The Bridge

by Jill Cox

  The courtyard and the Grande Salle still buzzed with life.

  The coffee machine still delivered its magical elixir.

  Monsieur Ludovic still breezed into history class in his uniform. And he still seemed like he should be wearing a cape.

  Marshall still chomped on his chocolate.

  Dan continued to hold his hand out for Anne every day at lunch. And every day, Anne accepted.

  Harper and Kelly still made everyone laugh eighty times a day.

  And, just like before, Pete Russell zoomed in and out of every class with nothing more than a brief nod my way or maybe, if I was lucky, a tiny smile.

  Yeah. So much for being that so-called bridge between his two worlds. I was ninety-nine percent sure I’d imagined that whole conversation. After all, it would hardly be the first time my mind had played games with my heart.

  Two weeks later, April arrived in Paris, and you know what? Turns out that cliché is actually true. The gray skies disappear, the sun comes out, and l’amour takes over. On the Métro, in the parks, at the sandwich shop – everywhere you go, someone’s smooching somebody else. Every once in a while, people smooch somebody they don’t know. Why? Oh, wait, sorry. The question is: why not?

  Thanks so much, Paris. No really. Merci beaucoup.

  Because France was on trimesters, our friends back home would end their school year about a month before we were to end ours. So despite the blue skies, the Centre Lafayette was quite the dismal place until Madame Beauchamp called a meeting one day in late April.

  “Mesdames et Messieurs,” she said sternly, “need I remind you that with the privilege of extra-long school breaks and an abundance of public holidays comes the terrible burden of spending extra time in Paris while your friends at home are bored out of their minds in the suburbs? Poor you. Yes. Poor, pitiful you.”

  The entire group laughed, but we understood. Time to get over ourselves.

  “As you know, on Thursday, May 8th, the French will celebrate Victory in Europe Day,” she continued. “Therefore, it seems fitting that immediately following the dismissal of Monsieur Ludovic’s history course next Wednesday, we will all board the high-speed train to Provence for the final Centre Lafayette cultural trip. Be prepared. We have a lot of ground to cover while we’re there.”

  She wasn’t kidding around. The first full day of our trip, we were all over Provence visiting Avignon, Nîmes, and Arles. Even though our brains had to jump from antiquity to the papacy to post-Impressionism all day long, no one seemed to care. Best of all, Meg Green had strep throat and had to stay in Paris, all alone.

  I should have felt badly for Meg. I should have offered to take notes for her or at the very least, bring her a souvenir, because four whole days sans Mademoiselle Verte was the best news I’d had all year. My buddies and I were back in business, and everything felt quasi-normal again. By the time I fell into bed that first night, my cheek muscles actually ached from so many hours of grinning.

  On Friday morning the tour bus headed to the Côte d’Azur, stopping first at a perfume factory in Grasse. After an hour learning about essential oils and fragrance notes, Madame Beauchamp paired us in teams and tasked us with making a scent for the other person. My partner was Pete. We’d been given a worksheet to help us pinpoint the correct scent combination for our teammate, but instead of following directions, Pete had created his own questionnaire for me.

  “Okay, Sully. Which animal do you prefer: giraffe or cheetah?”

  “What kind of a question is that?” I scowled as I began searching through our kit for the base oil. “Come on, Pete. Just stick to the real questions.”

  “But these are real questions. Madame Beauchamp’s questionnaire didn’t ask what I wanted to know. Don’t you trust me to make you something nice?”

  “Why would I trust you? I saw you grab the gardenia-scented oil when you heard me telling Anne it makes me gag.”

  “Fine.” Pete slid the gardenia essence off to the side. “I’m still waiting, Red. What’s your choice: giraffe or cheetah?”

  “Giraffe,” I scowled, pouring the base oil for Pete’s scent into the tiny beaker.

  “Interesting.” Pete propped up his notebook so I couldn’t see what was going on behind it, and squeezed a dropper into his beaker, contorting his face like a mad scientist. “Okay, next question: Portland, Oregon, or Portland, Maine?”

  “How do you make such high grades when you never bother to follow the assignment? Dr. Sweeney would be so disappointed in Highgate’s third most talented French major.”

  “The assignment is to make a scent that represents your partner,” Pete corrected. “Madame Beauchamp won’t care that I’ve ditched her questions when she finds out I’ve made the perfect Eau de Sully. Now, tell me. Which Portland?”

  I pretended to think for a minute. “Portland, Ireland.”

  “There’s no Portland in Ireland. Even I know that.”

  “There is. In County Tipperary, right in the middle of the island. I have pictures of my brother and me standing next to the sign on Facebook. I’ll be happy to show you.”

  “Which leads me to my next question.” Pete resumed the mad scientist face as he dropped another mysterious oil into the base. “Which social media platform do you visit least often?”

  I dropped some sandalwood oil into the beaker, then shrugged. “That’s easy enough. I couldn’t tell you the last time I tweeted anything.”

  “I can. 7:43 this morning,” Pete said without looking up. “At least I assume today was your turn to post a vertisme. But maybe it was Kelly. She’s starting to pick up your phraseology.”

  I whipped my head around to find Dan, but he was too busy mooning over Anne to notice my glare. When I turned back to Pete, he was watching me, arms crossed, eyes dancing triumphantly.

  “Oh, look who’s nervous now?” He shook his head, chuckling to himself as he dropped some unknown fragrance into the base. “Don’t be angry at our Danny Boy, Sully. He never would’ve told me about your secret project if I hadn’t forced it out of him one night last month. He was laughing so hard that it woke me out of a dead sleep. I guess my storming into his room scared him, because Dan surrendered you and Kelly like his life depended on it.”

  “You’ve known for a month?” I felt my eyes widen. “Ugh. I’m really sorry, Pete. You know we were just messing around. Please don’t tell Meg. It would hurt her feelings.”

  He removed the notebook from between us and proceeded to clean up his station. “No problem,” he said without lifting his eyes. “We broke up.”

  “What? Hold on a minute. Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. Actually, we broke up around Easter.”

  “But I see you guys together, like, all the time.”

  “Oh, come on, Sully. You know how it goes. Just because you’re not together doesn’t mean you stop talking.” The lines around his eyes reappeared. “You do know how that goes, right?”

  I did know.

  The day after Drew and I broke up, he’d called to see if we could set our change-in-relationship status as invisible. When I asked him why, he said we had too long a history to owe the randoms of the world an explanation.

  The next week during his spring break, Drew came over to our house in Lincoln City every day to visit my dad. Afterward, the two of us would walk along the beach until the sun went down, hashing through everything we’d never admitted to one another but still needed to say.

  A couple of weeks after my return to Paris, Drew had called me to say the guys had unanimously elected him president of Sigma Phi Beta. Every single brother, including Pete Russell.

  And to my complete shock, my heart swelled with pride.

  The next week, he’d messaged to let me know he’d driven home for Easter, that my dad was well, and that not one single person in either of our families liked Ian’s new girlfriend, Kate.

  I didn’t even know Ian had a Kate.

  So he caught me up on what I’d missed, and just like that, Drew and I
were friends again. The kind of friends who care about each other, no matter what.

  Now we texted once a week, Thursday night his time, Friday morning in Paris. It was like Friday Morning Breakfast, Version 2.0. That had been our tradition for a lot of years, after all.

  The fact that Drew wanted to honor it now meant more to me than he’d ever know.

  So I smiled down at my beaker and shrugged at Pete’s question. “I might know a little something about that. But Pete?” I looked up. “I’m really sorry I tweeted those things about Meg.”

  Pete watched me for a moment. “It’s okay, Sully.”

  “No, it’s not. Sometimes my mind fills up with too much energy and I don’t always let it out the right way. I didn’t think it would matter since only the Addison girls had access.”

  “And Dan.” Pete raised an eyebrow. “Here’s a little-known fact about Dan Thomas: he may be Highgate College’s brightest French mind, but he is terrible at closing his browser windows. Also, his password is AnneWilder. Capital A, capital W, one word.”

  “Guess I’d better retract that CIA recommendation. So, um… you’ve read everything?”

  “Everything.” Pete leaned back in his chair, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You got pretty prolific there in the last month, Sully. If I didn’t know better, I might think some of those Green-isms only existed in that wild imagination of yours.”

  My mind raced back through everything we’d written the past few weeks. Not much was libel-worthy, but every single tweet was vindictive.

  Except Meg’s ex(!!)-boyfriend seemed as relaxed and happy as I’d seen him in months. Even the dark shadows under his eyes were gone. Pete Russell seemed like himself again, and for that alone, I was deliriously grateful.

  “Here you go.” He slid the small perfume bottle my way. “I hope you like it. I think the name is especially fitting.”

  In Pete’s distinctive architect-esque script, the label read: Jalousie Verte.

  “Green Jealousy. Aren’t you clever?” As I opened the bottle, the mismatched fumes of evergreens, gardenia, and tobacco made me cough violently. “Whoa. Is this going to explode?”

  “You don’t like it?” Laughter danced around Pete’s eyes. “They say ladies prefer a light scent in this part of the world. Go ahead, Sully. Put some on.”

  “Aren’t you sweet? But no. This is the sort of thing you save until the day after never.”

  “Pretend all you want, but we both know you’ll be sporting it around by the end of the day. I bet the rest of your friends will be – wait for it – green with jealousy.”

  “The expression is green with envy. And this smells like feet.”

  “But really well-groomed, nicely pedicured feet, right? And now for my signature scent, please.”

  I finished writing on the label, then slid the bottle across the table. “Don’t break it.”

  Pete opened the bottle, and after he lifted it tentatively to his nose, a surprised smile crept across his face. “Wow, Sully. This actually smells nice. What’s in it?”

  “Patchouli, pine, sandalwood, and leather. See what happens when you follow directions? Things work out the way they are supposed to. You should try it sometime.”

  “Maybe I will.” He took another whiff from the bottle. “So, what did you name it? Les Orteils Qui Scintillent. Oh, I get it. You’re fluent in franglais now, are you? Is that supposed to mean Twinkle Toes?”

  “Look, not all of us have a clever nickname generator built into our brains. It was either that or Soul Patch, but who knows how to say ‘patch’ in French?”

  “Pièce, tache… depends on what kind of ‘patch’ you mean, really. But I think in this case, they’ve got a word for ‘soul patch.’ Une mouche.”

  I stuck my hand across the table. “Hand the bottle back. Come on, hand it over.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re renaming your scent Dictionnaire.”

  “Aw. Who says you don’t have the nicknaming gift, Sully? A less creative person might have settled on a more boring choice, like Celui Qui Sait Tout.”

  The One Who Knows It All. That wasn’t a nickname – that was a fact. Well, except for knowing how to mix scents, because ewwwww, that perfume he’d created smelled like a poodle smoking unfiltered cigarettes in the garden wearing three-day-old socks.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  I don’t know if she sensed our need to be together, but that afternoon, when we pulled up to our hotel on the Côte d’Azur, Madame Beauchamp put Harper, Kelly, Anne and me together in the largest room. The windows stretched from floor to ceiling and opened onto a long balcony that overlooked the Mediterranean and Nice’s famous Promenade des Anglais. It was a gorgeous afternoon when we arrived, and while the other girls made plans to find the Old Town market, the sea was calling to my Irish-Oregonian roots.

  “Do you guys mind if I skip out on the market?” I asked after we had unpacked. “I think I need to go for a run.”

  “Who could blame you?” Harper opened the balcony doors to let in fresh air. “We should be back by seven. The guys said they’d meet us back here about that time.”

  “Oh. They’re not going with you?”

  Kelly pushed her sunglasses on top of her head, scowling. “They’re going to an arcade up the street. We are in Nice, the jewel of the Azure Coast, and those nerds want to play video games. Not explore the town. Not check out the boardwalk. Video games, you guys. Remind me again why we keep them around?”

  “Because they’re adorkable. Well, one of them is,” Anne grinned, then sighed dreamily. And with that, I left the hotel, crossed the street, and jogged left onto the Promenade des Anglais.

  I always felt my sanest when I was breathing steadily in and out, and the saline coastal air somehow made me feel whole again. After weeks of being land-locked, I found comfort in the sound of the waves rising and falling nearby. I couldn’t help it – I come from a long line of coastal-dwelling Irishmen. Even my name meant ‘guardian of the sea.’ I guess it was in my blood.

  On my return, the sun was inching its way slowly down to the Med, the sky turning warm shades of orange and pink above the blue horizon. That’s when I noticed Pete standing on the boardwalk, pacing back and forth. I slowed to a walk, wiping sweat from my face with my sleeve. I couldn’t believe how beautiful he looked standing in the fading light. Or how un-beautiful my reflection looked in his aviator sunglasses.

  “I thought you guys went to the arcade?” I said in between heaving breaths.

  “Dan did. I came to find you.”

  I steadied myself against the low wall of the boardwalk. “But won’t I see you in, like, half an hour or something?”

  Pete brushed a rogue strand of hair out of my eyes and tucked it behind my ear. Then he cupped my sweaty face in his hand. “Yeah,” he said, stepping closer. “But this morning, when I told you about Meg, you looked so happy. So I figured you wouldn’t mind if I finally did this.”

  Can you make up for nine months of lost time in one moment? It’s hard to say, but when Pete kissed me, I wanted that moment to last forever, even if that meant spending eternity in a sweaty t-shirt. Each time Pete’s lips brushed against mine, it felt like he was showing me his side of our story, with all the parts that I’d missed, like a love letter with no words.

  “You mad?” Pete said, pulling me tight against him.

  “No,” I smiled. “But can you tell me what possessed you to pick right now to kiss me?”

  Pete’s chest bobbed up and down as he laughed against me, at first because of my irreverence, and then, it seemed, with relief. “Well, I’m sorry. Did you have a better time in mind?”

  “Let’s see.” I pushed him playfully away, then took the sunglasses off his face and put them on so I didn’t have to stare at my disgusting self one second longer. “Any day of the week at school. Later tonight after I don’t smell like Jalousie Verte…”

  “You make a valid point.” Pete pushed his sunglasses up my nose with his index fing
er. “Thanks for the tip, Sully. Next time Anne of Green Gables makes me fall in love with her, I’ll pick the swooniest moment I can to let her know.”

  “Very funny.”

  He slid his hand to my hip. “So, did you really not know until just now? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve been using my best material on you since the first time we met, and… whoa, why are you scowling at me like that?”

  “Because you already kissed me. There’s no reason to waste your time wooing me now.”

  “Did you just say woo?” Pete’s eyes slid down to my lips. “That is disturbingly hot, Sully.”

  “Yes, well, you’re the one who likes to make out with sweaty girls in disgusting t-shirts.”

  He looked at my shirt, then smiled. “This is going to be our thing from now on, isn’t it? You’re going to make fun of me for kissing your sweaty face, and I’m going to have to explain how it was actually romantic, because I. Just. Could. Not. Wait.”

  “Okay, this conversation has taken a turn for the weird.” I tugged at his free hand. “Come on. Let’s see how far this boardwalk goes.”

  As we walked along, fingers entwined, my little friends the stomach butterflies arrived back in droves. Pete confessed that he’d nearly kissed me three separate times: once at the Tuileries the night of La Nuit Blanche, which did not surprise me. Once on my birthday, which did. And finally, in his room after Gigi’s wake, when the two of us had been sitting so close that I could actually still smell his scent on me hours later up in my own bedroom in Lincoln City.

  When we’d strolled half a mile, Pete pulled me in front of him at the railing, both of us facing out to sea. He slid his hands around my waist and bent his face forward so that our cheeks touched as we watched the waves rolling in and out along the shore.

  “So, I have to ask,” he finally said, pulling me closer. “Are you sure you’re over Sutton? Because I heard a rumor that you guys still talk a couple of times a week.”