The Distance from A to Z (18 page)

“No, she wouldn't.” Zeke cradles me close and we walk like that all the way back to the hotel. And then through the hotel. And up to our room.

Our room.

“ABBY.”

The voice whispering in my ear is too deep to be Alice's. And too close, for that matter. Because the voice seems to come from a mouth that is right near my ear and is probably connected to the two arms that are wrapped around me.

And if it were either of my brothers, they'd have already sprayed me with cold water, wouldn't have waited to wake me first. And they wouldn't be holding me quite like this. Like they were both trying to keep me close and to shift slightly.

I wiggle closer to the warm body.

And hear a growl and a deliberate shift backward of the bottom half of the body near me.
“Merde,”
he says, and I can't help it. I giggle because all of a sudden I'm completely certain why Zeke is trying to move backward and it has nothing to do with his embarrassment at waking up with our bodies intertwined, my back pressing into his front, and everything
to do with . . .

His front.

“Stop laughing,” he says, his growl slightly more ferocious. “When you laugh your body moves more. . . .”

Which only makes me laugh more. Because there's this absolutely lovely boy in bed with me, around me, holding me. An absolutely lovely boy who can't quite stop his body's reaction to me. An absolutely lovely boy who made me feel beautiful and enticing and so damn sexy last night, but who never made a peep when I said I didn't want to take things further than we'd already gone.

Even when I changed my mind. And changed it again. All before he even had a chance to speak.

It was only when I apologized that he raised his voice. He stared me down. “Even if I didn't have a sister who would castrate me with a rusty spoon if she even got a hint that I would force a girl to go further than she wanted to, I would never be that guy.”

“Thank you.” I nod. “But we should probably find out if there's a French term for
castrate with a rusty spoon
because that speech would have sounded so much better if you weren't going back and forth between languages.”

Zeke rolls his eyes. I love the way he looks without his glasses, almost like a little kid. His eyes are so close to mine, those long lashes.
“Tu es mignonne,”
he whispers, cute, and
then bends forward to kiss me and all I can say is I definitely don't want him to be punished by his sister.

I want to tell him how I feel.

His fingers slip below my camisole and it tickles.

“Zeke, arrête.”
I laugh.

“Pourquoi?”
Why?

“Parce-que je veux te dire quelque chose.”

It's hard to be serious when his fingers are driving me mad. But I want to tell him.

“Zeke,” I plead.

“Quoi?”
His fingers halt their attack on my skin and his face goes quiet. Not content quiet, but worried quiet. The tiny patch of skin between his eyebrows is furrowed and I cup his jaw with my palms, smoothing his rough cheeks with my thumbs.

“It's nothing bad,” I promise. “I just . . .”

I've never said this. I've never—

“I don't know how to say this,” I struggle, “because you know the French have only one word for
like
and—”

This is definitely not the right way.

So while it feels awkward, I switch to English. “Zeke, I love you. And I know it's only been a few weeks, and we barely know each other and that you're going back to San Diego and I'm in Chicago but—”

The frown lines between his eyes have deepened.

And suddenly my heart is beating way too fast and my lungs are clearly not able to fill properly because this is mortifying, because he's looking at me with eyes that seem sad. His eyes shouldn't be sad, should they? I mean, I've never said those words to anyone and I clearly botched the lovely moment, but . . .

“You don't have to say them back,” I squeak, still in English because apparently when I'm embarrassed beyond belief, I can't think of the right French words. Which is kind of ironic since apparently when I'm drunk, I can only speak French.

I'm rambling in my head. Mostly because Zeke is probably still staring at me with that pitying look on his face, his body so close to mine, and this is beyond what I can handle.

“I should go to the bathroom.”

“Don't,” Zeke whispers. “Don't. You're sad, and I didn't want to make you sad.”

“It's okay,” I whisper, and I know tears are gathering and maybe if I make a quick exit, I can clear them before—

“I love you too, Abby.”

Okay, this is actually worse. Didn't think it could be, but it is. I'm getting the pity I-love-you. I didn't even know that was possible.

“Stop, Zeke, it's all right. I'm apparently just the type of person who feels things really intensely and maybe I'm
wrong anyway, and I definitely should have waited.”

“No, you're not wrong.” Zeke's tone is harsh and, despite myself, I open my eyes. “I love you too, Abby. I didn't pause because I didn't feel the same way. I paused because I wanted to say it too, so much. I've wanted to say it for days now.”

“Then why . . .” Why the frowny lines? Why the worry?

“I think we should talk.”

Now that's never a good sign.

And so because I'm coward, a true coward, I make a decision I know in my core is the wrong one. “If this is about what happens after the program ends, let's just not deal with it. Let's pretend that all that matters is this lovely little bubble that we're in right now.”

Zeke shakes his head and I know this is the beginning of the end, and I don't want it.

“Please,” I beg. “We don't need to worry about what happens after, not now. Let's worry about that when it comes.”

Zeke looks away, his eyes focusing on the door to our room, on the sign explaining the evacuation route and the checkout time, and I hope . . .

“Okay,” he says, but his smile is still sad.

Zeke convinces me to leave our room when I can't hide my growling stomach anymore. We stroll through the early morning streets, the sidewalks deserted but for the
storekeepers opening their shops.

I don't care because it's warm, but there's a cool breeze that feels glorious against my sunburned skin. But mostly I don't care because I'm walking through streets that could be in France, for all I'd know; the language of my dreams is everywhere. It's like a beautiful alternate universe where everyone is living inside my happy place. I don't need
Amélie
or Paris. I am happy right here. My happy place that is made infinitely happier given Zeke's firm grip on my hand. I want to pull him into an entryway and kiss him; we can melt into the streetscape, melt into this life, right here. There's no baseball here. No Chicago. I don't even need to cross the ocean; I can make my life here on this tiny street in Old Montreal, a
boulangerie
and
pâtisserie
and
dépanneur
to keep me fed, a
librairie
to keep me busy. And Zeke. Zeke for everything else.

Except Zeke isn't relaxed. His grip is tight, like he's afraid I'll take off running. His usual torrent of French is silent. He's not even peppering me with silly questions.

But I'm pretending that it doesn't bother me. Maybe it's just too early in the morning. Maybe we both need more coffee.

“Je pense,”
I start, not so much filling the silence as reveling in the morning, “I think that if I can't go to the Sorbonne, if I don't get in, I'll come back here. Apply to McGill
or the University of Montreal. My parents can't get mad at that, right? Aren't Canadian schools cheaper than American ones anyway? And classes are in English so I can live in French, or take French classes, but be able to do my degree in English.”

Zeke gives me a weak smile. A weak smile that is not even a half smile. But I'm not going to worry.

“Montreal is awesome. I know it's not as gorgeous as Paris, but it's a city that couldn't even support a major-league baseball team, so that makes it fabulous in my books. And I can—”

“Monsieur, je peux donner une fleur à ta belle fille?”
A white-haired gentleman in a brown suit has stopped sweeping the cobblestones in front of his store to pick up a fully bloomed red rose. He holds it delicately by the stem and points it toward me, his eyes trained on Zeke.

Zeke nods slowly and the man turns the rose to me.
“Une belle rose pour une belle fille.”

A beautiful rose for a beautiful girl.

I'm definitely never leaving.

“Come, take a picture with me and my rose,” I tell Zeke, pulling him close beside me. I extend out my phone and snap the picture, our two smiling faces framed by the dull gray buildings of old Montreal in the early morning, the dark cobblestone street.

With Zeke Martin in Vieux Montreal
, I write under the photograph and post it, my first post since I left Chicago. And then I shut off my phone.

We spend the day touring through Montreal, notebook pages filled with the words we look up, the conversations we have. Zeke's exhaustion must have passed because he's back to normal, laughing and joking as we take the Metro, hit up a drumming circle on Mount Royal, and eat the fluffiest eggs at L'Avenue. All in French.

We walk through the McGill campus, the run-down student ghetto, taking side streets up through the plateau to St-Viateur Bagel. In a small waiting area with a giant woodburning oven, we watch as dozens of bagels come off the oversize spatula, dumped into giant bins. Each of us buys a dozen bagels.

“Où veux-tu aller?”

I'll go anywhere, I want to say, but instead I shrug. We only have a couple of hours until we're due back at the bus station in order to make the last bus, and I hate the idea that this is our last weekend together, that in a week we'll both be headed back home, far away from Montreal, far away from Huntington.

“Un autre café?”

Definitely. Coffee is my official beverage of choice here.

“
Oui
.” I smile. We pick up extra-large coffees and settle down on a park bench near what seems to be a very hotly contested soccer game.

“Viens ici,”
Zeke whispers, pulling me closer, his arm resting across my shoulders. Leaning my head on his chest, I sip my coffee and watch the soccer players. The men, seemingly in their midthirties, are strong and dark, their olive skin painted with a faint sheen of sweat. They race back and forth across the field, unapologetic in their praise and condemnation of their teammates. The crowds sitting around the field follow their lead, shouting jeers at the goalie, who misses catching the ball by a hair.

“What language are they speaking?” I know that French in Quebec sounds different, but nothing has been quite as difficult to understand as their yells.

“Based on the flags the various fans are waving, I'm guessing Croatian and maybe Tunisian?”

An elderly man hobbles over to the shamed goalie and smacks him on the head.

“Oops.” I laugh. “Someone's in trouble.”

We watch through the last quarter of the game, cheering for both teams until our voices are almost as hoarse as the spectators'. As the crowds disperse, they hand us their leftover flags, each team believing we were on their side.

The clock strikes four, and I groan. “We should probably
start heading in,” I say, pulling my phone out and turning it on to check the time.

Four missed calls from Jed. Two from Si.

“Listen, Abby, before we get back, I want to talk about something.” Zeke's voice is strained, and it takes me a few moments to realize he's switched to English. We've been speaking French nonstop for so long that it seems odd to even hear English words coming out of his mouth.

“Of course,” I mutter, my fingers swiping across my phone. What if something happened at home? Most likely not. Most likely Jed called once to say hi and then butt-dialed me the rest. And Si . . . maybe—

“Let me just call home quickly,” I say, handing him my bag of bagels, my red rose, flags, and the collection of postcards I purchased.

“Everything okay?” Zeke asks, transferring all the bags to his right arm so he can hold mine in his left.

My phone is ringing and it's my home number. Odd. I wonder if I should tell them I'm in Montreal, that it'll cost extra to talk to me here. Or maybe it'll cost me extra?

“Abby!” Jed shouts as I swipe the answer button before the call goes to voice mail. “Si, it's Abby! C'mere. Finally! Abby, I can't—”

“Zeke, just a second,” I mutter, my hand in Zeke's coming to rest on his chest.

“Holy shit! Ezekiel is there? He's actually there? I thought this might have been a joke, that you were pulling our leg. But you're actually standing there with Ezekiel Martin? Really? I told Si that guy at your school looked like Ezekiel Martin but he said there was no chance. Put him on the phone!”

“Wait, what?” How would my brothers even know who I was standing with? I feel like there are giant puzzle pieces floating around and I have no idea how to connect them all. “Are you guys here?”

“What? No! Abby! Put Ezekiel on the phone!”

I turn to Zeke and his face is white, his eyes wide. He's clearly heard their shouting.

Is this some kind of odd brotherly love thing? Like
Don't hurt my baby sister or I'll come get you
? But they wouldn't be excited for that, would they?

Zeke holds the phone, his eyes pleading with mine.

“This is Zeke.”

I can hear the vague shouts and the sound of my brothers' voices, but Zeke has the phone pressed so tightly to his ear that I can't hear much else.

“Sure, sure,” he says, his jaw tighter and tighter. “I'm definitely considering all my options.”

He listens for a long moment, his eyes closed. “Absolutely. I'll get your information from Abby and I'd love to meet up when I come through Chicago.”