Everly After (10 page)

I quirk an eyebrow at his smug smile. I can pretend if it means keeping him around longer. Right after I trace my fingers over the ink on his bicep.

Live and let die.

Exactly.

Beckett

We could have walked, but I’m not sure about the awkward quiet between us. It’s easier to take the Metro.

Well, it’s easier until she runs her fingers over my tattoo. Then the day takes a turn from awkward to fucking intolerable because I’m apparently no better than a prepubescent boy. She walks for the door, but I don’t chase after her this time. I’m hard, and my heart is racing. My skin is burning. If I didn’t have those words etched into my flesh before, I sure as hell do now.

Live and let die.

That’s exactly what I should do, but I can’t because this girl is like an addiction to me. She’s gotten under my skin, and we haven’t even kissed.

We have a short wait for a table at the trendy café I bring her to. Luckily, not too many tourists know about it yet, so it’s mostly on the quieter side.

“You have a lot of wrinkles on your forehead,” Everly says over her menu to me.

I run my hand over my forehead. I must be scowling. I guess I make it worse because she laughs and drops her menu. She swats away my hand and then cups my face, using her thumbs to erase my ugly mood.

It works, too. I mean, it helps that I can see down her dress when she leans over the table. It’s not like I haven’t seen this view before, but at least today I can enjoy it. She’s not bleeding all over my flat now.

I want to kiss her wrist, but I curl my fingers around it instead, scooping them under the length of red string she’s wearing as a bracelet.

“He told me it was magic,” she says, trying to tug her hand away.

I don’t let go. “Who did?”

“A gypsy. One of those string men who stand on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur.” She lifts up her menu again, biting on her perfect bottom lip.

“And you fell for that?”

Everly glances nervously between my fingers resting against her wrist and my face. I remove my hand.

The waitress interrupts before she can give me an answer. We order, and then it goes quiet between us. Like it always does.

Everly props her elbows onto the table. “This isn’t a date.”

Our drinks arrive and I think I’m saved from having to reply, but she presses me again. “Did you hear me?”

My Bloody Mary is bloody perfect. I’m not good on the opposite end of an Everly inquisition. I mean, I’m easy—I’ll tell her anything—but that’s the point. I’m not used to letting everything out or anyone in. I usually have a filter, a wall, whatever it is that’s kept me to myself over the years. I had to close myself off after my dad went to prison—people can be nosy as fuck.

She sets down her mug with a ring of
chocolat chaud
around her mouth. She frowns at first, but we both laugh and she wipes it away with her napkin.

“It’s not a date,” she repeats, smoothing the napkin over her lap again.

Everly doesn’t look me in the eye when she says it, so I’m starting to wonder what we’re doing exactly. We were going to get coffee. Now we’re having drinks, eating a meal.

“Okay.” I knock my fingers against her hand to draw her eyes back to me. “Not a date,” I agree. She seems satisfied, bowing her head to blow over her hot chocolate. “You can pay since you’ve wrecked two of my shirts if that’ll make you feel better,” I say. Her fingers snap free from the cup, and her eyes are wide. For a moment, she sort of looks like an owl. “Deal, pet?”

Our food arrives and it goes unspoken, but I think we’ve struck a deal. No date. If we don’t call it a date, it doesn’t have to be one. She can pay. And it can be whatever. No big deal.

“I don’t believe in magic.” She sticks a forkful of pancake into her mouth. Her lips shine with maple syrup. “But I wanted a bracelet and it was cheap.”

“It’s a piece of string.”

“A string that reminds me I can’t believe in lies.”

I set down my fork, but it still rattles against the plate. I wish she’d stop surprising me like this. I swallow down my mouthful of crepe, her eyes meeting mine. I’m staring the biggest truth in the face.

She’s going to break me.

Everly

“Give me your phone.”

I reach behind me and hand it off to Beckett while I watch a boat sit in the locks on the Canal Saint-Martin. Paris at sunset is enough to make your heart burst. Especially on a perfect spring night like tonight.

“Have you ever been to the Musée de l’Orangerie?”

I shake my head, my attention fixed on the opening lock gates. I’ve been to Paris plenty. I stayed here for the summer of my sophomore year in college, but those weren’t my finest months. I remember exploring my taste in foreign men plenty, but I never explored the city.

“We’re going to walk by there. We can see if it’s still open if you’d like.”

“Maybe another day.” I spin around and start walking backward so I can watch him typing furiously on my phone.

“What about the Catacombs? Louvre? Musée d’Art Moderne?”

“No. No. And no.”

“But you’ve been to Paris before?”

“Lots of questions.” I scrunch my nose, my stomach quickly turning in a knotted mess. I was waiting for the other questions, the ones that were about something a little more important than my lack of cultural experiences in Paris.

“My job,” Beckett says, but suddenly he reaches out and drags me to a stop. “You’re really determined to knock yourself out.”

I don’t understand until I shake off his hand and turn around to notice the lamppost behind me. He leans forward and flips up my sunglasses so they rest on top of my head. “It’s getting dark. I don’t think you need these.”

I do my best to scowl, but I think I end up grinning a little. I tug the phone out of his hand, surprised to see that Beckett’s put himself in my calendar, each day filled with some touristy destination. Each day, a reminder that he’s going to be there and that I’m going to be seeing him so we can visit Shakespeare & Company or see the locks of Pont des Art. That I’m not going to be alone in Paris if I don’t want to be.

“You’re assuming a lot.” I’m about to stuff it back into my purse when my phone vibrates with a text from Beckett:
Look up
. I do and stop, barely avoiding a trash can. I whirl around, crossing my arms. “And you stole my number.”

“What am I assuming?”

“That I want to see you again.”

“This isn’t a date,” he reminds me, spinning me back around. His hand still rests on my shoulder as he says, “Maybe I want to see you again.”

I tense up and quicken my steps, putting a little distance between us. “No, you don’t.”

It’s as if he’s forgotten the ugly disaster who passed out in front of his apartment two weeks ago. The same one who had a panic attack, hit her head, threw up all over his bathroom, bled over his T-shirts. That mess—
me
.

I’m not the sort of girl who is ever chased for more than one thing. I don’t believe in magic, and I don’t believe Beckett wants me for any other reason than he thinks I’m easy. To his credit, I usually am.

I stumble in my flats when my phone buzzes in my hand.

Maybe I do.

“Stop texting me. I’m walking right next to you.”

“You’re running ahead of me,” he calls out.

Huh, I guess I was putting a little more than a short distance between us. I go to pull my sunglasses over my face, but he races up and grabs them out of my hand.

“It’s dark,” he teases, running backward over the cobbled walkway past Île Saint Louis, beside the Seine.

I don’t stop him, maybe because his smile is too smug right then and I’d rather see the smile where the lines crowd around his eyes. I like that one better.

He backs right up into a budding linden tree, knocking his head.

I try fight back a laugh, but it leaks out anyway. “What’s your excuse?” He rubs the back of his head, his tawny hair sticking up awkwardly as he glowers at me. I bite back my smile and step closer, ducking low to meet his averted eyes. “Well?”

“I want to see you again,” he says. I like the way his voice is so firm when I’m so caught up in the uncertainties of us. “Even if this isn’t a date. Even if it’s not a date the next time, Everly.”

I hate that he’s so good at making me believe there could be more. I straighten and brush the hair away from my face, determined not to let him see that his words are melting my heart. “Maybe next time I need to let you stumble into the Seine.”

Then it happens—the smile I do like. Beckett looks incredibly cool as he says, “You’re awfully cheeky, aren’t you?” He tugs at my shirt so I sway closer.

“I’m a lot of things.” I tip my head near his as if I’m going to kiss him, loving it when I hear his breath hitch in his throat. But I’m not in a rush to destroy what we have. I grab back my sunglasses and twirl away, walking safely again on the sidewalk, minus one Brit.

He jogs up beside me. “You’re trouble.”

“Of course I am. You found me passed out on your doorstep. That should have been sign enough.”

“I’m good at reading people…but not you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, so thanks.” The sun has dipped below the horizon now, and we’re both lost in the gentle light of twilight. I can’t help glancing over again. “How old are you, Beckett?”

“How old do you think I am?”

I never thought about it until now, but he looks older, acts older. It’s hard to tell how old someone is sometimes. “Twenty…eight.”

“Do you have a thing for older men?”

I’ve been with a lot of guys, some older, some younger. It never really mattered. “No.”

“Good because I’m twenty-five,” he says. I tilt my head, fighting back a laugh. “But maybe I should start telling people I’m twenty-eight. I bet they take you seriously then.”

No one takes me seriously, but Beckett actually looks and acts like an adult. I would expect…I don’t know. I just assume he knows his place in the world by the way he carries himself.

“Do they not take you ser—”

“How old are you?”

I curl my hands into fists, staring down at the ground. “Twenty-one.”

I sprint off toward the bookseller’s cart in front of us before it can get too personal. I need to stop running away from him. I close my eyes, ignoring the bookseller greeting me.

I’m fine.

“That’s a good movie.”

He’s right behind me again. Beckett is really good at ignoring my attempts at trying to be friends. I can be friendly. I can tease and flirt. But to have him so close—it blurs the line I’m trying very hard to draw between us. We won’t be good for each other. And I’m leaving—soon—if only I can make up my mind about where I want to go next.

I open my eyes and see that I’m holding a French edition of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. “Have you read this before?” I turn to him, my hands curled tight around the water-stained paperback.

“No.”

“Well, don’t.” I return it to the stack of books and flash a fake smile to the bookseller. “It’ll ruin your happy ending,” I say to Beckett over my shoulder.

He thumbs through the aged pages of another book I’ve never heard of, makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, and sets it down, his blue eyes assessing me again. He’s determined to learn my depths today, I swear it.

“Are you still at school then?”

I frown. I thought it would be easier to push him away. “No, I graduated early.”

“I knew there was more to you.” He grabs my hand before I can think of a comeback and tugs me forward. “Come on. There’s one more place I want to take you tonight.”

We stop off at a small convenience store and Beckett buys us a bottle of champagne. He grabs my hand, and even though I should let go, I keep mine tucked tightly in his. I’m about to ask where we’re going when we round the corner.

I drop his hand and step away, my hands clutched to my chest. I’ve seen it before, but never like this. I’ve never had Paris given to me like a surprise present. It’s beautiful.

We’re standing at the gates of the park, staring up at the Eiffel Tower as it sparkles.

“Do you want to go up top?” Beckett asks. I look between him and the lights again, speechless. “I’m guessing you’ve never been up to the top before.” He scratches the back of his neck.

I shake my head, my chest tightening. He’s doing it again—being thoughtful. I don’t deserve it. I do one nice thing like return a quilt, and now I’m standing in the dark, in Paris, with Beckett and a bottle of champagne beneath the Eiffel Tower.

Le sigh.

“This isn’t a date, Beckett.”

“That’s what you keep reminding me.”

“But it isn’t. I need you to understand it isn’t. You can’t…you can’t like me.”

He marches closer and bumps his hand under my chin so our eyes meet. “Maybe I like spending time with you.”

“As friends?” I ask. His fingers cradle my face, and I don’t pull away.

“Sure.”

Do you believe that? That we’re friends?

I hold back those questions. I’m afraid that if I say them, this really will become a date, and I’ll end up kissing Beckett in the most romantic place in the world and lose myself again. It’s so easy to get caught up in things—school, plans, guys. I want to stop losing myself and
live
.

His thumb is flush against my bottom lip, the look in his eyes melting me to the sidewalk. My resolve doesn’t even last ten seconds. It can’t when our eyes are locked and I think I’ve forgotten to breathe.

“Are you going to kiss me, Beckett?”

Please kiss me.

He drops his hand, tracing his fingers over my arm until my hand is in his and he’s leading me toward the Tower. It looks like it left Cartier, dripping in diamonds. The lights are beautiful. So beautiful, and so is Beckett.

I can pretend if that’s what he wants. We can pretend to be friends if I can have him around me until I leave Paris.

Beckett

Everly hugs the vinyl to her chest and sways in the middle of the living room. The trumpet plays slow, sexy notes while the piano softly cascades in the background. I feel like I’m at a smoky bar, lusting over the beautiful lounge singer in an old movie.