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
Vulnerability was easy, since they all seemed to think I was some kind of adorable babydoll with the cutest little accent. Every time I opened my mouth and they heard my accent, I could feel them subconsciously dividing my IQ by four. If that hadn’t been so annoying, I might have let them win a couple of games to be polite.
“I don’t understand this bit about Mission Cards,” I said. “We used to play for world domination. I feel like I’m just getting warmed up and boom, the game’s over and I’ve won again.” I smirked.
“I don’t understand how you could get so lucky three times in a row,” Sébastien scowled.
“Yeah, it’s amazing how that happens, isn’t it?” I said drily. Luck played a clear role whenever I won against my brothers, too. “Plus, the dice were against you,” I added with heavy sympathy.
He nodded, relieved I realized this. “That’s true.”
I slitted my eyes at him. He was cute, but he had his flaws. “It’s the strangest thing the way men lose by luck and women win by it.”
Éric ran a hand through his short brown curls and snorted. I felt relieved. Finally someone in this tight group of friends had understood something I said and even seemed to find it mildly humorous. All evening every joke I’d attempted had dropped like a dead weight on the conversation, with my funny accent and my inability to find just the right witty French word. They’d been very polite and encouraging about it, but kind of the way they’d be if a retarded child told a knock-knock joke.
“Men, on the other hand, only ever win by their superior skill.”
Sébastien suppressed a grin. “This is true in my case,” he said, straight-faced. “But of course I can’t speak for all men and all women. That would be sexist.”
DVDs crammed the shelves of Éric and Virginie’s apartment around us. A giant plastic R2D2 phone sat on one speaker, and a newly acquired giant plastic Buzz Lightyear toy had been taken out for Sébastien to play with. I’d been expecting something a little more Art Nouveau and classy. That’s what French apartments looked like in magazines. Here, fur covered most things, not as a design element but in tufts from their three animals. One of the cats had already bitten me, after snookering me into petting it for half an hour. American cats never bit me.