Page 87 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
“Ringer,” Mom says. “Have you done this before?”
“Maaaybe,” Katy says, adopting her I’m-so-innocent face she used to use when she was caught tiptoeing in late at night from parties.
“Your turn,” Sebastien says to me.
“Can you show me, I don’t know, the proper form or whatever?”
“No fair,” Katy says. “We didn’t get lessons. You have to throw using just your natural instinct.”
“Or your previous, undisclosed experience,” Mom quips.
Katy smiles smugly.
“You heard what they said, Helene.” Sebastien steps back and crosses his arms, but relaxed, as if he thinks I’ll magically know what to do.
Okay, well, you get what you pay for.I step up to the line marked on the cement, wind up my arm like the skinny guys in the next cage, and get ready to throw. But right before I do, something shifts inside me, like muscle memory, and I adjust my arm just so.
Then I let loose, and the axe flies through the air.
It hits the bull’s-eye.
“Hot damn, Hel!” Katy gives me an approving nod.
Sebastien looks at me proudly, but also like he suspected all along that I’d ace it. I wonder which of our past lives was the one where we threw axes to the point that I’m this good at it.
By the time we get back to the table, I’m ravenous. Thankfully, Jim arrives with the food at the same time. Another waiter accompanies him, because there’s so much to bring over.
Each order of s’mores is the size of a baking sheet. Mine alone has two ramekins of Nutella, giant cubes of house-made chocolate marshmallows, and chocolate chip cookies baked flat for optimal s’more smashing, artfully arranged on the sheet pan.
Jim flicks on a switch under the table that gets the fire in the center going. “All right, gimme a holler if you need anything else.” He leaves four long-handled skewers around the little fire.
I stare at my Nutty Chocoholic platter and can’t imagine needing anything else, ever.
Katy picks up a skewer and stabs one of Mom’s coconut marshmallows.
She swats at Katy’s hand. “Eat your own first.”
Katy sticks out her tongue and pops the coconut marshmallow into her mouth anyway.
“Incorrigible,” Mom says.
I smile at them, and notice that Sebastien does, too.
“Thank you,” I say to him. “This is the most perfect celebration I could imagine.”
“It is?” he says. “Then I suppose I don’t need to give you your second surprise if this is already perfect.”
I set down the cookie I was about to smear with Nutella. “There’s another surprise?”
“You requested plural surprises. Close your eyes and hold out your hands.”
I obey. Sebastien sets what feels like a brochure in them.
“Now open.”
It’s not a brochure, but a paperboard sleeve. I open it, and my jaw drops. “Plane tickets? ToEurope?”
I’d thought my dreams of gallivanting through the Netherlands and France were over when Merrick canceled my flights.
