Magazine pullouts from different films—Frodo gazing at the Ring, Cameron Diaz winking—entirely plastered the walls of the toilet. I hadn’t been able to find a sink, though, other than the one in the kitchen. Fabien had caught me snooping behind doors trying to find one, and he’d looked at me strangely, but I’d been too embarrassed to tell him what I was looking for. When I’d finally given up and used the kitchen sink, thinking I could do this discreetly, everyone had stared at me, appalled. Even Sébastien looked confused. Everybody looked away quickly, and Éric threw out a joke about something else.

Feeling like an animal that had wandered in from the barn, I folded my paws self-consciously. To be honest, in every Beauty and the Beast fantasy I had, I’d been the beauty. This was less because I considered myself a beauty than because Beast was so sexy before he turned into that wimpy prince, but still. The change of roles was discomfitting.

“You know, you can wash your hands in the bathroom sink, if you like,” Sébastien breathed into my ear, under the guise of kissing me.

“Where is the bathroom sink?” I gritted back. “Under a poster?”

He walked with me down the hall and opened a second door I’d assumed was to a closet. Inside lay a treasure trove: not only a sink but a whole range of cleaning facilities, such as a bathtub, soap, and towels. “Where do you put the sink in American houses?” Sébastien asked, puzzled. “Not in the same room as the toilet, do you? That’s disgusting.”

I sighed. Why had Sébastien brought me here? What could possibly have attracted a gorgeous Frenchman to a clumsy American enough to introduce her to his friends? This group was so tightly knit. If you took the three guys from “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” added one of the female guest improvs to the mix, and had them grow up together, this foursome is what you would get. They didn’t just finish each other’s sentences. Someone would start saying something funny, a second person would twist it into something even more hilarious, and the third would add the last little cherry of wit that had everyone’s sides splitting. This was not the kind of group to whom you brought n’importe qui. They were extremely nice to me, but what was I doing here? I was leaving the country in five weeks. Even if Sébastien called me “girlfriend,” I was a fling.

Right? The too-good-to-be-true Sébastien and I hadn’t discussed this, but I’d just been assuming.