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
Someone knocked hard and stepped inside without waiting for an answer. “Hi,” Adela said. “Laura, did you know there’s a poem about hot midnight flesh on your door?”
“Hey!” Philippe protested. “Did you steal torride from my poem?”
She spied the blue sweater dropped on my desk. “Laura, what is this? Were you thinking of wearing blue again? I can’t leave you for a second, can I?” She broke off. “Are you crying?”
“She’s thinking about not going to Cambridge,” Philippe said reservedly. Philippe and Adela associated a lot, via me, but they had never embraced each other 100 percent. Maybe there wasn’t room for two best friends in one woman’s tiny dorm room. Also, only children such as Philippe had more trouble adjusting to Adela than I did. I had four older brothers and two sisters. The older sister could eat all four brothers and Adela for breakfast and still need chocolate and a Dr Pepper to wake her up. And people wondered why I’d spent half my adult life on the other side of the world.
Adela stared at me. Her brows shot down to form a thicket. “You’re crazy,” she said flatly. “Change your plans for a man? He’s French!”
“You know, he was French before you made me ask him out, too. I just mention it.”
If I expected Adela to recognize her own words thrown back at her, I underestimated her. “That’s different! I didn’t tell you to change your plans for him!” Also, as Adela’s exams approached and papers came due, she was getting in more and more fights with her professors, a fact she blamed on them being French and out to get her.
“You told me to change my plans for you! You said not to go to Prague because you would still be in Paris.”
“Laura. This is a guy. I’m your best friend.”
Philippe raised his eyebrows and slanted her a glance. Adela caught that, but she had a crush on him, so only smiled at him humbly and apologetically. Then she slanted me a mean look for daring to let Philippe think he was as important to me as she was.
“Anyway, I didn’t say I was going to change my plans for him! I said I didn’t know what to do.” I started crying again.
“Will you quit that?” Philippe said uncomfortably. “Listen, can you just go have fun and quit thinking about changing your life? Go to Cambridge. Prague, it’s up to you; you can do that some other time. But Cambridge is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Sébastien is only a fling. A fling, by definition, ends. And can you get in touch with this guy somehow? Because there is no way you’re going to get there on time.”