When in Paris... (Language of Love) Page 3

  Peering up at me, he’s wearing a smirk on his face as he watches me approach. “Pearson, you’re late,” he says in his best imitation of Coach Brighton, who has this scratchy Al Pacino voice.

  “Yeah, no shit. What about you, aren’t you late?” I stop in front of my locker.

  “Had to have my leg checked.”

  I lower my gaze to his knee and notice the brace and bandage are gone. I almost forgot the hit he’d taken last week. He’d landed awkwardly, twisting his knee. After diagnosing it as a bad sprain, the team physician had benched him until he gave Troy the okay to resume practice. But being benched doesn’t mean you don’t have to come to practice, it just means you don’t have to do the physical stuff.

  “Hey, you got plans tonight?” Finished lacing his cleats, Troy straightens, coming to his full height, putting him at an inch taller than me.

  “Why, you asking me out?” I joke and begin stripping out of my street clothes.

  His response is a good-natured laugh. “Don’t you wish. No, April’s coming over for dinner tonight. I’m ordering Chinese. Just wanted to know if you wanted to join us. She’s bringing a friend.”

  “What, two too much for you?” The very last thing I need is a setup. Unless she’s in it just for fun. I’m not trying to get serious with anyone right now.

  I tug my jersey on then angle my head toward him, eyebrow raised.

  “April? I thought your girlfriend’s name was Katie or Courtney?” Or something like that.

  Troy’s from Illinois and made the mistake of not breaking up with his high-school girlfriend when he went away to college. Let’s face it, most long-distance relationships don’t work, especially at our age. Add in college and there’s an almost one hundred percent certainty of failure.

  I think he said his girlfriend is taking night classes at a community college and working full-time at either a dentist’s or doctor’s office. I’d only been listening with one ear when he’d briefed me on the relationship.

  “April’s only a friend,” he states firmly.

  “Right, I get it. She’s nice.” Code for she isn’t attractive enough to cause my girlfriend too much grief. That’s the only way male/female friendships have a chance in hell of working long-term.

  “Nah, man, it’s not like that. April’s good-looking. She’s real pretty.”

  Real pretty? An image of Olivia instantly comes to mind. I’ll bet my left nut his April has nothing on Olivia. I turn back to the locker after I pulled on my pants and socks. “Then I guarantee you, one of you wants to do the other.”

  I laugh, expecting him to join in. He knows I’m just busting his chops. Sort of. Only when I turn back to him, a smile still stretched across my face, do I pick up on the fact that there’s something off about his reaction.

  No laugh, no smile, just eerie somberness.

  “It’s not like that either.”

  Okay, so he’s real touchy about April. I make a mental note of that. “Well, yeah man, I get it.” Although I don’t. I never had a girl who was just a friend—at least not past the age of twelve.

  “So, you on for dinner tonight?” Troy asks after another few seconds of silence.

  “Yeah, sure, you can count me in. I might be late though, after practice I got to go to the registrar’s.”

  Troy grabs his helmet off the bench and heads for the door. “Cool. I’ll make sure to save you a fortune cookie.” He tosses the parting remark over his shoulder as he exits.

  Hmm, April, huh? I wonder if she and her friend are hot. Now my interest is piqued. Maybe either or both will help get Olivia out of my head now that she appears to be firmly lodged there.

  CHAPTER THREE

  OLIVIA

  April’s barely through the door to our dorm room when she demands, “Okay, spill. If you went to school with that sex god from French, I want to know why this is the first time I’m hearing about him.”

  Her backpack hits the floor with a thunk as she drops onto her bed, her pursed lips demanding a response.

  I’m not even going to dispute the term but I sure as hell refuse to confirm it. “He’s just a guy from high school.” Although I’m positive she’s going to make a big deal about him, my voice still tries to downplay his significance, like he really is no big deal. Which, let’s face it, he shouldn’t be.

  April’s response is a combination of a snort and a laugh, a sound that always makes me smile. And even now, she doesn’t fail to elicit that response.

  “Yeah, right. Spill, girlie. I know you’re holding back. No one who looks like that is ‘just a guy’. She punctuates “just a guy” with expressive air quotes.

  I slide onto my bed and sit cross-legged on my thick down comforter. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. I got nothing. We never hung out in the same crowd. He was the football quarterback and all-around jock. We had a couple classes together but apart from that, that’s it.” I’m definitely not about to tell her anything else. Not about the locker-room incident or that he was my first major crush.

  Skeptical, April gets all squinty-eyed. “Are you holding out on me? I’m sensing something else is going on here. Seriously, Liv, the guy is…well, majorly hot. What’s his name by the way?”

  It’s ridiculously stupid, but for some reason, I don’t want to tell her. “Zach,” I say, hoping I managed to keep the reluctance from my voice.

  “And the two of you never…?”

  Just the thought of it causes heat to rush to every part of my body. I pray my face isn’t as pink as it feels. “Absolutely not. Not even close. If you want to know the truth, he doesn’t even like me.” I hate that my voice trails off at the end, as if the knowledge hurts me. I hate that it does hurt.

  I must have gotten some sort of wounded look on my face, because the next thing I know, April is at my side, all concerned.

  “What do you mean he doesn’t like you?” She makes it sound like it’s a crime, like not liking me requires explanation. But her indignation on my behalf is touching. And so like April.

  “Hey, it’s no big deal. It’s not like I care. Anyway, you know I’ve never been into jocks.” Okay, the last was an out-and-out lie. I should have quit while I was ahead.

  “Wasn’t Jeff on the baseball team?”

  My ex-boyfriend Jeff. Crap. So he was. “I mean football jocks.” My correction is duly noted with another arched brow.

  “But why doesn’t he like you?”

  “I don’t know or care.”

  “You might not know why but you care,” she shoots back, equally adamant.

  “No I don’t.” I pray we’re not going another couple of rounds of this because she has this way of wearing me down. It’s called tenacity and persistence, which is fine when it’s not being used against me.

  “Then why are you tapping your fingers on your leg. You only do that when you’re lying.”

  And sometimes she’s too damn observant.

  Yanking my hand from my thigh, I thrust both under my butt. I’ll be much better off sitting on them.

  My thoughts are all jumbled because I want to tell her all, everything I’ve ever felt when it came to Zach. She’s my best friend and I know I can tell her anything, but on this subject—on Zach—I’m blocked. It’s like peeling off the protective part to the place I’m most vulnerable and I just can’t go there. Not even with April.

  “So he really doesn’t like you?” she asks, scooting closer. She looks as if she wants to put her arms around me.

  “Nope, and you know what’s funny?”

  “What?” April asks.

  “He was nice to almost everyone else. At least to all the girls. I think I was the only girl he never talked to.”

  Or at least that’s the way it’d seemed. Isabel Murray, a girl in our graduating class, had worn glasses as thick as those old-fashioned Coke bottles and he’d defended her when some of the guys had started making fun of her, which in essence had stopped anyone from even attempting it. I’d seen the whole thing mysel
f. And that had disabused me of my second impression of him, which was that he was one of those heartless, conceited jocks who thought they were better than everyone else. Nope, for reasons I still don’t know, I’d been one of the only girls he hadn’t liked.

  “Which means you have to stop calling him my high-school hottie, because he’s not. I’m sure he won’t mind if you call him plain hottie,” I say, hoping an infusion of humor will work to deflect further questions.

  April’s lips compress into a pink line of Maybelline peach rose. “Then screw ’em. He’s not that hot anyway.”

  In the silence that follows her fiery outburst, our eyes lock. Our bond is strengthened. She has my back and I have hers. The next thing I know we’re rolling on my bed giggling like a pair of thirteen-year-old girls, legs flailing and clutching our stomachs.

  “Yes he is,” I gasp between breaths.

  April tosses back her head and lets out a high-pitched howl of laughter. “I was trying to make you feel better.”

  It takes a few more seconds before I’ve calmed enough to throw my arms around her neck and say more soberly and sincerely, “I know you were and I love you for that.”

  The hug she gives me in return is tight and constricts my heart. But I’m determined to not get all mushy about it and fix a smile on my face when I pull back, holding her at arm’s length.

  “So what’s on the calendar for tonight? Are we going to the cafeteria for dinner or do you think we should splurge and go out for pizza?”

  April flicks her hair over her shoulder as she springs from my bed.

  “Didn’t you get my text?” She directs a pointed look at my purse where she knows my iPhone is set to silent. “Troy invited us over for dinner. Get your chopsticks ready, we’re having Chinese.”

  Great. Nothing like a pair of chopsticks to make you feel like you have two left thumbs. And my best friend isn’t any better at it than me. This should be fun.

  “Have you seen him since you’ve gotten to school?” I ask, my mind immediately going to what I’m going to wear. I haven’t seen Troy since I was in Illinois for the summer six years ago when he was twelve, which feels like a lifetime ago. When I’d gone back two years later, he’d started spending his summers at various sports-related camps.

  My last memory of him is this skinny kid with brown hair that was too long and in a constant state of dishevelment. He’d had a mouthful of braces and I remember him being short, at that time standing at least two inches shorter than April. But then April has always been tall for her age. Still is at five-nine, six feet in her standard three-inch heels. At five-six, I feel short beside her.

  “No, he’s been busy with football and I had the shoot last week…”

  April only arrived at school two days ago. Saturday she’d been in Manhattan finishing a cosmetic shoot. She hates modeling but claims it’s a necessary evil. Her hope is that she can schedule her shoots around school breaks, but I can tell she’s worried that if she can’t, she’ll start losing jobs. I hope she’s wrong because she says she needs the money.

  I hop off the bed and head to my closet while April stands in front of hers, thumbing through a line of pants.

  “I haven’t seen him in ages. What does he look like now?”

  I glance over at her in time to see her give a nonchalant shrug, all her focus on her clothes. “Like a guy.”

  In silence, I digest her answer and try to decide if I may be projecting or if there’s something she’s not telling me because this is so not like April. Not only does she want details—every salacious bit of them—but she also tends to offer them up without prompting.

  “That’s it?” I probe, watching her closely, not exactly sure what I’m searching for but certain I’ll know it when I see it.

  She pulls out a silky blouse on a hanger, holds it up in front of her before she turns to me. “What do ya think?” she asks in a bright voice that tells me she’s deliberately ignoring my question.

  The blouse is the same green as her eyes, which she knows looks fantastic on her. But then everything looks great on her.

  “Fantastic. Now back to Troy.”

  And it’s then it strikes me. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. She never talks about Troy. In the last five years, I can count the number of times on one hand she’s brought him up. I wonder if something happened between them. I know they used to be real close. I thought they still were.

  What sounds like a forced laugh bubbles from her throat. “What do you want? It’s Troy. There’s nothing to tell. He’s on the football team so I’m sure your—I mean Zach knows him.”

  I’m not sure what to make of her response but decide to let it drop. Anyway, I’m going to see him soon enough. If something’s going on, I’ll be able to tell.

  “Just checking,” I reply lightly and then I turn back to hunt for the proper ensemble to meet my BFF’s best guy friend.

  ~*~*~

  Forty-five minutes later, we’re getting out of April’s white Mustang V6. Personally, given the choice, white wouldn’t have been the color I’d have picked if I lived in Illinois or New York. But then my four-door Honda Civic is a very unsporty car so you can hardly call me adventurous.

  Located across the street from the sprawling campus, the apartment building is four-stories high and looks much nicer than some others I’ve seen. Troy obviously has more money at his disposal than most incoming freshmen.

  Four guys are coming out as we’re going in and one holds the door open for us, saving us the need to have Troy buzz us up. They also perform the kind of double-take that’s not unfamiliar to me when April and I are together. I glance at my best friend and her expression is so blasé, I’d swear she’s not affected by the attention. I know for a fact she is but she plays it off as usual.

  In the elevator, she pulls her compact out of her purse, flips it open and studies her reflection in the mirror. “Do you think this lipstick is too bright?”

  “You look gorgeous, like always.” Okay, this is weird. April never needs her ego stroked.

  “My hair never does what I want,” she frets as if she didn’t hear me.

  Grabbing the beige compact from her hand, I snap it shut and drop it back in her purse. Her gaze lifts to mine and I see something I rarely see there, anxiety.

  I’ll be damned.

  “What are you nervous about? Seeing Troy?” And if that’s true, there’s definitely a whole lot she isn’t telling me.

  April huffs a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. But Troy has a roommate. You know how I am with guys I’ve never met.”

  “Um yeah, vivacious and gregarious.”

  To that, she purses her lips in annoyance. “Like everyone, I have my moments and I’m having one now.”

  The elevator dings, the doors open and I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one keeping secrets.

  “What’s the number?” I ask as we step into the lit hall. Unlike the lobby, which had darker walls, the walls up here are cream colored and shockingly clean if the majority of its tenants are a bunch of college students. Not that I expected to see graffiti or anything like that but this is pretty nice.

  “Apartment 243,” she replies after a glance at her cell phone. “Come on, it’s got to be down here somewhere.”

  Diligently, we follow the arrow on the wall that points the direction to apartments 233 through 255. It’s when we’re halfway down the long stretch of hall that I notice the guy walking toward us. His appearance alone isn’t what pulls my attention back to him—I can’t see his face from this distance—it’s his familiar loose-limbed stride that puts my senses on high alert. For a second, I think I’m losing my mind.

  The distance closes between us until he’s close enough for me to recognize with pinpoint clarity the face that has somehow become ingrained in my mind. Zach. My stomach does a flip-flop then goes into free-fall mode.

  It’s Zach. Who apparently lives in this building too. I’m not sure whether this is karma or fate. Or maybe a bit of both
messing with me.

  Oblivious, April is too busy concentrating on the number on each door we pass to notice what’s going on with me. Which is actually the way I’d like to keep it.

  The instant he recognizes me his strides slow just as mine had and he gets this look on his face; brows drawn, eyes narrowed, mouth tight. In other words, he looks absolutely thrilled to see me. In another parallel universe, I’m sure I’d think this whole situation was hysterically funny.

  “Here it is,” April exclaims. Only then does her gaze dart to Zach, who is still almost three doors down. He has his backpack slung over a broad shoulder, his hair is damp and he’s wearing the same clothes he had on when we saw him in class.

  Don’t ask me why, but April and I stand there frozen like we’re two wax figures on display. He continues toward us and I expect we’ll make the best of an awkward situation. We’ll exchange some sort of greeting—a grunt, a tip of the chin, what have you—and then we can continue on with our lives, ignoring each other.

  My heart is racing when he’s finally abreast of us and I feel hot so you can best believe my face is hothouse pink.

  You’d think that my acting talents would come in handy in cases like this but this is worse than any pre-performance jitters I’ve ever experienced. In as casual voice as I can manage, I say, “Hey, Zach, I didn’t know you lived here.”

  What is wrong with me? We’re not friends so why on earth would I know where he lived. I’m better at reading lines from a script because it’s clear I suck when it comes to adlibbing.

  He flashes April a faint smile before shifting his gaze back to me. “Yeah, I do. You?” The first words he’s spoken to me since the first semester of our senior year. The last time had been the awkward holding-of-the-door situation when not doing so would have looked rude. I’d quietly thanked him and he’d politely replied. That’s the closest we’ve ever gotten to a torrid love affair.

  “No, we’re just here visiting a friend.” I angle my body toward the door. “Where do you live?”

  My heart goes wild when his mouth tips up at one corner. He raises his chin toward the door behind us. “I live here.”