When in Paris... (Language of Love) Page 5

  “I’d like that,” he says and I’m not sure if it’s my imagination or not but his voice sounds deeper. Sexier.

  Oh God, have I just agreed to be Zach’s friend?

  There are friends then there are friends.

  What am I, insane? I catch myself before I descend into a girly meltdown. I don’t do that. That’s not who I am or have ever been. Argh! It’s all Zach’s fault for making me crazy. I’m not sure if he’s still messing with me now or what but I’m pretty sure that after four years, he’s not all of a sudden trying to get with me. Being friends with us means no more ignoring each other or acting as if the other doesn’t exist. It’s shooting the breeze when the occasion warrants. And that I can do.

  “Cool. Sounds good to me.” I’m proud of how nonchalant I sound.

  His mouth lifts at the corners in a sinfully wicked smile. My heart goes all rogue on me and I pray I won’t have to endure many more of them. Having any kind of real, meaningful feelings for Zach would be a lesson in misery and no one ever accused me of being a masochist.

  “So whatcha you want to do now, shake on it?”

  My problem is, I don’t know how to read him. I can’t tell if he’s serious or not. There’s a teasing quality to his voice but his eyes…good Lord his eyes are so—so intense. But even the thought of something as innocent as a handshake causes tiny butterflies to cavort in my stomach.

  I send him a grin and hope it hits the right teasing tone. “I think we’re good. Unless there’s money being exchanged?” I crook an eyebrow. “There isn’t, is there? I hope there aren’t Vegas odds on how long this friendship will last.”

  My remark—okay joke—elicits a quiet chuckle from him and I’m relieved. We’re on firm ground. Floating up in the clouds may be an exhilarating joyride but the crash down to earth can be deadly.

  The sound of a door opening down the hall heralds April and Troy’s return. When they appear, their smiles are muted and their expressions questioning.

  “So did you kiss and make up?” April asks, plopping back down in her chair.

  Searing heat suffuses my face. I’m an actress, a good one, but it seems my acting skills are rendered useless when it comes to anything to do with Zach. I don’t trust myself to try to convincingly make light of her comment, so I do the safest thing and keep my mouth shut.

  There are several long seconds of silence as Zach watches me over the rim of the can as he tips his head back to take a long swallow. Gaze still on me, he places his drink on the table. “Yeah, we did,” he says, his voice softly mocking, each word drawn out.

  A shock of heat zips through me to settle in my core. My gaze drops to my plate as I sit here furiously and helplessly turned on.

  I’m a bigger mess than I thought.

  Another awkward silence falls. I sense April and Troy sharing a look. I can only imagine what they’re thinking.

  Troy clears his throat. “Right, well, good.”

  I raise my gaze to Zach and get that eerie, shivery feeling of déjà vu because, once again, I find him casually leaning back in his chair, watching me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  OLIVIA

  The following day when I return to the room after a full day of classes, April’s perched on her bed speaking earnestly into her cell phone. She glances in my direction and I can tell the call’s important because of the uncharacteristic line creasing her otherwise flawless brow.

  “No, that’s fine. Just book it. I’ll work my schedule around it.”

  Now I know that’s not good. Bad news? I mouth to her as I grab the knob of the door and ease it quietly closed.

  April nods and makes a face but it’s hard to tell if she’s sad or pissed off. Or maybe a little bit of both. Eyeing her curiously, I cross the room to my bed.

  “Okay, Carol. Just email me the deets. Right. Ciao.” After she clicks off, she tosses her phone down on her bed. “Shit!”

  My backpack and purse hit the floor as I immediately turn to face her. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Carol’s booked me for a toothpaste commercial.”

  “A commercial? But that’s great.” I’d stopped modeling and auditioning when I was ten but April has been landing modeling gigs for as long as I can remember. Usually small stuff for catalogs—Sears, JCPenny, Macy’s—stuff like that. In the recent year, the fashion magazine stuff started to pick up but she hasn’t done a commercial in about four years.

  “Yeah, but do you know when they want to shoot it?” Apparently, it’s a rhetorical question because she continues, “During the break.”

  It takes me a couple seconds to understand the significance of that because school-wise it puts her in the clear. We’re off that whole week. But as the realization of what she’s saying crashes down on me, disappointment is an understatement to what I’m feeling.

  “No. No. No. You cannot mean you’re not going to Paris.” We have all these plans. The places we’re going to go, the things we’re going to do, what we’re going to see. But the look on her face gives me the answer I don’t want to hear and I want to stomp my feet like a five-year-old at the unfairness of it.

  April heaves a sigh and comes to her feet. I see the misery and disappointment I feel inside reflected on her face. Going to her, I put my arms around her and hug her tightly. “If you don’t want to do the shoot…”

  She raises her head from my shoulder and peers down at me. “I can’t afford to turn it down. The pay is ten grand. I’d have to work all year to make that working part-time. It’s for three days’ work.”

  I concede her point but… “Is it school? I thought your sister was paying for that.”

  At that, April pulls completely out of my arms. “It shouldn’t be on her to pay for my college.” She runs her hand through a swathe of shimmering brown curls.

  My eyes follow her like I’m watching a ping-pong match as she paces the length of the floral rug between our beds. “April, she wants to do it for you. She has the money.” This I know for a fact, I’d heard it right from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

  Victoria’s been modeling since she was fourteen and is now in the big times. She also loves her little sister to pieces. Both her younger sisters and her brother. She has problems denying them anything.

  “But she shouldn’t have to. I’m her sister, not her daughter.”

  What she means is that responsibility should belong to her parents, not Victoria.

  “Okay, then we’ll go to Paris another time. Hey, wouldn’t it be great if you get a job overseas, someplace like Paris or Milan?”

  April halts and gives me a sad smile. “See, that’s why I love you, you try to put a positive spin on everything. But what about you, we’re partners in crime. How the hell are you going to manage Paris without me?” She quirks an eyebrow and just like that, old April is back.

  I waggle my eyebrows. “More gorgeous Frenchmen for me now that I’ve managed to ditch the competition.”

  She lets out an amused laugh. “Maybe I’ll meet someone in the city. You never know.”

  The fact that April’s single is a mystery to anyone meeting or seeing her for the first time. Of course it’s by choice. If I thought she was a picky eater, she’s a hundred times worse when it comes to guys. She’s a regular Goldilocks. Oh she’ll try a bunch of them on, but none of them ever seem to fit just right.

  “I won’t hold my breath for that.”

  “Crap, that means I have to drop French and it’s the only class we have together.” She appears equally distressed about this.

  “What do you mean you have to drop French?”

  “Come on, Liv, I only took it because of the trip. After Spanish and Italian, the thought of learning more verbs to conjugate is enough to give me a bad case of the hives. But I was willing to suffer through it for a good cause.”

  I know I’m being totally selfish, but I want her to stay in the class. Without her, it’s just me and Zach, no buffer between us. Oh right, there’s the other twenty or so students.
Maybe I wouldn’t feel like I’m being abandoned if I felt more comfortable around him.

  I thought last night was the official thawing of the ice between us but as it turns out it only melted a bit. He’d stopped giving me those looks that played havoc with my insides. That had helped a lot. But he hadn’t talked much and neither had I. No, April and Troy took care of that part, mostly reminiscing about high school. Zach and I couldn’t exactly do that without it getting awkward.

  The visit had wrapped up pretty early, considering none of us have curfews. But as I’d explained, I scheduled all my classes to begin practically at the crack of dawn and I needed to make sure I was at the cafeteria for breakfast by seven thirty, so April and I left not too long after dinner.

  It’s hard to tell how things stand between me and Zach. Better, yeah, but how much, I’m not exactly sure.

  “Which means, I need to get my butt to the registrar’s office before it closes so I can drop the class.” April grabs her cell off her bed, collects her purse, shrugs into her stylish burgundy bomber jacket, and with a more sober than usual ciao to me, sashays out the door.

  That’s when it hits me again. April’s not going to Paris with me. I’ll be touring Le Louvre, des Champs-Elysees, Notre Dame and Arc de Triomphe without her. Now the prospect of Paris doesn’t seem quite as much fun.

  ***

  ZACH

  Ten minutes after I’m back in my apartment following practice, I get a call from my brother.

  “Hey, man, what’s up?” I answer, cell to my ear as I peer into the refrigerator, which currently holds milk, orange juice, eggs and two takeout cartons from a local Mexican restaurant.

  I was twelve when Brett was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys. He attended Ohio State and my dad expected me to follow in his footsteps. When I chose Warwick University—a perfectly decent Division I school—my dad went completely ballistic. Told me I was throwing my God-given talent away.

  Brett emits a deep rumbling laugh. “I’m doing alright. You see us beat the crap out of the Packers Sunday?”

  I snort. “Yeah, well, who the hell wins on five turnovers?” Rodgers got sacked five times and the Packers had no running game to speak of. It had been an easy win for the Cowboys.

  “Yeah, they played like shit. I guess it’s nothing to brag about but a win’s a win.”

  Who lost the Super Bowl in 2005? my dad asked me a couple years ago just after my high-school football team lost the state championships. When I couldn’t answer, he said, “You see, no one remembers the losers because winning is all that matters.”

  “So what’s up?” I close the refrigerator, resigned to either eating out or ordering in tonight.

  “Dad called.”

  There’s enough gravity in his tone that I almost don’t want to hear what’s going to be coming down the pike this time. But like I ever do.

  My dad’s a total hardass who considers himself a man’s man. He has the stereotypical MO of the overbearing, sports-obsessed father. Back in college, he was a star college linebacker but he blew out his knee during his senior year and since then has bemoaned the career he should have had in the NFL.

  I roll my eyes just thinking about the number of times I had to sit through those lectures as he pushed me harder than sometimes I thought I could endure, reminding me how lucky I was. I can’t tell you how many times I wished I’d had the courage to push back on his ambition for me. The thing is I love playing football. Maybe not with his all-consuming passion but that would be hard to do since my dad eats, breathes and sleeps the sport.

  My brother’s a great guy and we’re as tight as two brothers can be, even though he’s ten years older. And when my dad wants to “talk sense” into me, he tries to do it through Brett. The good thing about that is Brett gives me a heads-up to whatever shitstorm’s coming my way. I sense one coming now.

  “He set up a meeting for you and Hoke over your break.”

  Motherfucker.

  I walk to the counter and brace my white-knuckled hands against it, my vision a haze of blood red.

  Brady Hoke is the head coach at the University of Michigan. Theirs was one of the five football scholarships I turned down to come to Warwick. Although Ohio State had been my dad’s top choice, Michigan is his alma mater. After over twenty years, he still knows everything that’s going on there and has obviously been able to browbeat Brady into meeting with me.

  “Before you get all bent out of shape, listen to me.” Brett can be a pretty volatile guy on the field, but off it, he’s usually the voice of reason. He’s using that tone on me now. “Why don’t you come and stay with me over your break? I think Dad intends to spring it on you last-minute. If he doesn’t know where you are, he won’t be able to ambush you.”

  My brother owns a condo in Gaithersburg he uses whenever he goes home to Maryland. He gave me a set of keys for the times I need to get away. In other words, when I need a break from our dad. He also understands me better than anyone but he never really needed our dad to drive him. My brother is single-mindedly driven all on his own. But he gets what it’s like dealing with our dad and is better at handling him than I am.

  “And have him get Mom all worked up because she doesn’t know where I am?” I ask, taking a deep breath to try to calm down.

  There’s a couple seconds of silence on the other end. “Well do you have somewhere else to go where he’s not going to be able to just show up?”

  And my dad would do it. If I tell him I’m staying on campus, he’d have no qualms about showing up uninvited and would try to drag me off to Michigan. Of course I wouldn’t go but then there’d be a huge fight. Fuck. I already feel a headache coming on.

  “I don’t know, maybe I’ll talk to Troy and see what he’s doing.”

  “Hey, it’s your birthday next month, why don’t you let me send you somewhere as an early birthday gift? You and a friend.”

  That’s my brother, generous to a fault. But after his more-than-generous graduation gift—my Ford F-150 truck—there’s no way I can accept another big gift like that. Plus, I have a sizeable college fund my grandparents set up for me, most of which will go largely untouched due to my full athletic scholarship. And then there’s the money I saved to buy the truck.

  “Nah, I’m good. And unless I’m leaving the country, it wouldn’t do any good.”

  Leaving the country.

  Pushing myself off the counter, I straighten. Hell, I actually could leave the country.

  “I think you can still—”

  “I could go to France.”

  “What?” Brett sounds bewildered. Not that I blame him. Even for me this is coming out of left field.

  “There’s a trip to France over the break. I wasn’t going to go but I’m thinking it might actually be a good idea. If I stayed here, I was just planning to chill, ya know, hit a couple parties.” Suffice it to say, I’d be doing jack shit.

  “Why the hell wouldn’t you go? Don’t think it’ll be like when we went with Mom and Dad. Christ, if I had a chance to go to a place like Paris in college, I sure as hell wouldn’t have turned it down.” Brett’s scolding laugh rumbles in my ears.

  “Well, now I’m going so you can stop lecturing me.”

  And that’s it, new plan in place. No blowup fight with my dad. I won’t even have to see him, which is definitely to my advantage.

  Brett offers to give me money. I tell him no. He insists some more until he finally gives up. We shoot the breeze for a little longer before saying goodbye.

  After the call, my thoughts immediately go to Olivia. What I’m doing is asinine. I’d been serious at dinner when I told her I was messing with her. She’d been paying more attention to Troy than to me, and for some crazy reason that’d gone over like a lead balloon. Teasing her had been my way of getting under her skin, rattling her. And if I’m being honest, I wanted her to look at me the way she used to in high school. The same look I’d glimpsed in French class.

  When I got what I was looking for, my own
response had scared the shit out of me. There’s no denying my physical attraction to her but last night, I don’t know, I was having a hard-assed time controlling my reaction. If Troy and April hadn’t been there, I’m pretty sure I would have made a move on her.

  But getting involved with Olivia would be bad in so many ways. I actually think my mom and aunt would refuse to breathe the same air her mother breathes. Plus I like my life right now. No Dad and Ashley in my face every day, and no drama. Thank God I realized that before I did anything to complicate a situation that’s complicated enough. So I’d pulled back.

  Sure we don’t have to go back to the cold-war days of high school but that doesn’t mean we’re ever going to be as friendly as I want.

  Which means I can never allow us to get too friendly.

  Which essentially means I have to try my damnedest to stay the hell away from her if not physically then for sure emotionally. And I’m not even going to examine the reasons I decided that going to Paris is a good idea.

  CHAPTER SIX

  OLIVIA

  I hate running late. As a matter of fact, I always try to arrive ten minutes early to any scheduled event. I’m anal like that. But with Lawrence Theatre located all the way across campus—eons away from the language arts building—and only fifteen minutes between classes, arriving that early is going to be impossible. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get there on time.

  I seriously hope the parking situation on Wednesdays is an anomaly because on Monday, the parking lot wasn’t packed to the nines. Today it takes me almost ten minutes to find a spot. And I get lucky, managing to catch someone pulling out, barely thwarting the girl behind me in a sporty red Mercedes following me so closely you’d think I was towing her.

  The temperature outside is a nippy forty degrees, so I’m grateful the spot is close to the entrance. Clutching my books against the cold nylon of my blue jacket, I head to the double doors, my quickened pace just shy of a slow jog.