I Want to Kiss You in Public

by Zelda French

  “If he liked you, he wouldn’t try to change you,” Lucie says.

  “To mould you to his taste.”

  “To change your clothes.”

  “And decide who you hang out with,” Tony concludes.

  Michael hasn’t done any of this. I have done this. By choice.

  But if I challenge what they think… I might incriminate myself and reveal more than what I want to reveal.

  On the other hand, they’re right. I have changed. I have taken decisions that might seem completely crazy to them. The worst of all… I have ditched them to run after a guy. I never acted like that before.

  It’s true. It all started when Michael arrived.

  Wasn’t I perfectly happy before he showed up? The three of us were indestructible. Three rockstars living the life.

  Who am I now? The sort of guy who shows up uninvited to a Golden Fork party to hang out with a Golden Fork member. I have repeatedly lied to the most important people in my life, sneaked around town, hoping that a straight guy might give me, another straight guy, a kiss?

  Damn it. Michael is the reason for all my problems. He persuaded me to watch a Korean movie! with subtitles!

  “I didn’t think… “I begin, weakly. “I didn’t think this would matter so much to you.”

  “We love you,” Lucie says, her face so tense she looks on the verge of tears. “It’s always been the three of us. I don’t want it to stop.”

  So far, they only think I’m ditching them because I’ve made a new friend. They don’t know about my crazy, completely mental school-girl crush on him. No one knows but Michael. And possibly François. But what proof does he have? Nothing. As for Michael… Nothing ever happened. I can’t still get out of there without causing anymore damage.

  Looking Tony and Lucie’s faces, I understand they’re offering me a choice. Tony, shoving the pieces of his croissant in his mouth, cements the matter.

  “Honestly, Lou, you can’t be serious. It’s the Golden Fork we’re talking about. Are they really worth fucking us up?”

  “I don’t care about the Golden Fork.”

  They don’t look convinced.

  “We miss you,” Lucie says, her eyes red. “I miss you. You’ve completely abandoned me.”

  A deep feeling of shame settles over my shoulders. She’s right, a hundred percent right. I have.

  “It’s not normal that Tony takes better care of me than you do”, Lucie says, sniffing. “He took me home last night. It should have been you.”

  I glance up at Tony, who looks back in alarm. “I mean, get your shit together, man. We shouldn’t have to tell you this. It’s like we’re not good enough for you anymore. If you don’t want us in your life, just say so.”

  I am, I definitely am, on the wrong side of the table. If I don’t get my shit together, as instructed, they’ll both break up with me. Without me, they’ll be just fine. Without them, I’ll be screwed. And not screwed in a nice way. Screwed like hanging out like a fool in the corridor watching my mum slam the door behind her, kind of way. Everyone knows that.

  “Are you ready to order this time?”

  Startled, I look up to find my bird-waiter back at the side our table, peering at us through his glasses, lips pursed. That’s all I can take from him without biting his head off.

  “Honestly—” I begin.

  “Dude,” Tony starts.

  “Read the room!” Lucie says.

  I hand him back the menu. “Can’t you just be lazy and pissed off like the rest of us and take a cigarette break or something?”

  With a hurt but dignified look, he snatches the menu from my hands and walks away.

  “So…” I meet Lucie’s eyes. “You want me to—”

  “I just want thing to go back to what they were.”

  “I agree.” Tony says, picking up the last of the croissant crumbs from his plate and licking them off his fingers. “This only thing is, do you want to?”

  From the way they’re looking at me, my answer is of the upmost importance. Michael’s face swims into my mind, of course, but at this time I can confidently say nothing, and no-one is worse losing them both at the same time.

  Thing as they used to be isn’t so bad anyway. The only thing Michael does, really, is mess with my head. Last night I ran over town to rescue him from the clutch of another guy. How ridiculous am I becoming? No-one in their right mind would risk they gorgeous girlfriend and their best friend for a silly little obsession like this.

  Tony and Lucie really know me well, and their intervention shows how well. It’s like I’ve been awakened from the strangest dream. Did I almost upend my life for a few handsome curls?

  “I want it too”, I say, wiping the sweat off my hands. “Things, just as they were. I’m gonna get my shit together, I promise.”

  There is a short silence, then Tony lets out the loudest groan I’ve ever heard.

  “Thank you, baby Jesus!” He claps his hands together. I watch him, astonished. “I couldn’t take it anymore. All this bad blood, this hostility! I’m a man of few needs, Lou, you know me! All I ever wanted today is food, a joint, and an afternoon of video games and The Fratellis. And I earned it.” He gets up and stretches. “Where’s that waiter? Has anyone seen him? Who do you have to kill to get some food in here?”

  Tony walks away to search for our waiter. Lucie leaps forward and swallows half my face in a hungry kiss.

  “I’ve missed you.” She still looks pale and nervous. “I’ll be right back.”

  She slides off the bench, and takes the staircase down toward the Ladies.

  Was that all? All they wanted from me was an apology and a promise I would do better? A can literally feel sweat streaming down my back. I thought they would both break up with me. After this rollercoaster of emotions, I feel strangely hollow.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket, startling me. I dig it out of my pockets with trembling hands.

  Michael. He wants to know if we are still meeting this afternoon.

  My finger hovers over the REPLY button. Yesterday, a message from him was everything I wanted. Now Michael is like a body I once buried, something I’m afraid will come back to haunt me.

  “I can’t.”

  My reply, so short, has taken me so long to come up with, that by the time I send it, Lucie’s back at the table.

  “Who’s that?” She asks, pointing at my phone. She tries not to sound suspicious, but she does.

  She doesn’t trust me.

  It’s my fault, I haven’t given her reason to. I could, right now, if I could find the courage… Courage is something I clearly lack.

  I stick the phone back into my pocket, my heart giving a heavy sigh, my brain telling him to keep quiet. If I tell her, things can get back to normal again.

  I’ve made my bed, and I’m ready to lie in it.

  “Lucie… There’s something you should know.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THOSE WERE THE DAYS

  MY LIFE WITHOUT Michael is pretty much what I envisioned, except for the part that that I hate everything now.

  School, especially, is a blast. Especially since Michael doesn’t sit with me anymore. I must say, he accepted my decision relatively well, or too well, depends on my mood of the minute, because they’re ever-changing you. The Monday morning after my conversation with Tony and Lucie, I made it clear to Michael that I didn’t want anything to do with him. I didn’t speak to him, didn’t look at him, didn’t answer his subsequent text messages.

  For our next lesson together the next Friday, I found him, without surprise but not without resentment, sharing François’s table at the front of the class. Michael didn’t complain, didn’t try to talk to me again. He took my silence as a sentence, and a sentence it was, for me.

  Thankfully, the holidays arrive shortly after. Two weeks of freedom, two weeks without driving myself insane, wondering if I should have done things differently.

  To the outside world, I’m top of my game, best friend AND
attentive boyfriend. Inside, I’m either completely placid, apathy incarnate, or mounted on springs. Yes, I know, I don’t make much sense of myself either.

  “If people knew, they’d probably think I’m completely mental,” I tell Miss Eugénie over tea on the first weekend of the holidays.“Honestly. If you’re bored playing video games and smoking the same joints, and if you’re not sure your sexy girlfriend does it for you anymore, then leave, go home, ring your mad crush’s doorbell and tell her you’d like to kiss her somewhere dark and find out once and for all what the hell is wrong with you. But Tony is everything to me, and you see, if Lucie and I break up, I’m not sure he’d stick with me. Anyway. That’s the worst of it.”

  Miss Eugénie, her brow furrowed, leans away from the window.

  On my advice, she has ditched scrapbooking, in profit of birdwatching. I guess it makes us friends.

  “You think your best friend would leave with your girlfriend.”

  “Yes, I just told you.”

  “And you’re happy with that.”

  “Do I look happy to you?”

  I’m starting to regret taking up her invitation. When I rang her doorbell to return her sunglasses, she took one look at my face, ushered me with an iron grip to her sitting room and ordered me to tell her everything. Only to hear:

  “No, you look miserable, as usual.”

  She makes a note in her handbook about the hundredth blue tit who flew by with a little smile. I’m too exhausted to retort. Miss Eugénie makes a serious face. As though my predicament is something serious and nothing to do with the insecurities of a seventeen-years old teen.

  “Eugénie?” I sink deeper into the cushions of her sofa. “Have you ever been in this predicament?”

  Her eyes widen. “Torn between two lovers?”

  “Attracted to the wrong person.” A small crack in the paint of the ceiling catches my attention. “You know it’s wrong or even ridiculous to be attracted to this… girl, but the more you realise it’s crazy, the more you want to do it, and you can’t get it out of your head.”

  Miss Eugénie, spotting another bird, lifts her binoculars to her eyes. “And this girl you like…”

  Oh, yes. Miss Eugénie being as ancient as Rome, I didn’t tell her I had a crush on a guy. Wouldn’t want the shock to wipe out the only person I can talk to.

  “Doriane,” I say, after a quick rummaging around my head to find my fake crush an English name. “Her name’s Doriane.”

  “You don’t know if she ever liked you, and you didn’t bother to ask.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because,” I say, in a tone that suggests it makes complete sense, “if she liked me back, then I wouldn’t know what to do!”

  She snorts. “A part of you would know what to do, trust me on that.”

  The sofa springs squeal as I jolt upright. “You’re a disgusting old woman, you know.”

  “No, you’re disgusting,” she says, smiling. “I was talking about your heart.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “Fine. I wasn’t.”

  I start stuffing my mouth with her delicious biscuits while she laughs at her joke. Eventually, she gets away from the window and comes sit next to me.

  “It looks like you put yourself in this situation. And you’re the only one who can get yourself out.”

  “That’s it? That’s your advice?”

  A piece of biscuit gets stuck down my windpipe. Miss Eugénie sighs and pours me some more tea.

  “Don’t beat yourself up. Everybody lives through the same situation at least once in their life. The world is vast, and so is the heart. This is probably just a fling, you’ll get over it in no time. Everything will go back to normal.”

  “You promise?”

  She shakes her head. “No, of course not. Why would I promise you that?”

  “So, what happens if it’s not just a fling?”

  She holds up a finger. “If not, next time, we’ll have gin.”

  Oh boy, get over it, I did. For the next two weeks, Tony never lets me out of his sight. I believe he’s never liked me more than at the point of losing me. He always comes up with plans, meeting for a movie, or play the newest video game, getting our hair cut together, and of course celebrating his and Lucie’s birthdays, which are only three days apart. The Golden Fork is not invited to their celebrations this year, and I’ve got a feeling it’s my fault, and mine only.

  I’m so good at faking happy, I’m honestly considering becoming an actor. Fake it ’til you make it as some truth to it. Eventually, I begin to enjoy myself again, one afternoon at a time. The good thing to come out of it is that Tony has stopped saying I always get what I want.

  I’ve also become the perfect boyfriend. Lucie and I go on many walks. We hold hands in the park like cardboard couples from romcom movies. We stroll along the lanes in the park, and I try not to think of Michael every time we encounter a plane tree.

  I’ve told Lucie about the girl I slept with. She wasn’t happy about it. It took her forty-eight hours to come around the fact that I lied about something which she deemed so important. But then, she came back and she apologised for being so insensitive, confusing the hell out of me.

  Now that she knows I’ve had sex before, she doesn’t seem so hell-bent on shagging me senseless, and I cannot tell either of them how relieved I am. Sex is the last thing on my mind, and I’m almost eighteen! My body feels shut down, sealed like some ancient tomb.

  Lucie’s got another obsession: planning my birthday, which happens in April, during the next holidays. I don’t care much for it, but Tony and Lucie want to celebrate the fact that we will all be allowed to drink alcohol in public.

  It sounds great, really. I can’t wait to be able to drink any time I want, and be happy all the time. What madness possess me to spend so much time worrying about Michael. Now I’m sure that it was nothing but a fling and I’ll be able to face him without concern when we get back to school.

  To my father’s satisfaction, I’ve done all of my homework during the first week of the holidays, working at all hours, even at night, depending on how sleepless I was. I’ve read Wuthering Heights as instructed and without complaint, and I really could have complained, since I understood half of it and I’m not even sure about the stuff I understood. I told Lucie and Tony I needed to keep my grades up if I wanted a chance to go to London after the holidays.

  Tony asked if I was really serious about it. I said I was. I don’t know if I mean it. London might be the worst city for me at the moment. But on the other hand… the idea of going away is definitely growing on me.

  And just like that, between games, smokes, walks, homework, celebrations, bird watching with Miss Eugénie, and banging my head trying to understand Catherine and Heathcliff, the two-weeks break is over.

  It’s a new, rested, and cured of all insanity Louis who arrives almost on time at school on Monday morning and who doesn’t have to sweat over Mrs Paquin hawk-like stare for the first time ever. My confidence, just as my self-control, is off the hook. It’s early March and the sun is back. Shades on, I blast through Colette International’s front doors practically in slow-motion and I’m close to start winking at strangers like in the movies.

  Keeping my eyes straight to make sure not to make eye contact with any undesirable, I pay little attention to Tony and Lucie’s friendly chatter behind me, until I hear my own name.

  “Lou’s never been in such a hurry to go to English Lit.”

  I wheel around so fast that my own hair slaps me in the face. “That’s not true.”

  “Then why are we practically running?” Tony asks, unwrapping a Madeleine.

  “I know why.” Lucie says.

  Keeping a straight face, I ask: “You do?”

  She advances on me, slyly, her eyes glittering.

  “You want to show off because you’ve read the book on time this time.”

  “Ha!”

&nbs
p; She’s absolutely right. I’m a new person, a responsible one, who does his homework and washes his hair, and as of last night, lays out my outfit for the next morning.

  “I’ve read it too,” Tony says, through a mouthful of Madeleine. “But I can’t talk about it. I think I need PTSD counselling now.”

  “More like you didn’t understand what was going on,” Lucie says.

  “Touché!” He showers us with Madeleine crumbs.

  Meanwhile, they’re not walking fast enough. I clap my hands together to spur them. “Enough, fools, or we’ll be late.”

  “God,” Lucie says, looking over my shoulder. “Is it me or this guy keeps getting hotter?”

  “Who?”

  Whipping around, I collide into François whom I didn’t notice standing right behind me, and sends him flying straight into Michael’s arms. Michael catches him without effort.

  “Watch where you’re going!” I bark.

  I know who Lucie was talking about, and it wasn’t François. With slightly longer hair, his bouncing curls looking softer than ever, Michael is now the hottest thing spotted on Earth since the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

  Everything Eugénie promised wouldn’t happen happens. Desire ignites in every part of my nervous system, alighting me like a god damn Christmas tree.

  “Get out of the way, then!” Yasmin’s harsh voice brings me back to reality.

  Her black eyes boring into mine, Yasmine dares me to say another word. Sacha, who doesn’t mind this sort of things, pulls me into a hug, then proceeds to kiss us all on the cheeks.

  “Lucie!” She says in her usual chirp of a voice. “How was your holiday?”

  Lucie, for once, doesn’t seem at all happy to see Sacha, and mutters a vague answer. Tony too, seems to look at her with more contempt that ever. Is it because she let me into her flat the night of the party? Anyway, while Sacha keeps them all busy, I end up sandwiched between François and Michael, and begin to sweat profusely. Oblivious to my presence, Michael is searching through his backpack.

  “Did you have a nice break?” François says.