The International Kissing Club (31 page)

“What flavors do they have?” she asked, staring at the Chinese characters in frustration.

“A bunch you’ve probably never even heard of.”

“They must have vanilla, right?”

“I don’t think so.” Guiran scanned the list posted on the wall, then turned to her with a sly glint in his eye. “Let me order for you?”

Mei looked at him warily. There was trust and then there was trust. Back home, her ice-cream order was sacred. “Well, that depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether or not any of those flavors will kill me. The electric purple one is a little concerning.” Not to mention the puce-colored one and the one with the unidentifiable chunks in it.

“Aww, come on, loosen up. Live a little,” he prodded.

“I just did—I got on that stupid board and almost killed myself.”

“Well, you’re not dead yet. And admit it: you had fun. I could tell you liked it. So, trust me now, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed, though still a little wary.

Guiran turned to the person behind the counter and spoke in rapid-fire Mandarin. Within a minute or two, Mei held a double-decker icecream cone in her hand. As Guiran ordered for himself, she looked at the thing suspiciously. He’d ordered her black ice cream. Black ice cream. She didn’t even know such a thing existed. Or if it should.

She sniffed it. It didn’t smell like licorice, but what else could possibly turn ice cream that color? She decided to start on the green mint scoop first and work her way around to the black. If it was some kind of funky chocolate, she wasn’t sure she could stomach it.

Her eyes started watering with her first lick, and she swallowed quickly. “You got me wasabi ice cream?”

“Do you like it?”

Did she like it? What kind of question was that? Who on earth actually ate wasabi ice cream? She could barely stomach the Japanese horseradish on her mother’s homemade sushi, let alone on a waffle cone.

Still, she didn’t want to hurt Guiran’s feelings, especially when he was looking at her so expectantly. Bracing herself, she cautiously took another lick. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she hadn’t been expecting it to taste like mint.

“It’s … interesting.”

He laughed, before shouldering the ice-cream parlor’s door open. “Now there’s a ringing endorsement if I’ve ever heard one.”

“So shoot me. I’m used to my ice cream being made of flavors I would eat in a cake. Vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, Cherry Garcia.”

“Ahh, the boring flavors.”

“You mean classic, don’t you?” She narrowed her eyes at him playfully.

“No. I meant boring.” He took a long lick of his own wasabi ice cream. “So, have you tried the black-sesame scoop yet?”

Seriously? Black sesame? Had she skipped China and landed on a totally different planet altogether? One where people didn’t have taste buds? “Uh, no. I haven’t.”

“And you’re not going to, are you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” He bumped her with his shoulder. “It’s written all over your face. You’re a control freak.”

“You make me sound so boring.”

“Not boring.
Classic
.”

His words hit her the wrong way. “I’m not boring!”

“I’m just joking, Mei.” He laughed. “There’s nothing boring about you.”

“Not boring, then. Just unadventurous. Anal-retentive,” she said.

He didn’t answer this time and Mei could feel herself getting more and more worked up. It was stupid, she knew, to let Guiran push her buttons like this—especially over a stupid ice-cream cone—but she couldn’t help it. John, her ex, used to give her a hard time about how she planned everything out, how she was never spontaneous. How she always had to control things. The fact that Guiran was suddenly doing the same thing really bothered her. Strange, though, how it wasn’t him she was annoyed at, but herself.

Looking around, she tried to find a way to prove to him that she wasn’t as staid, as predictable, as he seemed to think she was. It had gotten late, and since it was the middle of the week, the earlier crowds had thinned to almost nothing. So it wasn’t as if she could just walk up to someone and do something crazy, like kiss them and finally get on the IKC point chart. But maybe there was something else …

Her eyes fell on the fountain in the middle of the square and an idea started to form. It was crazy, ridiculous, especially since it felt like it was about forty degrees outside, but once the idea was in her head, she couldn’t get it out. A quick glance around told her that the earlier crowd had all but disappeared.

She turned to Guiran, shoved her ice-cream cone at him. “Here, hold this for a minute.”

“Where are you going?” he asked, following her as she started toward the center of the square. “I was just joking, Mei. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please don’t leave.”

She didn’t answer him. She wasn’t leaving, not by a long shot, but after his teasing, he deserved to suffer a little. Refusing to give herself time to think, Mei stripped off her jacket and dropped it in the center of the square. Next she ripped off her shirt and jeans, until she was dressed in nothing but the black stretchy lace camisole and matching panties Piper had given her for the trip. Thank God she’d decided to wear them today as an extra layer of warmth, but now for the extra
confidence boost as well. Somehow, she doubted this would have the same effect if she was wearing her regular underwear. ’Cause nothing said wild and crazy like plain white cotton.

And then, with a quick glance at Guiran to make sure he was watching (he was, with his mouth hanging open), she jumped straight into the huge stone fountain and plunged into the water.

Cold. Oh God, was it cold! Siberia cold. South-Pole-penguin cold.

But it was too late to back out now. The only thing worse than freezing to death in this stupid fountain would be seeing the look on Guiran’s face when she wimped out. No way. She was staying put in the waist-deep water for the duration.

“Mei, are you crazy? Get out of there!”

“Why? It’s nice.” She prayed he couldn’t hear her teeth chattering.

“It’s got to be like five degrees above freezing. I’m sure ‘nice’ is not the proper adjective.” He was shrugging out of his jacket even as he was telling her to get out, dropping it on the rim of the fountain. “Plus, it’s against the law to be in there. You can get a major fine.”

She looked around. “Do you see any police here?”

“No. They’re smart enough to be inside, bundled up. For now.” He shrugged out of his shirt, stripped off his jeans. Mei tried not to stare, but he was even better looking with his clothes off. “Unlike us.”

“Hey, no one told you to strip,” she answered indignantly.

“Well, I couldn’t let you get arrested on your own, could I? You wouldn’t last a minute in a Chinese prison.”

“And you would?”

“Let’s hope neither one of us has to find out.” And then he jumped over the edge of the fountain, landing with a huge splash at her feet. “Holy shit, it’s cold!”

“You’re crazy, you know that, right?” she said, looking down at him, squatting in the freezing water.

“That’s pretty much like the pot calling the kettle black,” he said, standing up. He was so close that his hip brushed against hers. “I can’t believe you did this.”

She shrugged. “See? You don’t know everything about me. I can be spontaneous.”

“Yes, but now I’m questioning your sanity.”

“You can leave anytime, you know. No one’s making you stay.”

Guiran stepped back just a little, let his eyes rake over her from head to toe. “Like that’s going to happen.”

He reached behind him, picked up his jacket. Slid it over her shoulders. Then brought his right hand up to cup her left cheek. “It just so happens,” he said with a grin that suddenly made her knees tremble, “that crazy looks good on you. Really, really good.”

Mei tried to answer, but her brain was as frozen as her body. If he didn’t kiss her soon, she was going to end up with hypothermia and probably frostbite as well. In fact, she could get stuck with—

Screw it. She was done waiting. Burying her hands in Guiran’s soft, silky hair, she tugged him forward until his mouth met hers. At the first touch of their lips, fireworks exploded all around her. It looked like Chinese New Year had come early.

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Chapter 17
Piper

“Are you ready to go, Piper?” Sebastian’s voice floated down the hallway toward her, along with the sounds of his parents and Simone leaving for their day in the country. They’d invited Piper and Sebastian to go with them, but Sebastian had wanted to spend the day in Paris instead, and Piper had wanted to stay with him.

“I’ll be there in a second,” she answered, pulling up the IKC Facebook page on her laptop. She’d been so busy lately with school, and Simone and Sebastian, and her stupid, humiliating art classes that it had been a few days since she’d posted anything. She knew her friends would be worried if she didn’t at least let them know she was still alive.

Sure enough, Cassidy had posted, “Ariiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiel? Where are yoooooooooooooou?” just the day before.

Instead of answering, she scrolled through the numerous other comments on the page, from girls who had begun tallying up their points and marking their kisses on Mei’s widget. There were a bunch of them, way more than the last time she’d looked, and she couldn’t help feeling a little proud. She and her friends had sparked a kissing revolution. Girls taking control of their own destinies. How cool was that?

Piper certainly felt like she had seized control of her own fate since coming to Paris—it was easy to do what she wanted here, to do
what felt right, instead of always worrying about how her mom was going to react or how Germaine would use her actions against her.

Not wanting to think about Germaine
or
her mother, Piper continued to skim the comments, stopping only when she found one of Izzy’s from a couple days before, saying she was keeping a close eye on Tanner. It seemed so strange to see those words, stranger still to think about Tanner when being with Sebastian had completely obliterated him from her mind. Tanner had been a silly crush, while Sebastian was so much more.

She knew that wasn’t what the other girls wanted to hear, though, so she typed back a flippant, “As long as that’s all you’re keeping on him,” before continuing to look for Mei’s status. She was dying to know what her friend had been up to in China. She really hoped Mei had met a guy as amazing as Sebastian.

But when she finally found Mei’s comment—buried beneath a flurry of postings from girls she’d never heard of—it gave her pause. “Hey, Ariel, you look so happy in those pics you e-mailed us! Good for you—does this mean the angsty artist is a thing of the past?”

Piper stared at the words for nearly a minute, absorbing them. Worrying about them. For so long she had needed to force herself to get up in the morning, to pretend that her life wasn’t as bad as she thought it was. To ignore the snipes and gibes that came at her from everyone but her three closest friends.

She hadn’t done that in France, not any of it. The realization felt strange. But how could she be anything but happy here? The city was amazing. Marie, Simone, and Gus were the family she’d always longed for. Her friends at school were great. And Sebastian …