We Were Here: A New Adult Romance Prequel to Geoducks Are for Lovers (Modern Love Stories Book 1) (33 page)

“Right Here Right Now” ~ Jesus Jones

MAGGIE REFUSED TO
tell me what was wrong. Not in the car, not on our flight from Seattle to JFK, not during our three-hour layover, or on the overnight flight to Paris. Her eyes were puffy and red when we finally arrived. Then again, mine were, too.

She played the same mixtape over and over on her Walkman until the batteries ran down.

I counted fifty-seven sighs from the time we left Olympia to when we finished immigration and gathered our bags. On the train into Paris from the airport, she stared out the window, but I had the feeling she didn’t really see the beautiful French architecture passing her by.

Replaying the last twenty-four hours in my head, I searched for clues. We’d had a teary, long good-bye with our friends at our going away party. Selah even shuffled out to the living room this morning in a kimono to say a final good-bye with a promise she’d see us over winter break.

Maggie didn’t want to wake up the rest of our housemates with the excuse we were running late and might miss our flight. That had been a little odd. Maybe she’d snuck into Gil’s room earlier to say good-bye. I couldn’t imagine her leaving without doing so. They’d been inseparable at the party. In fact, two different people asked me if they were a couple.

Plus, their fake kiss looked pretty real to me. The last I saw of them, they’d been going into his room.

However, she sat in her room this morning when I went in to wake her. Her suitcase and backpack were neatly stacked by the front door and she’d already taken a shower.

Sigh fifty-eight and counting escaped from Maggie. It would be a very long year in France if she moped about being here the entire time.

Although, sighing did seem like a very French thing to do. I studied the couple across the aisle from our seats. He wore a sour expression like he smelled something terrible or someone had insulted his wife. The woman opposite him, who I assumed to be the maligned wife, frowned as she read her book. Neither smiled the entirety of our short train trip. Nor did they speak to each other. Maybe they were strangers after all.

Arriving in the station, he handed her a small bag from the luggage rack above their heads. She passed him his hat and I noticed a thin gold band.

Exhaustion washed over me as we lugged our suitcases up the stairs to the street. The director of our program had arranged to meet us outside and escort us to orientation.

Maggie tromped along behind me, in even more of a daze than I felt. I didn’t know if it was the moping or jet lag. Probably both.

A guy on a scooter whizzed past us, nearly hitting my large suitcase. I jumped back from the curb, pulling Maggie with me.

Next to us, a woman in a chic pencil skirt and red lipstick scowled and whispered, “Stupid Americans,” under her breath in thickly accented English. I knew the only reason she spoke English was to make sure we understood her insult. Delightful welcome to the city of love.

An older woman with dark hair streaked with white waddled up to us. She reminded me of a little penguin with her small pointed nose. Her round belly stood in stark contrast to the ultra slim Parisienne woman who insulted us.

Maybe the snooty woman only felt hungry. I could get very cranky when I was hungry, too.

The benevolent penguin greeted us in a mix of French and English. “
Bonjour
! You must be Maggie and Lizzy!”

Maggie snapped out of her walking coma and said, “
Bonjour
, Madame Picou.”

Madame’s bobbed hair bounced with her excitement. “Welcome to France!
Bienvenue a Paris
!”

I wondered if she would repeat everything in both languages.

Maggie gathered herself together and introduced us. Jet lag had erased my language skills. I smiled mutely and made awkward hand gestures.

Madame Picou smiled at us, then gave us double kisses, one on each of our cheeks. She smelled of old roses and hairspray, with a lingering layer of strong body odor.

I immediately nicknamed her Madame Pee-ew in my head and giggled. I’d have to tell Maggie later.

We were among the final students to arrive for our program’s orientation. The rest had departed by private bus earlier in the day. Madame Picou stuffed as much of our luggage as she could into her small Renault’s trunk. Our backpacks sat on the seat next to me.

All of our possessions fit into this tiny French car. We each shipped over a couple of boxes of winter clothes a few weeks ago. We were basically gypsies for the next nine months.

Madame Picou drove like a Formula One driver. She cut across lanes and barely slowed down unless she encountered a red light. Out the window, Paris blurred past us as we headed to orientation at a château outside of the city.

“We need to pick up one more student.” She swerved around a bicycle close enough I could’ve reached out and stolen the baguette in the basket on the back.

I thought about where we would put more luggage and wondered if I’d missed a roof rack.

The car came to sharp halt in front of a café on the corner of two quaint streets. Everything appeared charming to my American sensibility.

A tall blond man warily approached the car with a rucksack type bag on his back.

Madame Picou prattled something in French at him and unlocked the door behind her. Unless he planned to sit on our backpacks, I had to shift them closer to me. One I put on the floor between us and the other I held on my lap, barely able to peer around it.

“Hello.” He shoved his pack into the car and squeezed in behind it. His own bag filled the middle of the seat, creating a wall between us.

“Introduce yourselves while I drive.” Picou put the car into gear and we lurched away from the curb.

Maggie rotated in her seat and stuck out her hand. “I’m Margaret. The tiny woman smothered under the bags is Elizabeth.”

I peeked around the tower of backpacks. “Hello.”

It was all I could do. My hands were trapped, and even if they weren’t, I wasn’t sure I could stretch around his bag to shake hands.

“Christopher. Christopher Liddell. Delighted to meet you both.” His accent wasn’t American. Who said delighted? Besides Quinn?

“You sound like James. James Bond.” Maggie emphasized the pauses in between his first and last name. “No double-o-seven?”

“Sadly, no. A simple university student.”

“
En français,
” Madame Picou commanded.

Jet lag overtook me and I rested my head on the window. The sun poured in through the glass and something smelled of fresh laundry and spices. I sniffed myself. Nope, it definitely wasn’t me. My clothes held the faint aroma of stale airline air and public transportation.

I would only close my lids for a minute while I listened to the conversation
en français
around me. I didn’t want to be rude, but my brain was too tired to translate and conjugate.

A gentle touch shook my shoulder. “Elizabeth? We’ve arrived.”

I jolted awake at the sound of a male voice close to me. Completely confused, it took me a minute to realize I sat inside a car.

While I attempted to shake off my impromptu nap, concerned gray-blue eyes came into focus. They belonged to the handsome face of a stranger with a British accent who leaned into the back seat of this tiny sedan. He rested his elbow near my head.

“How did I end up in England?” I attempted to blink away my confusion. “How long was I asleep?”

He chuckled. “You’re in France. Outside Paris.”

“Why are you calling me Elizabeth?”

His left eyebrow dipped while his right arched, making him appear almost comical. “You were introduced as Elizabeth. By Margaret?”

“Who’s Margaret?”

“Did you hit your head?” Maggie peeked around him. She disappeared, and then my door opened. Her head reappeared in front of me. “You fell asleep on the drive to the château. You were out completely, even snoring.”

I hung my head. Great first impression. Confused, snoring American girl charms no one. Despite my recent snooze, I wanted to close my lids again. I could have slept like the dead for days.

Maggie tapped my nose. “Don’t fall back asleep. We’re in France!”

At least I thought it was her. My lashes fluttered as I lifted my lids.

With a tug, she pulled me out of the backseat. I managed to get my feet under myself before I splayed out face first in the gravel of the drive.

“I’m up. I’m awake.” Planting my feet, I spread out my arms.

Applause came from behind me. I spun at the sound.

Prince Charming and two other guys clapped. After a bow followed by a curtsy, I stuck out my tongue. “In the fairytales, the prince awakens the sleeping princess with a kiss.”

Christopher arched his eyebrow again. I wondered if he practiced in the mirror. Honestly, he seemed the type. Now that we were out of the car and no longer squished by luggage, I could examine him more.

He wore a slightly rumpled pale yellow button-down Oxford shirt, tan pants, and very crisp white sneakers, without socks.

I swore if I had my copy of
The Preppy Handbook
, his picture would have been in there. His dark blond hair hung almost to his very high cheekbones unless he pushed it back. The ends brushed his collar in the back.

Angular cheekbones. Check.

Ruddy, prone to blush, pale English skin. Check.

Patrician arrogance. Check.

Mr. Darcy school of charm. Check.

“If the lady insists upon a kiss, then a kiss is what she’ll receive.” He strode closer and kissed my cheek. I froze, holding my breath. Then, slowly, deliberately, his breath brushed across my lips as he moved to kiss the other cheek.

Dumbstruck, I silently blinked at him as he stepped back.

“Kit’s not a prince. He’s not even a baron, poor bastard.” A short, dark haired guy slapped Christopher’s shoulder.

Standing next to me, a wide-eyed Maggie observed the subsequent scuffle and play-fighting between apparent friends. Or blood enemies. I couldn’t tell.

“Who’s Kit?” she whispered. “Is he the one who kissed you?”

“I have no idea, Margaret.” I clasped her elbow. “What’s with the formal names?”

“Maggie and Lizzy sound too American. Our given names are more sophisticated.”

“We sound like Thatcher and the Queen.”

“Or the youngest Dashwood and elder Bennet sister in Miss Jane Austen’s novels.” Christopher interrupted our conversation.

“Dashwood and Bennet could be lady crime fighters. I like it.” Maggie beamed a smile in his direction. I realized I wasn’t the only one of us to notice his arrogant charm.

It had to be the accent. Maybe it was ingrained in us from a young age to find British accents appealing. Our generation had stayed up all night, if we were lucky, to watch Princess Di marry a future king in a real life fairy tale wedding. Even I had the Princess Di haircut in elementary school. Something in our blood must have remembered the old colonial days of British rule. Maybe somewhere deep down, some of us still wanted to be told what to do by a British man.

I thought about my first real crush on a fictional character. It hadn’t been Mr. Darcy or a prince, but Sebastian Flyte and his teddy bear Aloysius in
Brideshead Revisited
. I could still recall watching the mini-series on PBS with my older sister and parents. We’d been allowed to stay up later than our normal bedtimes to watch classic literature and be educated.

At eleven years old, I’d missed all the homosexual overtones in Sebastian’s sad story. All I saw was dreamy Anthony Andrews. He was a charming blond, too, and the first in a long line of bad boys who stole my heart.

“Come on, let’s help the American girls with their bags.” Christopher pointed to our luggage piled near the bumper.

“Anything else in the boot?” a short freckled redheaded guy asked, tapping the trunk.

“You mean the trunk?” I asked.

He looked at our suitcases. “You have a trunk, too?”

“No, the car’s trunk.”

He regarded me in confused silence.

“The thing your hand is resting on right now?”

“That’s the boot.”

“This is going to be a long year if we can’t communicate while all speaking English, let alone French.” Maggie shrugged her backpack over her shoulder.