Anna and the French Kiss
Page 44

“What?” I hop into my jeans, a noise he seems to determinedly ignore. His ears are apple red.
“You went to see a film, right? Don’t you set your mobile to silent at the theater?”
He’s right. I’m so stupid. If I hadn’t taken Meredith to A Hard Day’s Night, a Beatles movie I know she loves, I would have never turned it off.We’d already be in a taxi to the airport. “The taxi!” I tug my sweater over my head and look up to find myself standing across from a mirror.
A mirror St. Clair is facing.
“It’s all right,” he says. “I told the driver to wait when I came up here. We’l just have to tip him a little extra.” His head is stil down. I don’t think he saw anything. I clear my throat, and he glances up. Our eyes meet in the mirror, and he jumps. “God! I didn’t . . . I mean, not until just now ...”
“Cool. Yeah, fine.” I try to shake it off by looking away, and he does the same. His cheeks are blazing. I edge past him and rinse the white crust off my face while he throws my toothbrush and deodorant and makeup into my luggage, and then we tear downstairs and into the lobby.
Thank goodness, the driver has waited, cigarette dangling from his mouth and annoyed expression on his face. He yammers angrily at us in French,
and St. Clair says something bossy back, and soon we’re flying across the streets of Paris, whizzing through red lights and darting between cars. I grip
the seat in terror and close my eyes.
The taxi jerks to a stop and so do we. “We’re here. You all right?” St. Clair asks.
“Yes. Great,” I lie.
He pays the driver, who speeds off without counting. I try to hand St. Clair a few bil s, but he shakes his head and says the ride is on him. For once, I’m so freaked out that I don’t argue. It’s not until we’ve raced to the correct terminal, checked our luggage, passed through security, and located our gate that he says, “So. Batman, eh?”
Effing St. Clair.
I cross my arms and slouch into one of the plastic seats. I am so not in the mood for this. He takes the chair next to me and drapes a relaxed arm over
the back of the empty seat on his other side. The man across from us is engrossed in his laptop, and I pretend to be engrossed in his laptop, too. well ,
the back of it.
St. Clair hums under his breath. When I don’t respond, he sings quietly. “‘Jingle bel s, Batman smel s, Robin flew away ...’”
“Yes, great, I get it. Ha ha. Stupid me.”
“What? It’s just a Christmas song.” He grins and continues a bit louder. “‘Batmobile lost a wheel, on the M1 motorway, hey!’”
“Wait.” I frown. “What?”
“What what?”
“You’re singing it wrong.”
“No, I’m not.” He pauses. “How do you sing it?”
I pat my coat, double-checking for my passport. Phew. Stil there. “It’s ‘Jingle bel s, Batman smel s, Robin laid an egg’—”
St. Clair snorts. “Laid an egg? Robin didn’t lay an egg—”
“‘Batmobile lost a wheel, and the Joker got away.’”
He stares at me for a moment, and then says with perfect conviction, “No.”
“Yes. I mean, seriously, what’s up with the motorway thing?”
“M1 motorway. Connects London to Leeds.”
I smirk. “Batman is American. He doesn’t take the M1 motorway.”
“When he’s on holiday he does.”
“Who says Batman has time to vacation?”
“Why are we arguing about Batman?” He leans forward. “You’re derailing us from the real topic. The fact that you, Anna Oliphant, slept in today.”
“Thanks.”
“You.” He prods my leg with a finger. “Slept in.”
I focus on the guy’s laptop again. “Yeah. You mentioned that.”
He flashes a crooked smile and shrugs, that ful -bodied movement that turns him from English to French. “Hey, we made it, didn’t we? No harm done.”
I yank out a book from my backpack, Your Movie Sucks, a col ection of Roger Ebert’s favorite reviews of bad movies. A visual cue for him to leave me alone. St. Clair takes the hint. He slumps and taps his feet on the ugly blue carpeting.
I feel guilty for being so harsh. If it weren’t for him, I would’ve missed the flight. St. Clair’s fingers absentmindedly drum his stomach. His dark hair is extra messy this morning. I’m sure he didn’t get up that much earlier than me, but, as usual, the bed-head is more attractive on him. With a painful twinge, I recal those other mornings together. Thanksgiving. Which we stil haven’t talked about.
A bored woman cal s out rows for boarding, first in French and then in English. I decide to play nice and put away my book. “Where are we sitting?”
He inspects his boarding pass. “Forty-five G. Stil have your passport?”
I feel my coat once more. “Got it.”
“Good.” And then his hand is inside my pocket. My heart spazzes, but he doesn’t notice. He pul s out my passport and flicks it open.
WAIT. WHY DOES HE HAVE MY PASSPORT?
His eyebrows shoot up. I try to snatch it back, but he holds it out of my reach. “Why are your eyes crossed?” He laughs. “Have you had some kind of
ocular surgery I don’t know about?”
“Give it back!” Another grab and miss, and I change tactics and lunge for his coat instead. I snag his passport.
“NO!”
I open it up, and it’s . . . baby St. Clair. “Dude. How old is this picture?”
He slings my passport at me and snatches his back. “I was in middle school.”
Before I can reply, our section is announced. We hold our passports against our chests and enter the line.The bored flight attendant slides his ticket
through a machine that rips it, and he moves forward. I hand mine over. “Zis iz boarding rows forty through fifty. Plizz sit until I cal your row.” She hands back my ticket, and her lacquered nails click against the paper.
“What? I’m in forty-five—”
But I’m not. There, printed in bold ink, is my row. Twenty-three. I forgot we wouldn’t be sitting together, which is dumb, because it’s not like we made our reservations together. It’s a coincidence we’re on the same flight. St. Clair waits for me down the walkway. I shrug helplessly and hold up the boarding