Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
“Laura,” Adela said, and my heart quailed, and I almost dove under my bed myself to haul out my Christian Constant chocolates. It was that tone of voice. “I have been patient with you. But that patience is at an end. You have been going to that restaurant for three months, and if you do not ask him out the next time we go there”—her eyebrows formed menacing, curly crags—“I will never eat with you in that restaurant again.”
Four
Adela was one of the few friends still willing to go to Le Relais du Vin with me, and I knew I wouldn’t find the gumption to go there alone. “Okay,” I said. I remembered Valérie and Giulia dismissing me with disgusted glances. I had lived in four different countries, I spoke several languages, and I had eaten blood sausage. I had to be capable of seizing romance, right?
“I’ll try.” That sounded kind of wimpy for someone who had eaten blood sausage. Adela narrowed her eyes at me.
“I’ll do it! I’ll do it! You’ve got to come with me to the restaurant, though.”
I needn’t have worried. Adela had no intention of leaving this event unwitnessed. A few hours later—2:00 A.M., to be exact—she called and woke me out of a sound sleep. When she had first started doing this, early in our acquaintance, I would leap in cold panic out of my bed, sure of some emergency in the family. Now I buried my head under my pillow until the tenth ring, when I finally despaired and answered the phone.
“Guess who else is going to come?”
“You . . . invited someone else? To the party, you mean.”
“No, no, to the dinner when you’re going to ask this guy out!”
I paused. “It wasn’t actually meant to be a public spectacle.”
“Oh, it’s only Eva and Pilar!” She named her two most beautiful friends. “Nobody else could come.”
“Nobody else.” I blinked awake. “How many people did you invite, exactly?”
“Not very many. Natalie, Stéphanie, and Kamila were busy, and I haven’t been able to get in touch with Marina.”
I digested the implications of this. First of all, considering the way gossip flew around these dorms, inviting Natalie, Stéphanie, Kam, Marina, Eva, and Pilar meant at least three hundred people now knew of my embarrassing plan to ask out a complete stranger. Second, Eva was after a man herself, and Pilar was drop-dead gorgeous. I would have strangled Adela, but I was pretty sure if police came looking for a motive, every finger in the dorm would point at me.