“Didyou trim your bush for this?”
I stay quiet for just a little too long.
“Ooh la la, someone’s getting laid tonight!”
“We are not having sex!” I protest. “Shaving is just part of my special occasion grooming routine, okay?”
“Right. I’m sure you shave your pubes for Christmas morning and your nephew’s birthday too.”
I lift my chin up in the air. “Maybe I do.”
“That would be so creepy. Now get your ass out the door. You look the exact right amount of fancy, and Frenchman is going to be on you like a magnet.”
“We’renot having sex,” I insist as I finally pull my coat on and Roxanne follows suit. It’s warm enough out that I can ditch my arctic explorer boots and go for some more fashionable—but equally functional—Blundstones instead. “I’m only going on this date because he has something he wants to tell me about the bar and refuses to tell me any other way.”
“I see,” Roxanne drawls in a way that suggests she ‘sees’ something else entirely.
“He’s hot, okay? I’ll admit that. I’m attracted to him, but where exactly do you see things going between us? You know those ‘Caution: Falling Rocks Ahead’ signs? Yeah, a giant one is staring Julien Valois and I in the face right now, and he doesn’t even know it yet. I’m going on one date with him, and then this ends.”
“But you did trim your bush.”
I lock the door behind us and turn to glare at her. “Don’t make me contemplate pushing you off this staircase, Nadeau.”
We ride the metro together all the way to the heart of downtown, where Roxanne hugs me before I exit the train. She stays behind to ride the rest of the way back to her and Cole’s condo.
“I owe you a beer for the fashion advice,” I call back over my shoulder.
“You owe me nothing,chérie. Have fun. Use protection.”
I give her the finger from the other side of the train doors.
Up on street level, I walk the two blocks to Frango Tango. The extremely popular Portuguese chicken place is just off Crescent Street, one of the main downtown nightlife hubs. It’s an excellent location for catering to customers looking to grab a quick snack before they head out drinking or to binge on meat and potatoes after they’re done with the night’s festivities.
Someone had their thinking cap on when they decided to put it here.
The red and blue storefront comes into view up ahead, a guy in a tracksuit leaning up against it as he looks at his phone. It prompts me to pull out my own phone and see if Julien’s arrived already and let me know he’s inside. I don’t have any texts, so I head for the door to grab us a seat myself.
I’m only a few feet away when the tracksuit guy looks up.
“Oh...my god.”
I don’t even bother to be subtle as I let my eyes travel from his feet to his head to his feet again as I take the ensemble in: battered Nike running shoes, faded grey sweatpants clinging to his hips, a Cambridge University crew neck sweater, and an actualball capwith the Cambridge logo on it perched on his head.
Julien Valois has dressed down.
He smirks at me where I know I must be gaping at him like a fish. “Told you I’d prove you wrong. There you were, thinking I only wear suits on dates.”
I clamp a hand over my mouth as I stand there shaking my head.
“How do you like the look?”
“You...” I stutter from behind my fingers. “You look...”
‘Fucking hot’ would be the most accurate term to use here. Julien does laid back sporty almost as well as he does business casual. I didn’t know sweat pants could do the things they’re doing for his body, and the hat makes him look like some sort of army sergeant on his day off—except it’s a Cambridge hat, so he also has the added benefit of scholarly values spritzed on him like a fine cologne. He’s a complex cocktail of manly charms with an alcohol content high enough to get you drunk off just the smell of him.
And sweet lord on high, do I ever want to smell him right now.
“You look adequate,” I manage.
