The Oracle Rebounds (7 page)

“Kayla, are you with us?”

I snap out of my open-eyed doze and sit up straight. “Yes, Ms. Cheney.”

A discussion of
Macbeth
is swirling around me. All I can think about is how I caught Benoit leaving the bathroom this morning wearing only a towel. His upper body was pale and well built, his stomach flat. My wonder must have shown on my face because he winked at me.

If we were in a romantic comedy, a puppy would’ve run by and snatched the edge of the towel, ripping it clean off him. But, of course, I don’t have a puppy and Benoit’s hold on his towel was annoyingly secure.

If we were on a soap opera, he would have dropped the towel on purpose and, bashful virgin that I am, I would have gotten a good look and then run off, scandalized.

But if we were in one of those late-night French movies, he would have dropped the towel and I would have stood my
ground and looked him up and down. But what comes next I’ll never know, since I’m terrified to watch anything even slightly erotic because Mom and Erland are always around.

Last night with Benoit was fantastic. We had an instant connection. It felt like we’d known each other for years instead of hours. If it had been a first date, it would have scored off the charts. Maybe that’s why it was so great—because it wasn’t a date. We were just two people getting to know each other with no strings, no expectations. It was the best non-date ever!

There was nothing we couldn’t talk about. He told me all about his family and friends back in Aix-en-Provence (which he calls “Ex”) and the freedoms they have there. Drinking and smoking among teens is normal and parents don’t have a fit over it. But then, teens don’t binge drink like they do here. Because drinking and smoking aren’t a big deal over there, teens are less likely to go overboard.

Well, that’s the only downside to Benoit—he smokes. But he didn’t complain when I told him that, due to city laws, he couldn’t smoke inside public buildings. And when I warned him not to smoke at my house, he said he wouldn’t have anyway.

He asked about my family and friends, and I told him stories about them, using the funniest anecdotes I could think of. The only person I left out was Jared. Talking about him would only be a downer.

Benoit was particularly fascinated by the fact that my mom is a minister. He said that he and most of his friends reject the Church and everything about it. In fact, he’s an atheist. I said that I have respect for most religious and non-religious traditions, as long as they have a basic morality and aren’t Satanic or anything. That made him laugh.

I so hope to see him this evening. I don’t know when he’ll get home because the exchange organizers have a bunch of activities planned. I think today is the Guggenheim Museum. Which I don’t understand, because can’t they see all that European art back home?

When I get home from school, I waste no time. I freshen up, put on some cutesy around-the-house clothes and wait for Benoit.

Eventually it becomes clear that he’s not coming home for dinner. So I eat with Mom and Erland and suffer through their questions about last night. Where did we go? What is he like? Are we getting along?

“He won’t be back until late, in case you were wondering,” Mom says. “They went to a Broadway show.”

“Oh, okay.” Couldn’t she have told me a couple of hours ago?

After dinner, I head up to my room to do homework. When I’m finished, I put the books aside to become the Oracle again. I answer a couple of standard “does he like me?” questions. I have to gently reply “probably not” to both of them. In most cases, when a girl writes asking if a certain guy likes her, it’s because she doesn’t want to accept that he doesn’t. Just because he occasionally flirts with her doesn’t mean he wants to date her. Bottom line: if a guy’s interested, he’ll let you know.

By ten-thirty fatigue is hitting me hard. I usually don’t crawl into bed until eleven, but last night we didn’t get in until midnight, and I was so wired it took me a good hour to fall asleep.

I wash up, get into my pj’s and turn off the lights. About
fifteen minutes later, I hear the front door open. Benoit is downstairs talking to my mom. Then I hear him walk up the stairs.

He taps lightly on my door. “Kayla?”

“Come in.”

He enters. “Sorry, you were sleeping.”

I turn on the bedside lamp. “I wasn’t asleep. Come in and tell me about your day.”

He drops his knapsack and sits on the edge of the bed. “The Guggenheim was interesting. As for the show, it was okay, but I would have preferred to sneak out and meet you somewhere. I couldn’t because my teachers were counting our heads like we were babies.”

“Lame.”

“What is ‘lame’?”

“It means totally annoying.”

“Then, yes, it is lame. I did not come here to be with them—I would rather be with you. My
professeur
says that if we leave the group, we will be penalized and maybe lose credit for English class. But if we get permission to do something with our host family, that will be all right.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll tell them you’re hanging out with us all the time.”

“Yes. You can help me. We can draw up an
itinéraire
of activities. They cannot say no.”

“Great! Should we do it now?”

“Tomorrow morning is fine. You must sleep.” He gets up. “I look forward to spending time with you, Kayla.”

“Me, too.” I am tingling all over now. “Good night, Benoit.”

“Bonne nuit, mon chou.”
And he leaves the room.

Though I don’t know what
mon chou
means, I’m sure it’s a good thing. I fall back onto my pillow with a dazed smile—and the delicious feeling that my love life might be turning around.

20 Days into Rebound Equation
(But who really cares? Benoit is here.
)

The next day, I meet Benoit at four o’clock on Thirty-fourth Street at Sixth Avenue. When he kisses both of my cheeks, my knees tremble. It’s incredible, this vibe between us.

We chat about our days as we walk the couple of blocks to the Empire State Building. There’s a huge lineup outside.

“Should we bother?” he says.

“It’s up to you. I don’t mind waiting.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He smiles down at me. “Do you really think we will visit all of the places we told your parents?”

As realization dawns, I smile back at him. From this point on, there will be no itinerary. Benoit doesn’t want to
see
New York, he wants to experience it.

“Where should we go from here?” I ask.

He takes my hand. “Let’s just walk for now.”

As we walk, I glance down at our hands. This is surreal. I wonder if he can feel my pulse pounding through my wrist.

We spend the next hour in the concrete jungle of Midtown.
He stops in front of a huge statue on Fifth Avenue and says he recognizes it from the cover of an Ayn Rand book called
Atlas Shrugged.
He takes a picture, telling me he’s going to turn it into a poster for his bedroom wall.

“You’re a fan of Ayn Rand?” I ask. I know that she was a writer and there was a movie about her, but that’s it.

“I am not a fan of Rand in particular. She was a communist. Interesting, but not for me. Is that a bookstore?”

Benoit’s eyes light up, and we head for Barnes and Noble. Usually I go to the fiction, self-improvement or teen sections, but this time I follow him. We end up downstairs in the philosophy section.

I pick up a book called
The History of Sexuality
by Michel Foucault, thinking the Oracle might benefit from it. Benoit shakes his head. “Maybe not what you are looking for. Try this instead.” And he finds me a book by Noam Chomsky on human nature.

As I watch him pore over philosophy books, I ask myself if I should tell him about the Oracle. I’m sure I can trust him. And it would be cool to share my secret and hear his thoughts on dating and relationship questions.

“I’ll be in the self-improvement section on the second floor,” I say.

He looks intrigued, but just nods. He’ll understand later.

We spend more than an hour in the bookstore. I buy
The Buddhist Guide to Loving Relationships
written by some bald monk and on sale for $8.99. I figure it’s a good buy since I’m on a spiritual, self-help kick these days. As for Benoit, he sees a rack with classics on sale for $3.99 each, so he stocks up: Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas. He says he welcomes the challenge of reading them all in English.

A half hour later, we’re sitting in a restaurant on the Lower
East Side—it’s not fancy, but the prices are reasonable. It’s certainly better than in Midtown where you can pay ten dollars for a small sandwich. I ask Benoit about his ambitions. He wants to be a professor of philosophy at a university, but he says professorships are hard to come by in France. So he may teach philosophy or history at a high school, or switch gears and go into art history and be a curator.

I think about how hot he would look as a curator at the Louvre, and I ask him if he’s read
The Da Vinci Code.
He says it has no basis in reality. I say that my mom would agree with him but I still think it’s a damned good read.

“What about you, Kayla? What career do you want?”

“I’d like to be a counselor of some kind. Giving relationship advice is my thing. I actually have a website called the Oracle of Dating.”

“A website of your own?”

“Yes. People pay me to answer their questions, and I write blogs on relationships.”

“That is brilliant! Can I see it?”

“Sure, I’ll show you when we get home.”

“That explains the books you were looking at. Why are you interested in such things?”

I shrug. “Human relationships seem to follow patterns. I like identifying those patterns and making sense of them. And the feeling you get when you help someone is awesome.”

“You are a healer of relationships, and you are named after St. Michael. He was a healer, too.” Benoit moves the bottle of ketchup aside and touches my hand. “
Chère
Kayla, you fascinate me, do you know that?”

He’s a master of French flirtation. Well, I’d like to think I’m an accomplished flirt myself. I give him a mysterious smile. “The fascination is mutual.”

Maybe Oprah is right. Maybe the universe does have a plan for everyone.

Is it a coincidence that Benoit came into my life a short time after Jared left it? According to
The Buddhist Guide to Loving Relationships,
there are no coincidences. It’s the universe conspiring to help you.

After the near disaster at the house party, I admit, I nearly lost faith in the universe’s plan for me. But I’m now changing my mind.

I’m thinking this as I sit at my desk, reading emails for the Oracle. I look over at Benoit, who is lying on my bed reading Herodotus. He’s so tall that his legs are dangling off the end.

He catches me watching him and cocks a brow. “Working hard, Oracle of Dating?”

“Always.”

Benoit has been here a week now, and hardly a moment goes by that I’m not with him or thinking about him. In the evenings, we explore the city, walking the streets or riding the subway to random places. We’ve spent hours in cafés and bookstores.

Mom and Erland know that I like him. It’s pretty obvious, since I never used to wear mascara, eyeliner and lipgloss around the house. The worst part about them knowing that I’m crushing on the French guy? They
like
it. “It’s a little excitement for her,” they’re probably saying behind my back. “It’ll help her get over Jared.”

Jared? I’ve hardly thought of him since Benoit arrived. It’s wonderful.

I go over and sit on the corner of the bed. “Enjoying Herodotus?”

“Yes, although he is rather verbose. I prefer Thucydides.
He gets to the point.” Benoit puts the book facedown and sits up, looking wistful. “It is so great, being here with you.”

“I know what you mean. I certainly didn’t expect this.” I look away, feeling a little shy.

We both know what
this
means.
This
is more than friendship.
This
is an attraction.

Benoit says, “My first week in America has gone quickly. I hope the next one is slow. I want to enjoy every moment with you.”

“Me, too.”

His gray eyes are warm. He’s leaning closer.

Our lips meet.

I feel like I’m melting.

When he finally pulls back, his cheeks are flushed. “I have been hoping for that.”

“Same here.”

We smile at each other. I snuggle into his arms, and we stay that way for a while.

Strange, but I feel like I’m falling a little more in love with him every day.

“I wish I could be the one to show you around the school,” I say to Benoit the next morning at my locker. “I’d tell you the real deal. I’m sure you’re going to have to ooh and ahh at the new gym and computer lab.”

“I will make sure to ooh and ahh appropriately.” He grins lazily. His hand is propped on the locker behind me, and he’s leaning in to me. It’s as if he wants to be kissing me right now, with all of these people around. I wouldn’t object.

I smile up at him, and we share a zinger moment of attraction. He brushes his lips softly against mine. I want to deepen the kiss, but he’s controlling this, so I submit to the sensual torture of his lips teasing mine. When it’s over, I look away
shyly, and my gaze suddenly locks with another pair of eyes across the hall. The intense look in Jared’s eyes startles me.

Benoit follows my gaze, and turns back to me with a wry grin. “Your ex, perhaps?”

“Um, yeah. I don’t see why he’s giving me that look.”

“You can’t blame him. You broke his heart, can’t you see?”

I’m not about to correct him and explain that Jared broke mine and that he has no right looking so pissed off.

Benoit gets dragged away by one of the exchange students just before the bell, and I head off to class. I can’t stop thinking about the look Jared gave me. It was fierce—hurt, angry. Does he have a problem with me having a life after him? Or did I break some unwritten rule that you have to wait a year before you can kiss another guy in the hallway? I wasn’t trying to rub Benoit in his face. And why should Jared care anyway? He broke up with
me
.

The more I think about it, the angrier it makes me. Would he prefer to see me sad than happy with a gorgeous Frenchman?

By lunchtime I’ve managed to put the matter aside. One look from Jared isn’t worth crowding my brain space. Besides, Benoit has snuck away from the exchange students to join me and my friends in the caf.

He tells us about his morning tour of the school, and my friends laugh at his sarcastic commentary. I can tell they’re impressed and a little awed by him. I bet they can sense the chemistry between us, the air around us crackling with electricity. He’s certainly not hiding his feelings, since he’s stroking my hair and rubbing circles on my back.

I am trying not to pay any attention to Jared, who’s observing us from a few tables away. At one point I dart a glance his
way, and our eyes meet. This time he doesn’t have the angry intensity he seemed to have before; he looks…concerned. Does he think Benoit’s going to take advantage of my vulnerable heartbroken self? I send him back a self-confident smile, letting Jared know, once and for all, that I’m just fine.

In fact, I’m better than ever.

While Benoit is off visiting the Statue of Liberty with the exchange students, I finish one of the guest blogs and send it off. Hopefully the blogger will post it fairly soon. Once I’m done that, I daydream about Benoit and find myself inspired to write a blog about chemistry.

Do You Believe in Love at First Sight?

The Oracle is too practical to believe in love at first sight, but the Oracle does understand how you could be intensely drawn to someone you don’t even know.

Pheromones. Without even knowing it, you pick up on the scent of someone and your biology takes over. If the pheromones are just right, you will be fiercely drawn to this person, with all of your basic animal instincts wanting you to procreate with them.

There are a number of scented products that claim to simulate pheromones, giving people the hope that if their natural smell doesn’t attract their crush, their new cologne will. The Oracle thinks that even though these colognes may catch someone’s attention briefly, it won’t be enough for a lasting attraction. So don’t bother.

How can you tell if your attraction will be lasting? The kiss test, of course. A scent could briefly fool you, but not a kiss. A kiss puts you up close and personal, your pheromones mixing together, and you’ll know right away if the chemistry is there…

That’s the thing about time. When you’re depressed, every hour is endless. When you’re happy, time flies.

Mom and Erland were so right about the French guy being a distraction. I hate it when they’re right.

Benoit and I have made the most of our two weeks. He’s leaving tomorrow. It feels like he just got here yesterday.

“Richard’s picking us up in twenty minutes,” I say. “Are you ready?”

“I know you by now, Kayla. The question is, are
you
ready?”

I laugh. “No, I want to change.”

“I suppose I should leave the room then?” His brows go up. He plays with it, this sexual tension between us. “I will be in my room. Let me know when you are ready.”

Tonight’s going to be awesome. Richard, a sophomore who also has an exchange student, has organized a bush party in Scrummer’s Park. I change into a white tee and faded jeans—tight, but not so tight that I have to wear a thong. (Amy made me buy one last summer, but I never wear it, it’s just too uncomfortable.) I put on some makeup and gather my hair into an artfully messy ponytail.

I look good. I guess romance suits me!

Richard parks behind the baseball diamond in Scrummer’s Park, and we trek across the field to where the group has gathered. The French people kiss both of my cheeks. I’ve decided that French people are highly underrated. I don’t find them snooty at all.

They describe the drama of their field trip to the Met, where one of the kids got caught smoking weed in the bathroom. Benoit’s already told me this, but I pretend to be interested. I
am
interested—in the fact that his arm is around my shoulders.

Benoit’s friend, Yann, arrives with a bottle of wine and plastic cups. We sip it in front of the fire pit, occasionally tossing branches in.

Evgeney comes up and sits beside me. I introduce him to Benoit. Evgeney has made an attempt at gelling his red hair; the gel makes it look greasy, but at least it controls the frizz. He tells a funny story about Mr. Granger freaking out in his history class, and we have a good laugh.

“How’s it been with Guillaume?” I ask, seeing his exchange student across the fire pit chatting with a couple of American girls. From what I’ve heard, Guillaume hasn’t been too enthusiastic about staying at Evgeney’s.