimmer in her eye. She picked up another piece of sashimi and lowered it into her mouth. With her long hair spilling over her shoulders, she resembled a mermaid on land. “But bread, cheese, something from the sea—what more do I need?”
The way she said it, like an invitation, she could get the whole world to give up meat on the spot.
He heaped a plate with sushi rolls, then felt self-conscious, like the boorish American he probably was to these people.
Juliet didn’t notice, or at least didn’t comment. Even though he wanted her to. He liked her teasing. He made a show of dabbing his roll with wasabi. Maybe a little too much, as his eyes started to water on the first bite. He was trying to ingest it in as manly a way as possible when a guy with that floppy movie-star hair girls loved tapped Juliet on the shoulder.
Romeo, Juliet & Jim Page 12