by Katia Rose
She’s shaking. There’s a metallic taste in the back of my mouth when I swallow, and it takes a moment for me to recognize it for what it is: dread.
“DeeDee, what happened?”
She draws in a shaky breath and lets it out before clutching the hand I still have resting on her knee.
“We don’t need to talk about it. It’s not very fun to hear.”
“I’m not just here for the fun, DeeDee.” I can’t help sounding a little stern. “I’m here for the scary parts too.”
Her grip on my hand tightens. We sit in silence for a few minutes, and I’m about to offer to let it go when she starts to speak again.
“I wasn’t really close with anyone in high school. I knew a lot of people, but they were just people to talk to and party with, you know? Except Clémentine. Clém was my best friend. We were like one person to everybody: DeeDee et Clém. We both wanted to move to Montreal after graduation. I wanted to go to haircutting school, and Clem wanted to study makeup art for movies and plays and stuff, but we needed to save up, so we got this really shitty apartment in Trois-Rivières.”
She pauses for a moment, and I run my thumb along the back of her hand, letting her know I’m here.
“Clém started working as a dancer at a strip club, and she got me a job as a bartender at the same place.” She watches my face like she’s waiting for a reaction, but I just sit there waiting for her to go on. “It was really fun, actually. Everyone is always talking shit about strippers, but they are some of the baddest bitches there are. We both loved our jobs. We were supposed to move to Montreal after a year, but the money was good, and one year turned into two. After that, things started going bad. She never told me if anything happened, but Clém started hating dancing. I didn’t see it then, but I think she became depressed. There were always drugs at the club. Everyone knew it, and Clém started getting into it just to get through her shifts.”
The dread is rising like bile in my throat. A prickle of awareness inches up the back of my neck. I can see where this is going.
“She got into trouble with the wrong people, something about money. She kept saying we should leave town, that we should just pack our bags one night and go, but we never did. I was so worried about her, but she was just...It’s hard to help someone when they get like that, and I was so young. I always made sure she had someone to leave the club with if I wasn’t working, but one night her ride bailed without telling me, and she...she just didn’t come home.”
I can hear the blood rushing in my ears. I’ve only gotten through half a piece of toast, but my appetite has vanished.
“I didn’t know what to do. I sat there for so long, all alone in that shitty, shitty apartment, and she just didn’t come home.” She’s crying now, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs, and I throw my arm around them. She leans her weight into my chest. “I called everyone, but nobody had any news. I waited until the next day to phone the police, but what was I going to say? ‘My best friend who is a stripper and owed money to drug dealers is missing?’ Girls like Clém aren’t people to the police. They made a missing person thing, but I don’t think they even looked for her at all.”
She gives in to the tears and cries into my chest while I hold her. I feel hollow. Numb. Almost three years I’ve known DeeDee, and never did I think she could have been through something like this. Never did I look at the girl dancing on table tops and pouring tequila shots and think she could be hiding so much pain.
So I hold her. I hold her so tight and pray to whoever might be listening that I can take some of it away.
“I moved to Montreal the next month. I cried during the whole bus ride here. It felt like I was giving up on her, leaving like that, but I did everything I could, and I was so scared the same thing would happen to me.”
“DeeDee, don’t you dare feel bad for getting out of there,” I can’t help urging. “It terrifies me to think that you might have stayed.”
She sniffs and sits up straight, running the back off her hand over her eyes.
“I don’t really tell people about this. I try not to think about it.”
“I told you I’m not just here for the fun.”
She hesitates for a moment and then nods, drawing in a few deep breaths.
“You know,” she adds in a quiet voice, like she’s sharing a secret, “sometimes I like to think that she’s here, that she got on a bus to Montreal like we always said we would. Sometimes I think I’ll bump into her in the street one day, and she’ll be all happy and beautiful. She’ll have some fancy job doing makeup for plays. She’ll say she had to run away so she wouldn’t get me in trouble, but she always knew we would see each other again. Sometimes I see girls who sort of look like her from the back, but when they turn around, it’s never her.”
Heat pricks the corners of my eyes as I watch her stare off into the distance, the most gut-wrenching ghost of a smile I’ve ever seen resting on her lips.
“DeeDee, I had no idea...”
“Of course you did not.” She barks a laugh. “I’m pretty good at hiding it, hein? When I started working at Taverne Toulouse, I was broken. It felt like I would never laugh or feel safe again. It felt like my whole future was gone. I couldn’t go to haircutting school, of course. I still can’t. It...It’s too hard without her, but when I met Monroe, and Roxy, and...and you, it made me feel okay. It felt like having a pack. It felt like having the friends I was always looking for in Trois-Rivières, and it didn’t matter if any of my maudit boyfriends ever worked out, because I had my little family of barflies there for me.”
“DeeDee.” I shift so I’m completely facing her. “I’m not some maudit boyfriend, okay? I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to make you believe it.”
She smiles, and it might not be the triumphant moment I’m looking for, but I see hope there. I look into her face, and I see a chance.
“I really want to. I really do, Zach.”
“Good.” I jump up off the couch. “Let me tell you something, DeeDee Beausoleil. I’ve had a lot of time to think of the perfect first date to take you on, and I have quite a few ideas. I think we should do all of them today.”
Thirteen
DeeDee
DIGESTIF: a typically sweet alcoholic beverage meant to be consumed after a meal
“I can’t, Zach. Tabarnak, I’m so full. I can’t walk anymore.”
I hold my stomach and try to keep up as Zach walks ahead of me. He’s going way too fast for somebody who just ate four tacos, two churros, and drank a margarita.
“Where even are we?” I complain.
We had dinner at a little Mexican place in the Old Port with the cutest terrace I’ve ever seen. Before that, we had brunch at a cute cafe in Saint-Henri and then got back on the metro to spend the afternoon hanging out in Parc Lafontaine, eating ice cream and joining in a game of Frisbee with some kids after they almost hit Zach in the head.
It’s been a perfect day, full of talking and laughing and holding hands. I’ve wanted to kiss him maybe two million times since we left the house. The way we both start breathing hard whenever we look at each other a certain way or stand extra close on the sidewalk lets me know he’s thinking it too, but I always look away or step aside. The moment just hasn’t seemed right yet. It’s stupid and girly and makes me sound like a fifteen year-old on her first date with a boy, but I want our first kiss to be romantic—perfect, even.
I’ve never felt like I needed things to be perfect with a guy. I’ve spent years behind the bar telling people to forget about perfect and just go for it, but the pressure to get this right is like a balloon in my chest that grows and grows the more I think about it until there’s no room for anything else.
“You’re falling behind, DeeDee,” Zach calls over his shoulder.
“Connard,” I mutter before shouting, “Tu es fou! You’re a crazy man!”
“Here.” He stops beside a rack of city bikes you can rent. “Let’s get a couple of these.”
&nbs
p; I glare at him. “I’m so full I can’t even walk, Zach. How am I supposed to get on a bike?”
“Then you can ride with me.”
“What? How?”
He’s already putting his credit card in the machine next to the bike rack. “You can sit on the handlebars.”
“What? That is not safe!”
He looks at me like I’m the crazy one and grumbles, “City kids.”
After he’s got the bike all paid for, he wheels one out of the stand and raises an eyebrow at me. “Do you want one too, or are you getting on?”
I’m going to puke if I get my own bike, but I’m going to die if I get on his.
“You have to pay for my funeral,” I warn him. “I want a million pink roses.”
“Done.”
He swings one leg over the bike and keeps it steady while I try to wiggle onto the handlebars. They were really not made for a person’s ass.
“Esti! How do you do this?”
Zach laughs from behind me. “You’ve really never done this before, huh? Here, scooch back.”
One of his hands grabs onto my hip, and I suck in a breath like he shocked me. That’s what it’s felt like every time we’ve touched today; all I can think about is his skin and the way he smells and how my heart gets so fast it scares me every time he’s close. He tugs me back until I’m sitting on a part of the handlebars that doesn’t make me feel like I’m going to fall over and hit my face on the sidewalk.
“Shouldn’t we have helmets?”
“Probably.”
I snort to hide how nervous I am. “Wow, Zachy Zach. Look at you, being all brave. Usually I am the daredevil.”
“I can be surprising every now and then. Hold on, okay?”
“O—”
I don’t even finish the word. I start screaming as soon as he pushes forward and begins pedalling down the street. I don’t stop until we’ve gone almost a block and I realize he’s laughing behind me.
“What is so funny, you asshole? I’m gonna die!”
“DeeDee, we’re going like point two miles an hour on a perfectly flat street. You’re also screaming loud enough to wake the dead.”
“I’m gonna be the dead!”
He keeps laughing as we start going faster. I try not to scream again, just so he won’t have another reason to make fun of me, but I can’t help it every time we make a turn or hit a stop. We’ve been biking for about fifteen minutes by the time I realize where we are.
“Are we going across the bridge?”
I forget all about being scared as the lights of the Jacques Cartier Bridge come into view. The sky is already starting to turn pink from the sunset, with a streak of purple along the horizon where the light has faded most. The city is waking up for the night, twinkling and shining like a million bright eyes opening, waiting to see what the evening will bring.
“Yes, we are,” Zach answers. “Is that okay?”
“Oh, now you ask me if it’s okay.” I’m getting more used to the bike. It’s actually kind of fun, but I’m not going to tell Zach that. “I guess we can go across the bridge.”
The truth is that I’ve always wanted to walk across the Jacques Cartier Bridge at night.
There’s a special caged-in walking and biking lane along one side of the bridge. A few people pass us by, heading back towards the city. Some of them laugh at me on the handlebars. Some of them glare like we’re annoying teenagers, but I smile at all of them.
We’re about halfway across when Zach slows down. There’s a little lookout alcove off to the side for people to stop and take pictures. Zach turns the bike into it and stops.
“You have to get off first, or else you’ll fall over,” he explains.
I hop down and run to the edge of the lookout, leaning up against the barrier to stare out at the shape of downtown Montreal and its reflection on rushing waves of the Fleuve Saint-Laurent. The sky is almost completely purple now, and it’s turning the water the same colour.
I hear Zach putting down the bike’s kickstand, and then he’s standing beside me. I reach for his hand without thinking, feeling the sparks travel up my arm.
“I always wanted to live in Montreal,” he says after a moment of us watching the city together. “We came on a family vacation when I was nine, and we didn’t ever visit again, but I always knew I’d come back.”
“Why?”
I don’t take my eyes off the lights, but I move close enough that our arms are touching.
“I always felt a little stuck at home, and I felt guilty about that. I mean, what did I have to complain about? My childhood was pretty damn perfect, as far as childhoods go, but it was like...everyone already knew exactly who I was going to grow up to be. Everyone knew how all our lives would play out. Sure, there’d be some surprises, but everything is so small in a small town. I felt like I was suffocating, and I didn’t even know why. I wanted to be there for everyone I loved, to be what they needed, but I just...I had to get out.”
“I’m glad you did.”
His hand grips mine a little tighter, and my breath catches again. “I’m glad I did too.”
“Not just for me,” I continue. “I’m glad you did that for you. It’s hard to go somewhere new. I’m sure it was hard to leave school and focus on your business too, and I’m...I’m so proud of you.”
I squeeze his hand back as a group of teenagers walk by, heading to the city. They laugh and swear in French, stopping to take a few selfies before moving on. Zach and I stay quiet, still holding hands.
“You know what?” I joke once they’re gone. “I think you came to Montreal because of all the sexy ladies.”
His thumb runs over my knuckles. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I think nine-year-old Zachy Zach was like, ‘Wow. They don’t make them like this in Ontario. I’m coming back to get me some ass.’”
He throws his head back and laughs for a long time.
“Oh really?” he finally chokes out. “That’s what nine-year-old me was thinking?”
“Mhmm.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have been wrong. There are a lot of very sexy ladies here.”
I make a little growly sound. “A lot, hein?”
“There’s only one I’ve ever wanted to watch the sunset on this bridge with.”
I toss my hair over my shoulder with my free hand. “Damn right.”
And then he’s kissing me.
His hands are holding my face and his mouth is on mine and I don’t have a chance to wonder if this is perfect or not because the whole city is lighting up just for us tonight, and it’s the most perfect thing that’s ever happened to me.
His fingers slide into my hair, and I grab the back of his flannel shirt, parting my lips when his tongue sweeps along them. I moan, and he grips my hair tighter, pulling me closer. All I want is to be closer.
I feel dizzy, like the wall beside us has disappeared and we’re dangling over the water. I feel like we could hit the rocks at any second, like the river is just waiting to tug us under, but then he pulls back just enough to breathe my name, and I forget. I forget everything except how much I want him, how good it feels to have him want me—so good I could scream or cry or run a hundred miles before the sun comes up, but all I do is kiss him harder.
Soon he’s got my back up against the barrier. His hands are gripping my waist, and mine are clasped around his neck, my thumbs rubbing circles into the skin above his flannel shirt’s collar while he does the same to the gap between my jeans and the tight long sleeve top I have on.
He tastes so good, like a mouthful of summer in the middle of spring, and the sound he makes when I brush the tip of my tongue over his makes my thighs clench.
For years, I told myself to ignore the things I felt when I was close to him, to ignore the heat of his chest or the smell of his laundry soap or the way his laugh makes my stomach dip when I hear it right beside my ear. I shook my head and pushed the thoughts away when I started imagining my hands in his hair or his on my hips
.
Even if I had let myself imagine it, it never would have been as good as this.
“Monsieur Hastings,” I pant after we’ve kissed for so long we’re both losing our breath. Our chests are still pressed together, heaving as we gulp down air. “You have some moves.”
He lets out a hoarse laugh and shifts his weight. His hips press harder into me for a second, and I gasp.
“Fuck,” he curses. “You have some moves too.”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth. “It’s pretty sexy when you swear.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, like a good boy gone bad.”
He makes a face. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“Well I do.” I lift my hips a little higher. “And I like it.”
He groans and kisses me again, even harder than before.
We find a city bike stand a few blocks from my house and drop the bicycle off. My ass is killing me from sitting on the handlebars for so long. Even though Zach said I was exaggerating, I did almost die a few times, but we made it back in one piece.
I could have spent the whole night making out with him on the bridge, but when our hands started climbing up each other’s shirts, we decided it was time to leave.
It takes me a few steps to realize Zach’s not beside me anymore. I look over my shoulder and see he’s stopped moving just outside the circle of light cast by a streetlamp.
