Page 3 of City of Love
“Hey, beautiful woman,” I read under my breath. “We’re going to spend the next month in Paris together. Hope you’re excited—I know I am.”
No. No, I am not.
I block Marcus’s number—again,though I worry he’s using a burner number app—and throw my phone down, feeling suddenly apprehensive about this whole trip. I mean, no way am I letting Marcus stand in the way of me going. But he’s still going to be a pain to deal with.
I sigh, finishing up my email to Noel.And Marcus texted me, I type quickly.He’s apparently excited to spend a month in Paris with me. Ugh. We’re going to need to avoid him. Anyway, I’ll see you soon!
I press send before flopping back on my bed, my mind still on Marcus. A little niggle of dread is starting to squirm in the pit of my stomach. He’d better not ruin this whole trip.
When my computer pings, letting me know I’ve got an email, I groan. Somehow I just know it’s Marcus, although he shouldn’t have my email address. But that’s never stopped him before. I sit back up, glaring at my inbox.
“Oh,” I say, surprised to see that it’s Noel; she’s already answered my email. Her response is only two words:Get online.
I log in and pull up the instant messenger we use, and sure enough, there she is. Within seconds, a message pops up.
I thought Marcus was leaving you alone, she writes.
I shrug, though I know she can’t see me.He was, I say.But he’s texted me three times now in the past week since we graduated.I frown before adding,You should be sleeping. Isn’t it the middle of the night for you?
Don’t worry about me,she says.What has he been sending? Any pictures? Did you block his number?
I just blocked it,I reply.And no pictures.
Three little dots pop up, telling me Noel is typing, but they disappear. A second later they show up again, and judging by how long it takes, I expect her message to be long. But when it comes through, I’m surprised.
Good, she says. A second later, another message shows up:We’ll worry about him when you get here, if we have to. Stay away from him on the flight. I’ll make sure he leaves you alone.
I give a snort of laughter. She’s funny. She does this sometimes; puts on a sort of tough-guy act, despite the fact that there’s probably not much she could actually do or say to keep Marcus away from me. Maybe it’s because she’s older.What are you going to do, beat him up?I type.
Definitely, she says.
I grin, shaking my head.We chat for a minute longer before Noel tells me she needs to go, and we log off. I lie back on my bed once more, feeling a little better. It’s going to be surreal to actually meet her in person. I hope it’s not awkward. If it is, though, we’ll get over it. We’ll get over it, and this trip will be amazing.
Paris, here I come.
Chapter 2
Noel
My heart is in the pit of my stomach when I say goodbye to Lydia, and I grit my teeth. I allow myself ten seconds to indulge in a daydream in which I punch Marcus in the face; those ten seconds are over too soon. I would love nothing more than to beat the guy up. I hate the way he comes on to Lydia. He’s a bully and a creep. And though I know Lydia puts on a brave front, I also know her—and I can tell that as much as he makes her angry, he also frightens her.
I grimace as I think back to the rest of her email. I dislike that part almost as much as I dislike Marcus, but for very different reasons.
We have one month of nonstop girl talk ahead of us.
This situation has gotten out of hand, and Ireallydetest situations like that.
When I started writing Lydia three years ago, I didn’t intend to deceive her for this long. I didn’t intend to deceive her atall. My mother was teaching English at a school here in Paris, and she and her friend—a French teacher in Stone Springs, Wyoming—decided to have their classes write each other as pen pals.
Except there were more English students than there were French students. Which meant that one student—Lydia—was left without a French pen pal.
So my mother asked me to step in. I didn’t want to; I fought her on it. Writing letters to some girl three years younger than me wasn’t on my to-do list.
But when Lydia’s emails started coming—and then later when she started opening up about how glad she was to have someone to talk to, because there were things she didn’t want to talk to her friends about—I thought I’d better stick it out. She’d been having trouble at school with Marcus, and she didn’t know what to do.
It was a few emails later that I realized she thought I was a girl. It was my name; I doubt she realized it was a man’s name as well as a woman’s. But because Lydia doesn’t do anything halfway—because she gives 110 percent, throwing herself into new situations with abandon—by the time I needed to correct her…well, she was already wholly invested in her female pen pal.
Her female pen pal who doesn’t exist, because I am as male as they come.
