Icy Pretty Love (16 page)

"That wine is too expensive to throw in anyone's face."

"Isn't it supposed to be rude to talk about how expensive the thing you bought for someone is?"

"Rude for other people," he says. "Rules don't apply to you."

I bristle. "What, I'm not good enough for your snooty rich-person manners?"

"No," he says. "You're too smart for them."

I'm not used to being called smart. It's not a word that's typically applied to high school dropouts. The word glows and sparks within me, leaving me momentarily breathless before I get ahold of myself. "Don't change the subject."

"You want to know why I bother?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"I don't know."

"That's a cop-out."

"It's a genuine answer." He glances up at the chandelier sparkling above us. "I suppose it's because it's what's expected of me. There's a reason people born into wealthy families are typically the ones who remain that way."

"Funny. I always thought it was trust funds and inheritances."

He smiles wryly. "That's a big part of it. But an equally big part is that it's how we're trained. We learn to expect extravagance, to settle for nothing less, to value money above all else. I guess that's why most of us are assholes."

I laugh. "You're probably the most self-aware douchebag rich guy I've ever met."

"Oh, I'm very self-aware," he says. "I know exactly what kind of person I am."

This is veering away from amusing and getting dangerously near depressing. But a guy like him can't possibly have poor self-esteem, right? He's probably had people fawning over him and telling him what a perfect little rich brat he was his whole life. "So you do all this work with people you hate to make money you don't care about."

"More or less," he says.

"That sounds like a shitty way to live."

"What would you propose?"

"I...ugh, I can't think of a way to say this without sounding like a self-help book. Oh well. I propose you find what you're passionate about and do that instead."

"You mean follow my secret, burning desire to splash some paint on a piece of canvas and charge a million dollars for it?" He smirks. "Admittedly that'd probably be an easier way of making money than what I'm doing now."

"I'm serious about this! And the whole point of something you're passionate about is that it isn't about money! What do you care about, Cohen, in a sense that doesn't have to do with work? Let's start there."

He shrugs.

"That's not helpful." I'm beginning to get annoyed. This always seems to happen.

"I just don't care about very much," he says.

"Everyone cares about something. What makes you heart soar? Picking flowers, petting puppies...?"

"Yes, Rae," he says, his tone laden with sarcasm. "Petting puppies makes my heart soar."

Thankfully, the waiter chooses that moment to return with plates of seared shrimp and a raspberry salad. Appetizers. I pop a shrimp into my mouth and utilize the time it takes to chew to clear my thoughts.

"I phrased that wrong," I say. "Come on. If you don't find your passion, your life will just be—”

He starts laughing, though I get the sense he tried to suppress it.

"What?" I demand.

"A girl who makes her living on the streets of LA is lecturing me about finding my passion with her mouth full."

"Sorry I never went to snooty rich person jerkface manners school." I swallow. "I'm not letting you off that easy. What are your hobbies?"

"I doubt my hobbies would translate very well into a passion-based occupation."

He's keeping something back. I try to think if I've seen him do anything that could be constituted as recreational, but the only times I'm aware of that he isn't working or arguing with me is when he sneaks off at night. I open my mouth to ask and then think better of it. His nighttime jaunts are something that neither of us have mentioned, like a weird black hole in our relationship. He must know I know, but I've waited so long to bring it up that mentioning it would feel like breaking some unspoken code.

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted," I say, "if you don't find your passion, your life will just be a big pile of blah."

"My life was already a big pile of blah." He spears a shrimp with his fork.

"Was?" The past tense is heartening, if confusing.

"Well." He eats the shrimp and takes a markedly long time to chew and swallow before continuing. "It's been a little more interesting since you came into it."

I have no idea what to say to that, so I eat some salad instead. Since I came into it? I try to banish the glow I feel at his words. He just means all the arguing, the weird niceness lessons. Just because I keep him from being bored doesn't mean I have anything to do with him finding his passion. It definitely doesn't mean I
am
his passion.

Okay, that one was so obvious I shouldn't have even felt the need to say it to myself.

"I'm very happy that you find me entertaining, but I'm only here for three more weeks," I remind him. Is it my imagination, or does his expression darken? "I'd feel better about leaving if I knew you weren't immediately going to sink right down again into a big gross pile of blah."

"This is what I always thought about your type," he says, and I'm immediately irritated when I realize he means poor people. "You're taught differently than us. You're taught to care more about life, to do things like 'find your passion’—”

"Stop," I interrupt sharply.

To my surprise, he stops.

I take a deep breath. "Don't romanticize what my life has been like. Being poor fucking sucks, okay? And no, we're not taught any different. We're taught to believe that money matters, just as much as you are. The only difference is that you have it and we don't. And that we're taught to believe we can get it if we just work hard enough, if we try enough. But it's a big lie. The rich stay rich and the poor stay poor, you're right. That never changes. People like us don't mix."

"We're mixing now," he says.

"Not for very much longer."

Maybe that was harsh. At any rate, he's quiet for a moment.

"Are you looking forward to it?" he asks me.

"Looking forward to what?"

"Leaving. Getting paid and flying away. Starting your new life."

Last week I would have told him I'd never looked forward to anything more than that. But now, something tugs at my heart. "I'll miss Paris," I say finally.

"Fair enough." His catchphrase.

"And I've made it my mission to turn you into a better person while I'm here, so I'll have to do that before I leave," I add.

"Ah."

"You know what they say in elementary school. Leave it better than you found it."

"So I'm the human version of the arts-and-crafts drawer of your elementary school."

"Don't feel too bad about it. There were some sweet finger-paints in there."

"Maybe you're right," he says, almost to himself. "Who knows. Maybe you have been sent here to make me a better person." He laughs. "I can't believe I just said something so stupid."

"Me neither." I jab a finger at him. "Let's get one thing straight, yeah? I don't exist for the sole purpose of improving you. I'm my own person with my own shit going on. So you better think of me as a human being and not some fairy sent to help you. Otherwise the niceness lessons are over, got it?"

"Got it. You're a human being."

"Say it again."

"You're a human being." He raises—oh, I won't even bother, you know what he does with his eyebrows.

"Good," I say, satisfied. "It's just that I'm not sure you're used to seeing other people as human beings."

"I'll try harder at that, then."

I point at a woman laughing a little too loudly a couple tables over. Cohen's been glaring at her intermittently all night. "What's she?"

"A human being."

I point to an older man who keeps clearing his throat. "And him?"

"Human being," he grumbles.

I gesture to a really old lady wearing so many jewels and so much makeup that she resembles a clown. "And her?"

"Alien from outer space."

"Cohen."

"What?" he says. "It pays to be suspicious."

I can't help myself. I giggle.

Then the food comes, and we spent the next half hour lost in a wonderland of French deliciousness.

"I never understood how good food could be before I came here," I remark halfway through a plate of roasted asparagus.

"What did you normally eat for dinner before me?" he says, just a tinge of smugness in his voice.

"The still-beating hearts of my enemies."

"And here I was thinking I'd upgraded you."

"Sorry. Nothing better than still-beating hearts. They go great with some pepperjack cheese." I grin. "Just kidding. Back home, I guess I usually had...oh, I don't know. A bowl of ramen, I guess. A fast-food burger. A bag of chips."

"If that's the case, how..."

"How am I still so thin?" I ask for him. "Sometimes I'd skip dinner. Couldn't afford a gym membership, couldn't afford fancy food, so the only way to lose weight was to go without meals every once and a while. The guys who pay for the fat girls are the creepiest, without a doubt. Nothing against fat girls or fat people in general, but the guys like that were...awful. I guess they assumed fat girls would let them get away with more.”

"For all your insistence that people are human beings and therefore worthy of my kindness, human beings seem to be generally terrible," Cohen says.

"No, that's not true. People are good, fundamentally."

He puts down his fork. "How can you believe that, after everything you've been through?"

I look down at my half-demolished plate. "People don't start out bad. They really don't. Somewhere along the way, someone was bad to them. That creates sadness and anger, see? And those feelings can't stay inside a person, they need a way out. Some people find good outlets, like art or punching bags, I guess. But that's really hard to do. It's much easier just to let it flood out of you and at the nearest available target. That's how badness spreads. Sometimes you just have try to break the cycle by being kind to others, even if no one's been kind to you."

He's staring at me with something unreadable in his eyes. "How does someone learn to be kind, then, if they've never been taught it?"

I brighten. "That's why I believe people are fundamentally good! I was never taught kindness, that's for sure, but once I decided to give it a shot, it came easily to me. It was inside me all along. Like how a bird just knows how to fly, in its core. It's the same way with people and kindness. All you have to do is take that step into the air."

He doesn't speak. For a second, I think I've gotten through to him.

"It really is impossible to say that stuff without sounding like a self-help book, isn't it," he says.

I sigh.

We finish eating and leave the restaurant. The sun's fully gone now, the night spread like black velvet poked through with star-holes over our heads. I clap my hands together. "It's dark! Do you know what that means?"

"That it's time to go home?" he says hopefully.

"Wrong. It's time for the Ferris wheel!"

He groans. "I was hoping you'd forgotten about that."

"I have the memory of an elephant, my friend. Now call Geoff and let's get our butts in gear."

The black car comes to pick us up only two minutes later. I press my nose to the window as Paris flits by, the lights and people and roses blurring together. This city is so beautiful. It still seems like a dream. Someone else's dream that I've been lucky enough to step into for a short time. But I know that before long, it'll be time to wake up again. I won't have a choice.

But it's okay, because I don't want to stay here. Paris isn't my endgame. It's not where I belong. He's not who I belong with.

There we go again with those stupid thoughts jumping into my head uninvited. Of course he's not who I belong with. That much is a given.

I only hope I can help him be kind enough so that someday, he will have someone to belong with.

The Ferris wheel is right near some really tall structure that looks more Egyptian than French. Beyond it, I can see a long, clear pool with a big metal ball right in the center. But I'm too distracted by how beautiful the Ferris wheel is. Geoff parks and as I get out of the car, I tilt my head so far back to look at it that I trip.

Cohen catches me. His touch sets my skin alight. "Watch it."

It's much larger than the Ferris wheels I remember seeing at LA fairs, the scuzzy ones populated mostly by drunk teenagers and the homeless. It's sparkling, a white jewel set into the night. Couples wait in a long line, laughing, joking in French, every girl clutching a rose. Cohen and I buy our tickets at the booth and then stand at the end of the line, behind a couple so in love that they don't even notice us there. The girl has a thin-stemmed rose tucked into her ponytail holder.

A dark-skinned man stands by the front of the line, a huge bundle of the brilliantly red flowers nestled into the nook of his shoulder. He advertises them loudly in French.

"Aha, that guy is pretty smart," I say, a little nervously, though I don't know why. "No wonder every girl in sight has a rose."

"Except you," notes Cohen, watching me.

"Except me what?"

"You don't have a rose."

I jolt. "Who wants a rose? I don't need a stupid rose. Some badge of honor that I'm loved on Valentines Day. Well, I love myself, and I don't need to buy myself a stupid rose to prove it!"

Wow, that sounded unbelievably depressing.

He looks at me for a long time, his brows crinkled together in an expression I can't read. After a while, he turns abruptly away from me and starts walking.

"Wait! Cohen! You get back here, I don't want to lose our place in line!"

"Hold it for me, I'll be right back," he calls over his shoulder. He walks down to the front of the line, where the rose man is pestering those about to get on the Ferris wheel even though the girls there are already equipped with roses, and taps the man on the shoulder.

I watch in stunned silence as Cohen Ashworth buys a rose.