Love À La Mode

by Stephanie Kate Strohm

  “Not the bow tie,” Hampus said from where he sat cross-legged on his bed. “Henry cannot pull off the bow tie.”

  “And you’re gonna do something with your hair, right?” Marquis asked.

  “Can I get a little less input, please?” Henry ran his hands through his apparently not-good-enough hair, frustrated. Dad, onscreen, laughed.

  “So what’s the plan?” Dad asked him for the millionth time.

  “Dad. I got it. Les Oies. 42 Rue des Ails. Seven p.m. Don’t be late. Ask for Michel. Table for two set up in the kitchen.”

  “Cue the panty drop,” Marquis said.

  “Dude! My dad is here.”

  “I went selectively deaf, momentarily,” Dad said, straight-faced. “Seriously, Henry. Don’t be late. They don’t set up the table in the kitchen for just anybody. Michel’s doing me a big favor.”

  “I still can’t believe your dad knows the chef de cuisine at Les Oies,” Marquis marveled. “That is so cool.”

  “They were at culinary school together.”

  “It is the oldest restaurant in Paris, yes?” Hampus asked.

  “Yup,” Henry and Dad answered, almost simultaneously. Les Oies had been serving dinner since the 1580s, to kings and queens, famous revolutionaries, Napoleon Bonaparte, Victor Hugo, Coco Chanel, and Ernest Hemingway, to name a few. And now, they’d be serving dinner to Henry and Rosie. With their table set up in the kitchen, they’d get to watch each course coming together, and best of all, when it came time for Les Oies’s signature dessert—soufflé au chocolat—Henry and Rosie would get to help the pastry chef make it, at the very same restaurant that claimed to have invented the soufflé back in the 1700s. Hopefully, it would be a meal just as spectacular as Rosie.

  Or almost as spectacular, anyway.

  And finally, Henry would tell her how he felt.

  “Where’s the victim?” Alice elbowed her way onto the screen.

  “Hi, Alice.” Henry tried not to sound too exasperated, and failed.

  “Where’s the girl you tricked into going out with you? I don’t see any girls.” Alice scowled into the computer. “See, Dad? I told you she didn’t exist.”

  “She exists very much!” Hampus insisted, insulted on Henry’s behalf.

  “Hmmm.” Alice narrowed her eyes. “I’ll believe it when I see it on the Insta.”

  “Not everyone puts their entire lives on Instagram,” Henry muttered.

  Marquis shot him a look. Henry shrugged—he hadn’t meant that as a burn on #Mumi.

  “Well, I’ll let you go,” Dad said. “Have fun. Enjoy every bite. And don’t be late!”

  “I won’t, Dad,” Henry said. “I promise.”

  Alice hung up when Dad was mid-wave good-bye.

  “I still do not see what is wrong with the hot dog tie,” Hampus said. “Hot dogs are very good.”

  “There isn’t enough time for me to explain what’s wrong with the hot dog tie. Here—this one.” Marquis held out a dark blue tie covered in a pattern of tiny white stars.

  Looking at his reflection in the mirror, Henry tied it on. It looked pretty good with the gray suit. He ran his hands through his hair again, trying to make it do something, but not sure what, exactly, he wanted it to do. He could feel himself starting to sweat through his shirt already. God, he hoped Rosie liked the restaurant. He hoped she liked him.

  “You’re ready, man.” Marquis clapped him on the shoulder. “Ready as you’ll ever be.”

  “Do not forget the flowers!” Hampus sprung to his feet and grabbed the bouquet off Henry’s desk, crumpling it only slightly as he handed it to Henry. Roses. Cliché, maybe, and kind of a stupid joke about her name, but Henry didn’t know crap about flowers. These ones were pretty, though, a mix of reds and pinks.

  Henry walked to the door, Hampus and Marquis right behind him.

  “Don’t come with me, guys,” Henry warned them as they followed him down the hall. “You’re making it weird.”

  But they came with him anyway. And they were making it weird. But as they got closer and closer to the staircase that delineated the boys’ hall from the girls’ hall, Henry was so nervous that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if he’d been accompanied by a marching band and a full police escort.

  This was it. Henry felt like his heart had leaped up his esophagus and was lodged in his throat. They turned the corner, but when they got to the end of the hall, only Priya and Yumi were standing there.

  No Rosie.

  Behind him, Marquis and Hampus stopped talking. Henry hadn’t even noticed they’d been talking before, but now the lack of voices felt ominous. They crossed the last couple feet to the staircase in silence.

  “I don’t know where she is, Henry,” Priya said, her eyes full of something horribly like pity.

  “She’s not in the building,” Yumi said bluntly. “I looked everywhere. And I think her phone’s dead. She hasn’t answered any of my calls. Or responded to my texts.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be here any minute,” Priya said. Her voice sounded reassuring, but like she was trying too hard to be reassuring, like a flight attendant on a plane going down. “Any minute now. She promised.”

  But she wasn’t there. And she didn’t come. And she didn’t answer her phone when Henry called, either.

  First, Yumi marched Marquis off to dinner. And then Hampus promised Henry he’d be right back, but he had to get some food. And then there was just Henry and Priya. Henry sat on the top step, feeling his suit wrinkle with each passing minute.

  “Cafeteria closes in five minutes, Henry,” Priya said gently, rising to her feet. “Shall we go, then?”

  “No thanks.” Henry couldn’t imagine eating anything.

  “D’you want me to fix you a plate?” she asked.

  “No thanks.”

  “Well—that’s all right, then.”

  Priya smiling at Henry only made him feel worse. He looked away as she went back down the stairs, his eyes alighting on the bouquet that had looked so good a couple hours ago. Now, it was all wilted and weird, like it was decomposing in front of his eyes.

  The clock in the foyer struck nine. Henry counted each bong as it chimed—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. They’d definitely missed their reservation. Henry groaned and buried his head in his hands, thinking of all the trouble Dad had gone to, imagining what he’d say when Henry told him they hadn’t shown up.

  The front door of the École swung open with its typical creak. Henry lifted up his head, and from his perch on the top of the stairs, he could see two figures in chef’s whites walk through the door.

  And there was Rosie.

  With Bodie Tal.

  Henry willed them away, off to the cafeteria, into the lounge, back out onto the street, but no, they continued their inexorable progress toward him. Should he hide? Where would he even hide? Lie down flat, pretend he was a stair, and hope they stepped right over him? There would have been a really solid metaphor in that maneuver, but Henry couldn’t muster up the will to move, either for a stair-disguise situation, or to flee back to the relative safety of his room, where maybe Hampus would be waiting with Söderblandning tea and sympathy.

  “Hey, man.” Bodie nodded at Henry, then sped past him toward the guys’ dorms, as if he didn’t want to be on that staircase any more than Henry did.

  “You look nice,” Rosie said as she met him at the top of the stairs, something sweet and hopeful in her voice that made it hard for Henry to stay mad at her. Was he mad at her? Or maybe he was just mad at himself? Henry didn’t know how he felt other than really, really embarrassed. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Henry stood up. He’d forgotten about the flowers, and the movement as he stood jostled them. The bouquet rolled onto the next step, and then bounced from stair to stair, all the way down, until it finally came to a stop at the bottom of the staircase, where it lay, looking all sad and bedraggled. I get it, universe, Henry thought. You don’t need
to drive the point home any more.

  “Those looked . . . nice,” Rosie said. “Um . . . Yes. Also nice.”

  She was looking up at him, like she was waiting for him to explain about the flowers and the suit. But he wanted her to explain why she smelled like shrimp and chocolate. And what she’d been doing with Bodie.

  Voices trickled out from down at the bottom of the stairs. Henry and Rosie both turned toward the noise. Yumi, Marquis, Hampus, and Priya stopped, stared at the two of them, and then quickly turned around, hustling back into the cafeteria and out of sight.

  “Henry. What is happening?” Rosie asked, bewildered. “Why are they avoiding us?”

  “They’re for you,” he blurted out.

  “Huh?”

  “The flowers. They’re for you. Or they were, I guess.”

  “Oh,” she said softly. “Are, um . . . are we going somewhere?”

  “We had a reservation at Les Oies.”

  “Les Oies,” Rosie repeated. “Les Oies. Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope.” Henry was having a hard time looking at her. “We were going to sit in the kitchen.”

  “The kitchen? At Les Oies? Oh, Henry.” She reached out for his hand. He jammed both of them into his pockets. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

  “I wish I’d known. I wouldn’t have— I never would have—”

  “Gone out with Bodie instead?”

  “Not like that,” she said sharply. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then what was it like, Rosie?” he asked, surprised by how angry, how hard his voice sounded. “Because every time I turn around, I see the two of you together. Talking. Laughing. Hugging.”

  “Are you even listening to yourself right now?” she asked, incredulous. “You’re upset that we’re hugging? I hugged Priya at lunch. Is that a problem, too?”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “Me and Bodie? We’re friends, Henry. That’s it.”

  “You sure about that? Because I don’t think that’s what he wants.”

  Rosie opened her mouth, then closed it suddenly, like she was reconsidering what she was going to say. Something flitted across her face, making Henry think that maybe something had happened between her and Bodie.

  “He is my friend,” Rosie insisted eventually. “And I’m sorry if you have a problem with that, but he’s been there for me when you haven’t.”

  “I haven’t been there for you?” That stung. That stung so much that Henry found himself taking a couple steps back, like he was absorbing a blow.

  “You’re always disappearing! And moody! And I can never figure out where I stand with you, what you think about me—”

  “I’ve had a lot going on—”

  “Then why don’t you tell me what’s going on?!” she interrupted. “Talk to me, Henry. Why won’t you just talk to me?”

  “It’s just been—it’s just been all this stuff, okay?” Henry felt like he was exploding. Like if he didn’t tell her everything immediately, the weight of it would crush his chest. “My mom made me do all this extra work. And she said she’d pull me out of the École if I didn’t keep my grades up, which has just been this endless cycle of up and down and up and down, desperately trying to balance out a failed quiz with a perfect paper or whatever. Desperately trying to get everything right so I can stay here—stay with you.”

  “How was I supposed to know that?” she said, matching his volume. “We kiss once and then anytime we almost kiss again, you run away. We never talk about it. What was I supposed to think? I thought you were embarrassed by me or something.” She thought he was embarrassed by her? Henry was so shocked he couldn’t even come up with the words to refute it. “You could have told me all of this, you know. I would have understood. I know something about struggling here,” she added bitterly. “Chef Martinet asked me to leave the École.”

  That stopped Henry in his tracks. As did the fact that her eyes were welling up with tears.

  “What?” he asked. “That’s not— When did she—”

  “Right after class. That’s why I left so fast.”

  Crap.

  “I’m really sorry I missed dinner,” she said. “I would have loved to go to Les Oies with you—I’d love to go anywhere with you—but you don’t have to worry about me or Bodie or any of it anymore. Because I probably won’t be here for much longer.”

  She walked down the stairs. Where was she going? Back out of the building? Nope. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and picked up the roses.

  This was a disaster. Henry had to save the night. But how? She was coming back up the stairs now, faster and faster, taking them two at a time. He had to do something.

  “I’m sorry, Henry,” she whispered as she fled past him, clutching the bouquet. Crying. Her tears hit him in the chest, each one a small stab of pain.

  “Rosie, wait,” he said. “Please!”

  But she had already turned the corner, running down the girls’ hall.

  Screw the rules. Henry was going after her. He’d apologize. He’d fix it.

  “Going somewhere, Yi?”

  Madame Besson stood in the doorway of her room between the boys’ and girls’ halls, filing her nails.

  “I was just—uh—”

  Henry watched Rosie disappear into her room, the door slam shut behind her.

  “Can you tell Rosie I need to talk to her? It’s kind of an emergency.”

  “No. I cannot,” Madame Besson replied. “It seems clear to me that she would like some privacy.”

  “Right. Sure.”

  Henry considered sprinting past her. Considered vaulting straight past Madame Besson and pounding on Rosie’s door, begging her to talk to him, begging her to give him a chance.

  But instead, he dropped his gaze away from Madame Besson’s stern glare, and walked back to his room.

  Alone.

  There was one thing Rosie didn’t love so much about baking: it was very, very hard to fix a mistake.

  There were some minor mistakes you could cover up with frosting or whipped cream, but for the most part, you were better off starting over from scratch. Forget an ingredient, add in too little or too much of another, and you were basically screwed. One wrong move, and everything was ruined.

  Exactly like last night.

  If she had just gone upstairs to change. If she had just waited five minutes instead of running off with Bodie, everything would have been different.

  Rosie could see it so clearly in her mind’s eye. Henry, handsome in his suit. The roses fresh, instead of crumpled and decaying. Rosie in the one nice dress she had brought with her, the dress that had been waiting for her on her bed when she’d fled back to her dorm room, carefully laid out by Priya and Yumi. Henry and Rosie tucked away at their own private table amidst the hustle and bustle of the kitchen at Les Oies. Les Oies! Rosie still couldn’t believe it. She groaned and slumped against Priya as they walked, hiding her face from the sting of the wind.

  “None of that groan, please,” Priya said as she hustled Rosie down the street. “I know exactly what that groan means.”

  “Can the two of you hurry it up?” Yumi said. “I’m freezing my taste buds off.”

  Priya was half carrying Rosie as they followed Yumi’s retreating back down one road and across another, each step taking them farther and farther away from the École. Rosie had sleepwalked her way through class today, and when Priya and Yumi had insisted on taking her out for dinner, Rosie didn’t have the energy to resist.

  “Oh, Yumi,” Priya said disapprovingly as they crossed the street to see a long line winding its way out of a restaurant with a bright red awning. “You can’t honestly expect us to wait in line at Le Relais de l’Entrecôte. It’s bloody freezing, and if Rosie leans on me much longer, my shoulder will lose all feeling.”

  “Sorry,” Rosie muttered. She tried to lift her head, but the effort was too much. Priya patted her gently.

  “T
he line is not for us,” Yumi scoffed. “A little credit here, please.”

  Yumi led them past the line, pushed open the doors, and paused in front of the hostess stand. Warm air and the tantalizing aroma of meat hit Rosie all in one comforting blast. She lifted her head and sniffed the air.

  “Ah, Yumi!” The hostess bent down to kiss Yumi’s cheeks, her dark glossy hair swinging as she did so. “We are three today?”

  “Needed some girl time. Usual booth free?”

  “For you? Always.”

  “Absolutely nothing about this is surprising,” Priya muttered as they followed the hostess into the restaurant, squeezing through the narrow spaces between tiny tables topped with red tablecloths and bright yellow napkins. “Of course she’s a VIP at the most famous steak-frites place in Paris.”

  Rosie slid into the booth the hostess indicated, Priya right beside her, as Yumi took the seat across from them.

  “Bisous to Marquis!” the hostess called as she left their table. Yumi threw her a thumbs-up as she went.

  “So this is where you’ve been disappearing off to with Marquis all these months,” Priya mused as she looked around the room, squinting at the Vermouth posters on the walls.

  “Yup. Where did you think we were going?” Yumi asked.

  “I thought you were shagging on the roof.”

  “Priya!” Yumi looked delightedly scandalized.

  “You know about the roof ?” Rosie asked. She hadn’t been back since that first night with Henry, when they’d joked about potatoes and he’d made her feel better about her terrible omelet.

  “Duh.” Yumi rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows about the roof.”

  “For shagging,” Priya said. “Bit cold for that now, though.”

  “Yumi!” Their waitress appeared, and repeated the whole delighted-double-cheek-kiss ritual. “Where is Marquis?”

  “He’s doing some recipe testing at school,” Yumi answered. “Can we get the usual?”

  “No salad, all the bread, steak saignant,” the waitress confirmed. “Of course.”

  “No salad? Have you eaten a single vegetable all semester?” Priya asked as the waitress left. “I’m surprised you haven’t contracted scurvy.”