“Ah, you’re a nature girl at heart. You’ve just never been given the opportunity.”
“And you’re a nature boy?”
“Definitely. See, if you come with me to New England, we can learn how to do all of those outdoorsy things you read about in your books. Exploring, camping, rock-climbing, rafting, stargazing, building fires—”
“Building fires?” I smile.
“That’s right. Fires. Plural.”
The sun dips below the treeline, and suddenly, Josh is backlit by a stunning golden light. He looks perfect even when he’s damp and sweaty and dirty. I wiggle upward until I reach his lips. We kiss, heavily, until I can’t handle it any more.
“Let’s go,” I say. It comes out ragged.
Josh freezes.
And then he’s lunging for his hoodie and backpack, tripping over himself to get moving. I grab my things, and he takes my hand as we sprint onto the narrow path. We’re laughing, completely blissed out. We run down, down, down, and the further we go, the more crowded the park gets. We race through an area that looks like a cave – perfect for making out, complete with a classical Spanish guitarist – but making out is no longer enough. We pass Gaudí sculptures, Gaudí buildings, Gaudí’s famous lizard fountain, but they barely earn a glance as we whiz by. We only have eyes for each other.
We grab the first cab outside of the park. We’re breathless. Josh hands the driver our hotel’s address, and our tongues and limbs and hands are touching, searching, groping as the streets of Barcelona whiz past our windows. We pay our distressed cabbie way too much, mainly out of guilt, and tumble back out.
Josh kisses my neck as we check in. Our surroundings are a blur. The clerk, the stairs, the hallway. We slam our room door shut and toss our backpacks to the floor. We have the entire night, but we can’t wait another minute.
We kiss fiercely. Urgently. I throw off my coat as Josh scrambles out of his hoodie. I remove his T-shirt as we collapse onto the bed. His chest drums against mine. I roll over, climb on top of him, and find that he’s as ready as I am. He lifts my dress up and around my hips and then over my head. I pull back, breathless. “Do you have?”
“Backpack.”
I bend over backwards, stretching for his bag on the floor. I reach it and yank it closer. I find them in the front pouch. I grab one, and he helps me sit back up. He stares openly at my matching pale pink underwear. Josh has seen all of me, but never all at once.
I unhook my bra. He takes it off.
He kisses my breasts, my stomach, the line above my underwear. And then the line below it as my last remaining clothing slides from my hips. I unbuckle his belt, unzip his jeans, and tug them down at the same time as his boxers. His breathing is shallow. Rapid. I lower myself onto him. We gasp. Our arms wrap around each other, and we move together, watching each other, checking in with each other with our eyes. Is this okay? What about this? This?
It builds. Faster.
I want him closer. I want him deeper. I want him, want him, want him. His eyes close and so do mine, and we finish as we started. Together.
Chapter eighteen
Josh’s stomach rumbles against my ear. The room is black. I unfurl from his body and lean towards the hotel’s digital clock. It’s nearly two in the morning. Josh feels me stir. “Tapas,” he mumbles. “We haven’t had tapas.”
“I think we missed dinner.”
“’s okay.” He hugs me against his chest. “Too tired to get up anyway.”
“We’ll just have to come back.”
“Tapas and cerveza. And then we’ll make love on the altar of the Sagrada Família.”
I pull away, he tugs me close, I pull away. “Be right back,” I say. “Bathroom.”
After I pee, I return for my toothbrush and toothpaste. He follows me in, and we brush our teeth. We can’t stop smiling at each other. I can’t believe that adults get to do this every day. And I don’t even mean sex, though it’s wonderful, but things like this. Brushing our teeth at the same sink. Do adults realize how lucky they are? Or do they forget that these small moments are actually small miracles? I don’t want to ever forget.
We climb back in bed and make sleepy, happy, minty-fresh love. He’s careful to make sure that I’m taken care of first before he collapses against me. Moonlight shines in through the windows, and I trace the outline of his tattoo with an index finger.
“You’ve never told me about this,” I say.
“You’ve never asked.”
“I love it.”
I didn’t mean for that to slip out in such a gushy way. Josh laughs, but it’s the tired laughter of relief. “Thank goodness.”
“Tell me the story.”
He shifts into a more comfortable position while carefully keeping me nestled against his body. “When I was sixteen, St. Clair convinced an artist in Pigalle that I was eighteen. Except he didn’t really convince him. He was just so pushy and persuasive that the guy gave up. It was definitely illegal.” I laugh as he continues. “St. Clair can persuade anyone to do anything. He’s, like, drowning in charisma. It’s so unfair to the rest of us.”
“Eh,” I say. “He’s okay.”
Josh pauses. And then I hear a smile in his voice. “This must be how you felt when I told you that you’re hotter than your sisters.”
I laugh louder this time. “I suppose it is.”
“Anyway, it was just the two of us, and I was the only person who got one. It was a few days after my birthday—”
“Like now!”
“Like now. I’d decided on my birthday that I’d get a tattoo, so I designed this one for the incredibly inspired reason that…it seemed cool at the time.”
“It is cool.”
“I consider myself unbelievably lucky that I still like it.”
“Oh, come on. You have taste. You’d never put something lame on your body.” I pause, a new thought occurring to me. “Do you want any more tattoos?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someday I’ll get a big garden rose on my other arm.”
“Ha-ha.”
“I would.” And he sounds hurt that I don’t believe him. “I want a lot more of these nights with you, Isla. I want all of my nights with you.”
When the sunlight streams in through the windows, it’s the happiest morning of my life. We’ve shifted in the early hours, but our legs are still hooked together.
I stare at his adorable, sleep-rumpled hair and his long, lovely spine. I touch the skin of his back with the tip of one finger. He rolls over. He smiles at me languorously. With contentment, I scoot in closer for a kiss. “Mm,” he says. “Is next weekend too soon to do this again? Switzerland. Let’s go to Switzerland.”
“You’ll be in New York next weekend.”
His smile falls.
“Next-next weekend,” I say.
“Deal.” He brushes my hair away from my shoulder, leaving it bare. “So. Tell me. Who’s the better bedmate? Me or Kurt?”
“Kurt, obviously.”
“I knew it.” He kisses my nose and hops from bed. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hand me my phone? I wanna double-check our departure time.”
Josh digs it out from my bag, tosses it to me, and goes into the bathroom. The door shuts. I flip the volume switch from silent to on. The screen illuminates. My heart stops.
“No,” I whisper.
Twenty-nine new messages. Kurt. Nate. Hattie. The school. My parents.
“Josh? Josh!”
The bathroom door bursts open. “What happened? Are you okay?” And then he sees the way I’m clutching my phone. The blood drains from his face.
“No,” he whispers.
I start crying. He tears apart his own backpack, yanks out his phone, and swears at its screen. “Kurt. Nate. My mom, like, a hundred times. My dad.”
I’m sobbing now.
He paces the room. He rakes his scalp with both hands. “It’s okay. It’ll be fine. I’ve messed up before. It’ll be fine.”
; “How will it be fine? This’ll go on my record!” My entire college future vanishes. I feel faint. My stomach churns, threatening upheaval.
“No. I’ll take full credit for this. You won’t get in trouble.”
“How won’t I get in trouble? I’m just as here as you are. In Spain.” I scroll through the texts, trying to piece together a timeline of events. But I can’t focus.
I listen to Kurt’s voicemail, and he’s completely freaked out. Hattie was asking around for you, and Nate overheard, and then they noticed that Josh was missing, too, and they came to me, and I had to tell them where you were. I’m sorry, Isla. I had to tell them.
I’m an idiot.
I am such an idiot.
How could I have forgotten about Hattie? She’s the one person that I can always count on to say or do the wrong thing. Of course she’s behind this. And of course Kurt was the one who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
Josh sinks beside me onto the bed. He places one hand on each side of my face and touches his forehead to mine. “Breathe,” he says. “Breathe. Breathe.”
“I don’t wanna breathe!”
“It’s okay,” he says. “I’ll call the school. You call your parents.”
Everyone is furious with us. Maman screams so loudly that I have to hold the phone away from my head. Josh gets an earful from Nate, and then I force him to call his mom. She won’t pick up, so he leaves a message. He refuses to call his dad, but I insist, so he calls his dad’s security aide instead.
And then he makes me text Kurt and Hattie.
They aren’t furious – they just want to know that we’re okay – but I’m not feeling so charitable towards them. I tell them we’re fine, we’re coming back, the end.
The train ride to Paris is the opposite of the one we took to Barcelona. The sky is sunny, but our car is dark. We hold hands, we don’t let go, but our grasp still feels like that. Like grasping. Like we’re trying to hold on to something that’s slipping away. Neither of us speaks of the thing that we fear is about to happen. I cry, and Josh holds me. It was selfish to think about my problems first. What he’s facing is much, much worse.
Our dread and terror grow. We’re almost back to the dormitory when Josh can’t take it any longer. He pulls me into someone’s private garden. There’s a pair of French students on lounge chairs, smoking clove cigarettes and soaking in the last warm rays of the year. They hardly even blink at us.
“I want you to know that I love you,” Josh says. “And I want to be with you. No matter what happens.”
My eyes fill back with tears. “Don’t say that.”
“It might happen.”
“Don’t say that!”
His shell is cracking. “I love you. Do you still love me?”
“How could you ask me that?” The change in Josh’s demeanour is frightening. It’s as if he could shatter at any moment. “Of course I love you. This hasn’t changed anything.”
“But it was my fault. This whole weekend was my idea.” He’s breathing too fast, and his eyes aren’t focusing. He’s having a panic attack.
“Hey. Hey.” I wrap my arms around him and place my head against his chest. “I wanted to go. It was my decision, too.”
But he can only cling to me. His fingers grip my shoulders so hard that it hurts.
“I love you,” I say quietly. “I have always loved you.”
His heart rate slows. And then again. “What do you mean? Always?”
I pull back to meet his gaze. I hold it, steady. “I mean that you never have to worry about me leaving you, because I’ve been in love with you since our freshman year.”
My confession leaves him stunned.
“There’s no story,” I say. “I saw you one day, and I just knew.”
Josh stares at me. He looks inside of me. And then he kisses me with more passion than he’s ever kissed me with before. It gives us the strength to face our future. It gives us the strength to return to our dorm. And it gives us the strength to knock on Nate’s door.
Unfortunately, Nate doesn’t open it.
Mrs. Wasserstein does.
Chapter nineteen
“I had to catch a flight, and I still beat you here. Outstanding.” Mrs. Wasserstein throws up her hands in anger. Nate stands behind her, tense, a prisoner of his own apartment.
Josh is in shock.
“Do you realize what an inconvenience this is?” she continues. “Being called overseas one week before the election? Do you even care?” Mrs. Wasserstein is petite, much shorter than I’d realized, though you’d never dwell on it. Her presence is huge. She looks as strong as she does on camera, but – in this moment – far more frightening. She sizes me up with hazel eyes that are startlingly familiar. “And you must be Isla.”
My name sounds as unwelcome as I feel. My eyes drop to the floor. “Hello.”
Josh stands partially in front of me, shielding me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mom.”
“You will be.”
Nate steps in. “I’m glad you guys made it home safely. Isla—”
“We have an appointment early tomorrow morning with the head of school,” Mrs. Wasserstein says.
A catch in my throat. “All of us?”
“No.” She frowns. “My son and I.”
My face burns with the shame of being put in my place.
“Isla,” Nate says, “your appointment is on Tuesday. Why don’t—”
“Thank you for your help,” Mrs. Wasserstein says to him. “I understand that my son has been making your job difficult. I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you like this.”
I get the sense that she’s been making his job difficult, but Nate only rubs his shaved head. “It’s what I do. And it’s okay, he’s a good kid.”
She clearly doesn’t believe him. Maybe she would if she knew Mike and Dave. She gives him a brusque nod before turning back to Josh. “We’re leaving.”
His eyes widen. “Where are we going?”
“Your room. We have much to discuss, young man.” She holds open the door and nods again, her farewell to me. “Isla.”
My ribcage is compressing my heart into a tiny, painful stone. As he’s led away, Josh squeezes my hand with the same unbearable force. Our hands let go only when they can no longer reach. There’s a final exchange of anguished expressions, and he’s gone. I’m rigid with silence. Nate sighs.
“We’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t we?” I finally manage.
“You’ll be all right.”
“Will Josh?”
Nate gives me a sad look.
Another horrible thought occurs to me. “Are my parents coming? Is that why my appointment isn’t until Tuesday?”
“No. Your appointment is on Tuesday, because tomorrow is a holiday. Remember?”
Tomorrow is the first of November. All Saint’s Day. It’s a national holiday in France, which means that…the head of school is coming in on her day off to speak with Josh.
It’s understood that Josh and I won’t be seeing each other until after his appointment. But that doesn’t stop me from checking my phone for texts every sixty seconds.
I hate my sister. Hate. Her.
If it wasn’t for Hattie, I’d be in Josh’s room right now – and his mother would not – and we’d be planning our Swiss rendezvous. My phone blips. I lunge for it, but the text is from Kurt: Train timetable says you should have arrived 3 hrs ago.
I reply: We did.
Are you ok?
NO.
A minute later, he knocks on my door. “Why don’t you just push it open, like you always do?” I shout.
Kurt does. “You sound angry.”
“I am.”
“Are you angry with me?”
“Yes.”
He wedges a textbook underneath my door. “I had to, Isla. They asked me.”
“What did Hattie even want?”
“She wanted to borrow your hair dryer.”
“My hair dryer?”
“Yeah. The??
?diffuser? Is that the thing you put on the end? She wanted to try to curl her hair.”
“And she couldn’t borrow one from somebody in her own stupid dorm?”
His left eye twitches. “I don’t know.”
A hair diffuser. I can’t believe this entire situation was caused by a freaking hair diffuser. A pirate and a devil stroll past my open door, heading towards the lobby for Résidence Lambert’s annual Halloween party. It’s unfathomable to me that anyone would be in the mood for a celebration.
“Why – for once in your life – couldn’t you just lie? That’s all you had to do.”
Kurt pulls up his hoodie. “They asked me a question. I gave them the answer.”
“Yeah, well? Thanks to you? My boyfriend is about to be kicked out of school.”
“That’s not my fault. I didn’t do that. He did that.”
I don’t care that he’s speaking the truth. I don’t care that it’s our fault. It still wouldn’t be happening if Kurt could’ve kept his mouth shut. He’s supposed to be my best friend. I yank out the textbook and hold open the door even wider. “Go. Away.”
He flaps his hands, upset. “Isla.”
I close my eyes. “I can’t deal with you right now. Just go.”
He’s still there. I sense the movement of his hands. I squeeze my eyes tighter, so tight that it hurts, until I feel him brush past me. The stairwell door clangs open.
“Boo!” a male voice says.
My eyes pop open. Someone in a Scream mask is two inches away from my nose. There’s laughter down the hall as I slam my door shut in the jerk’s face. I collapse into bed. I’m crying again. Maybe Mrs. Wasserstein is here to keep Josh from getting expelled. She’s a powerful woman. I’ll bet even the head of school is scared of her.
I’m scared of her.
She probably blames me for all of this. I wanted to make a good first impression on Josh’s parents. I didn’t know if they’d like me – if they’d think I was exceptional enough for their son – but now I don’t stand a chance. I don’t even know if they were aware of my existence before yesterday.