Page 84 of Host for the Holidays
We get to the fork in the path where we have to choose which direction of train to take, and she turns around, looking to me for guidance. I’m not mad about it; it’s nice to know she still needs me a bit.
When we get to the platform, it’s a zoo. An announcement comes on informing us that there are delays on this line. Bad timing. It only takes a bit of eavesdropping on nearby conversations to understand that there are bigger crowds than usual at this station tonight.
“Sounds like there was a big Christmas concert nearby,” I explain to Madi. The platform is chock-full as people wait for the next train. Someone brushes past, and I stabilize Madi with a hand on her arm as she gets bumped and jostled. “You sure you’re okay with this?”
“Okay with it?” she asks. “If you try to take me back outside again, you will have to pull me kicking and screaming.”
I smile. “Just checking.”
By the time the train slows to a stop in front of the full platform, there are people lined up all the way from the hall, just waiting to squeeze onto the platform. The subtle but continuous tug on my coat tells me Madi’s keeping a hold on me that way. I don’t blame her. It would be pretty easy to lose each other in this crush.
The train cars are already pretty full, which means there’s no way in Hades that even half the people waiting can fit on board. Thankfully, Madi and I are close enough that we end up inside the nearest train car. It’s not like we had much choice in the matter. The herd dictated our movements, and I kept my arm around her because it was clear that her hold on my jacket might not be sufficient. Yeah, it’s a line, but I’m more worried about getting separated from her right now than I am about following the rules.
And now we are sardines, packing as many of us as possible inside while people search for the nearest bar or seat to hold onto. Madi and I find ourselves pushed right up against the one floor-to-ceiling bar in this area of the car. It’s already covered in hands except for a space at the top and one a bit lower down. I have easier access to it, so I slip my hand into the lower space before it gets taken, just as someone takes the upper one.
The train car jerks forward, and I grab Madi around the waist to keep her from falling into those behind her. That would start a game of dominoes nobody wants to play. Her feet shuffle a bit as she tries to find her equilibrium, just like everyone else is doing, and she holds onto me because it’s either that or grabbing a stranger. Lines and rules are out the window right now. We couldn’t be much closer than we are. If hugging like Americans greet each other is considered the second base of intimate greetings, being in this metro car is a home run.
I try to draw the boundaries in my mind that are nonexistent for my body, ignoring the slope of Madi’s waist under my hand and the press of her body against mine.
The train car is swimming with scents—perfume, food, body odor, and minty gum, to name a few I recognize. The body odor is winning out, though, and Madi’s nose wrinkles as she looks at me to see if I’m smelling it too.
I am. Very much.
I grimace. The Paris metro in the summer is body odor central, but the winter months are usually a bit of a respite. Not today. Somebody must have gotten too close to the chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
It’s already toasty in here, and it’s no wonder. Everyone is dressed for freezing temperatures rather than this sudden oven on train tracks. Keeping his hold of the bar, the man next to me starts shrugging out of his coat, as if there’s plenty of room for everyone to be shimmying and wriggling like fish on hooks.
And then it hits me: a giant whiff of BO. I know it hits Madi, too, because she freezes against me, her nostrils flared, and her eyes alert. Her wide gaze shifts up to me, then to the guy next to us, whose sweat-darkened armpit is hovering directly above us as he holds tight to the bar.
Madi covers a cough with her hand, ducking her head closer to me, right up against my chest. Suddenly, she grabs the lapels of my coat, using them to pull her up and me down. Oh my gosh, she’s going to kiss me to distract herself from the—
“I’m just going to be smelling your cologne for the foreseeable future,” she whispers in my ear. “Lemme know when it’s safe to come up for air.” And then she disappears again, holding my lapels and using them as insulators around her head to keep the stench out.
And all I can do is smile. And then try not to reel as the train slows and the man switches hands, offering up a fresh batch of re-odorant.
My options are limited, but they aren’t non-existent. So I nestle my face into Madi’s hair and inhale. It’s bliss. I will write an ode to Madi’s shampoo. She can even throw it at my head like the first time we met.
I can’t believe how much has happened since then. I can’t believe I’m holding Madi right now, even if itisjust because a guy can’t figure out how to operate in modern society. To everyone else on the train, we probably just look like a young, in love couple. And suddenly I’m wishing that appearances were correct and that I didn’t have to fight myself to stop feeling more and more for Madi. I’m absolutely losing that fight.
* * *
The contrastfrom the metro to outside for our walk home couldn’t be starker. It feels like relief for all of ten seconds, and then the sharp wind finds its way through every crevice and pore, making its way down to our bones and chilling the sweat we worked up in the train, pressed against each other and half of Paris.
I fumble with the keys as I open the door from the street and then the one into the building, my hands already struggling to function again.
“Almost there,” Madi says, her teeth chattering.
Once inside, we both hesitate in front of the elevator. We look at each other, and I can tell that, for Madi too, the decision being made isn’t between the stairs and the elevator; it’s between repeating last night’seventsand keeping our boundaries.
In other words, it’s temptation at its finest.
“We’d better take the stairs,” Madi says.
“Agreed,” I say with a quick but longing glance at the elevator.
The exercise required of us going up a few flights of narrow stairs gets our bodies a fair bit warmer. I guess that’s our reward for choosing to be rulekeepers.
Yay.
