Page 89 of Enemies to French Kisses
“I was just beginning to think that myself.”
“Get her somewhere quiet, where you can be yourselves. You might just find she opens up more to you… physically…”
“Physically? That’s the end of this conversation.”
Alain gasps. “You kissed her.”
I look at the phone but it’s not a video call. “You can hear that in my voice?”
“We may not always see eye to eye, but Marc, no one knows you like I do. For the sake of all that is romantic in this country, divorce your work and rejoin your formerly fake wife under new skies. That will change everything.”
“You called to give me romance advice?”
“My brother.” he sighs. “You need it more than you know. Off you go,bon appetit.”
When I return to the table, Laura is in a deep conversation with the waitress about the fair trade market for truffles.
“And for monsieur?” the waitress asks. Strange how she calls me monsieur and it has zero effect, but when it’s Laura…
“Agneau, s’il vous plait.”
“Do you know how they treat the lambs?” Laura asks under her breath, but with a half-mischievous smile.
The rest of dinner passes in a combination of easy discussion about the Dutch project (ugh, work) and stilted comments about other aspects of life (ugh, awkward).
And then comes the check.
We both reach for it at once.
“Please,” I say, “it’s nothing against your American sensibilities but I want to pay for this.”
“Itisagainst my American sensitivities, and since you know it, you should let me pay my half.”
“Laura,” this will take us to a conversation I don’t know I want to have, but it might be the most real thing I’ve said tonight, “I owe you.”
She pauses, and only then asks quietly, “What for?”
But she knows.
“You were there for me when I needed it… and when I didn’t. The least I can do is buy you dinner.”
“If you think buying my dinner makes us even—”
“I don’t.”
“—then you’ve got another thing coming.”
“I just said I don’t.”
“Fine, because you shouldn’t.”
“So whatwillit take, then?”
She must not have seen this question coming a mile off, because she sits back hard in the chair. With parted lips and a piece of hair falling across one eye, I see the girl who slept in the chair of my bedroom. The girl who acts unafraid, though she’s trembling inside. The girl who has to show the world she has it all together when no one is asking her to.
“Fine,” she whispers. “You pay.”
I know this meal isn’t enough. I’d rather we went back to the stilted awkwardness than be where we are now, somewhere between embarrassment and outright discomfort.
