Love Lessons

by Daphne James Huff

  With a familiar pang, I settle back onto my bed and cover my head with my hands. “Pretty sure I failed whatever Zara’s last test was.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” says Reggie. “She’s the one who told the girls to stay in the group. To see it through till the end. To make sure we win.”

  I sit up. “Really?”

  Maybe all hope isn’t lost. Not that I have any clue what to do to get her back. She’s all the way in France, after all, with no intention of coming back.

  I take a deep breath. “Will you guys…help me think of ideas to get her to forgive me?”

  They both smile, and a weight lifts from my shoulders.

  “Of course we’ll help,” says Bronx. “Your mooning around the rest of the semester would be a serious downer.”

  Reggie nods.

  “But before that, we have an even more important question to answer,” says Bronx, a familiar scheming glint in his eyes.

  “What’s that?”

  “What are we gonna do to get back at Don?”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Zara

  “So how did the presentations go?” I ask Rosalie, trying to sound like I don’t really care.

  But of course I care.

  It’s all I’ve been thinking about all day. Even when I was taking my dad for his daily doctor-approved walks around the block, my mind kept drifting back across the Atlantic Ocean, wondering what was happening. My dad has been doing much better the past week, walking easier and longer each time he goes out. I was just there to keep him from stopping every two seconds to chat with the neighbors.

  “It was…interesting,” Rosalie says with a smile. Even without the video chat, I’d have been able to hear the secret in her tone.

  “What happened?” My mind goes to the worst-case scenario first. They must have done awful. Guilt wracks through me at the thought that it’s my fault. I wasn’t there to help complete the project.

  “Don and Jules totally bombed.” She grins widely as the words tumble out in English.

  “Bombed?”

  “They did terrible,” she says. “Jules stood up in the middle of it and walked off the stage. Don was up there with Alex, looking furious.”

  I give a weak chuckle. The thought of his humiliation doesn’t affect me much. He was the one to post the message, but it wasn’t his idea. Rex still told him to get everyone to stay away from me. How does Don looking like a fool change any of that?

  “We’ll hear the results tomorrow, but he, for sure, won’t be winning. I think we really have a chance.”

  “That’s great,” I say, and I mean it, but my energy is gone. I’m so torn between lingering anger at Rex and the desire to see him get what he wants. It doesn’t make sense, but when does love have to make sense? My heart aches for him, even though he hurt me. My only hope is that with time, and distance, he’ll fade for me, and I’ll be able to move on.

  “How’s your dad?” she asks, knowing me well enough to change the topic before I start crying.

  I go into details about his plan for physical therapy and the charges brought against the driver who hit him.

  “It sounds like he’s doing really well.” She smiles, and gratitude flood my heart fills at how much she cares.

  “He is. It was so scary, but he’ll get through this.”

  “So…do you think you’ll be coming back after the April vacation?”

  I shake my head. “Why would I? There are only a few months left. I can study from here for the baccalaureate just as well as I can there.”

  One of the reasons my parents picked Shelfbrooke was because of their international baccalaureate program. That way I could still prepare for the big year-end tests we take in France while abroad. But it just makes sense to stay here now.

  “Won’t your parents let you come back?”

  “My mom did tell me I could, if I wanted,” I say. She’d given me a lot to think about when she’d told me I could go. “But I don’t think I will.”

  “I thought you missed me and Maria,” she says with a slight frown.

  “Of course I do. I miss you every day. But I think…” I trail off. Rosalie is patiently quiet while I sort out my thoughts. “I think I need to be on my own for a while.”

  To my surprise, Rosalie smiles. “I think that’s a great idea.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes! I’ve been trying to tell you for ages that you don’t need us there with you to do what you want.”

  I can feel the tears welling up.

  “But, of course, we love to be with you,” she says.

  I shake my head. “That’s not why I’m crying.” I laugh a little, through the tears that have started to fall.

  “I think, for the first time, I really believe I can do it too.”

  “I wish I could hug you through the screen.”

  Instead we wrap our arms around ourselves and do the best we can.

  My sister suddenly pops her head into my room.

  “Hey, are we going out, or not?” She’s already dressed, her lips a peachy pink and her raven hair straight and shiny. I run a hand through my messy waves, trying to remember the last time I showered.

  “I don’t know…” I look at the screen, but Rosalie is nodding enthusiastically.

  “You should go out. Enjoy spring in Paris for Maria and me. It’s still freezing here.” She gives a dramatic shiver.

  I laugh. “Fine, give me half an hour,” I say. “And let me borrow your red dress.”

  “No, wear the blue,” Rosalie calls from the computer.

  I hesitate. I don’t need to do everything on my own quite yet, do I?

  “Fine, but I’m picking my own shoes.”

  She laughs, and we say goodbye.

  After a quick shower and change of clothes, I’m out in the fresh night air with Ines, our arms linked as we walk the wide sidewalks of the Boulevard Montparnasse.

  “So where are we going?” I ask, recognizing the street, but it’s not one I’ve ever stopped on. None of our father’s restaurants are in this area, and I don’t think there are any clubs.

  “You’ll see.” She gives me a secretive half-smile and steers me into the terrace of a large brasserie.

  “The Sélect?” I ask, confused. “Really? Isn’t it more for tourists looking for Hemingway?”

  “Exactly,” she says, and leads me to a table in the back.

  My heart stops.

  It’s Rex.

  He’s sitting there staring out the window, pencil in hand, looking very much like the young Hemingway jotting down his observations of Paris.

  “What are you doing here?” I say in English, and his head turns.

  His eyes light up at the sight of me, and I swallow hard when I see the pure emotion in them. The last time I’d seen him they’d been blazing with rage. Now it was something close to adoration.

  “I came to apologize,” he says in French.

  My pulse quickens at the familiar lilt of the words on his American tongue, and I look around for Ines, for an indication of what to do. She’s disappeared to a table outside. She waves at me through the window, mouthing “give him a chance.”

  “You couldn’t have written a letter?” I ask, more rudely than he probably deserves after coming this far. He looks exhausted. Did he come right here from the airport? “I mean, this is a surprise.”

  “I can go, if you want.” He looks down, and my heart melts. For some reason, hearing him ask what I want calms me and gives me hope that maybe this will turn out okay.

  “You did come all this way,” I say, and take a seat at the small table. I don’t want to make this too easy for him, however. I cross my arms. “I assume there is more to this apology?”

  He sits down and opens his mouth, just as a waiter approaches. Rex already has a bottle of Fanta in front of him, and I get the same. The waiter walks off, and I stare at Rex, waiting.

  He swallows once, then twice. He puts his pencil down, closes the notebook, but then op
ens it again.

  The fidgeting would be cute if I weren’t so anxious about what he has to say.

  “We don’t have all night,” I say. “They close at two.”

  “No twenty-four-hour diners in Paris?” he says with a half-smile.

  “Did you come to start another France-America argument?” I push back my chair.

  “No!” He reaches out a hand. “I’m sorry. I mean, I’m here to say I’m sorry.”

  He takes a deep breath. “I should never have told Don to stay away.”

  I raise an eyebrow and lean back in my seat. “Oh?”

  “I should never have told myself to stay away.” He looks down at his hands. “I’ve wanted to win the Navarre competition since I was old enough to know what it is. I didn’t think I could ever want anything more.”

  He looks up at me. “Until I saw you.”

  The busy sounds around us fade away, and all I can hear is his voice and my heartbeat.

  “I thought the most important thing was keeping my word. And I’ve been promising myself for years that I’d win the Navarre Prize.”

  “The prize!” I actually jump out of my chair at this realization. “You weren’t there today, were you? You didn’t even present?” I turn to the door, as if to run back to school so he can get there on time.

  But it’s already over. This must have been what Rosalie was keeping from me.

  He gives me a half-smile and walks over to me. He takes my hand in his. “Some things are more important than winning.”

  My breath catches and he takes a step closer.

  “Oh yeah, like what?” My voice is barely a whisper, and he leans in to hear it above the din of the café. “Revenge?”

  “Like love.”

  His lips find mine, and it’s like we’ve never been apart.

  And I hope we never will be again.

  Epilogue

  “Is this near the Moulin Rouge?” Bronx asks, his eyes glancing from one side of the street to the next.

  Rosalie rolls her eyes and tugs his arm, steering him down another street. “You’re not going to that tourist trap. You’re here to see the real Paris.”

  “Well, are real Parisians working there?”

  I catch Reggie’s eye, and we shake our heads. He takes Maria’s hand, and I wrap my arm around Zara’s shoulder. She leans her head against me, and it takes a breathless moment for my heart to calm down at the thought that this is my life.

  Well, at least, my life for the next week.

  Which probably wouldn’t have happened if Reggie and the rest of them hadn’t won the Navarre Prize.

  Technically I did too, since I was part of the team. I pulled out all the stops on a fake illness to get out of the presentation, and when Shelfbrooke had found out that I skipped school (and left the country) they were less than pleased, to say the least. The word “suspension” was mentioned a few times on the very irate call I got from the dean right after Zara’s sister came to escort us from the café back to their parents’ apartment.

  My dad was furious, of course, but my mom somehow convinced the dean to let me finish out the semester. I think she found it romantic. I had to use her credit card, after all, to get the plane ticket. She said my dad would have never done something like that for her.

  That’s how I knew for sure I’d made the right choice.

  As for Bronx's mom, she was so thrilled that he had won (and finally got accepted into a college), that she wanted to offer us a trip somewhere this summer.

  It did not take much convincing to get them both to agree to Paris.

  “Do you want to see the Moulin Rouge?” asks Zara with a small smile.

  I laugh and shake my head again. “Why is it called the red windmill?” I ask. She points. To a large, red windmill on the other side of the street. “Oh, right.”

  “You know the word moulin?” Her smile widens, and my breath catches a bit at the sight. “I don’t remember that being on the vocabulary lists from Madame Dupuis.”

  “Well, I’ve been studying a little.” I bite my lip. “Or a lot.”

  “Why? You don’t need to pass French anymore. School is over. You won the prize.”

  “We won the prize,” I say with a squeeze of her shoulders. “But there’s this study abroad option that my university offers.”

  She stops to look up at me, her forehead crinkled in an adorably hopeful way. Our friends keep walking, their chatter floating away into the bustle of the Montmartre neighborhood.

  “I need to take a certain number of French classes to be able to come do a semester in Paris,” I explain, and take her hand. My heart is pounding. I didn’t want to say anything until after the fall semester had started. “Or even a whole year in Paris?”

  Her eyes light up and relief washes through me. Then her little half-smirk appears as she leans up to place a quick kiss on my nose. “I hope you’ll be able to study without the Navarre Prize to motivate you.”

  I wrap her in my arms and bury my face in her hair, breathing her in. “I’m sure I’ll think of something that I want more than that.”

  She laughs, and I pull out of the embrace, leaving a trail of kisses across her cheeks. We run through the muggy summer streets of Paris to catch up with our friends, and it feels like I’ve won the biggest prize of all.

  Author’s Note:

  Love Labour's Lost is not the most popular of Shakespeare's plays, but it seemed too perfect in a boarding school setting not to use: The King of Navarre declares he'll not let a women enter his court for three years just days before the Princess of France arrives with her ladies in waiting.

  I've taken quite a few liberties with the original play in this retelling, but a lot of the basic elements and characters are there. I also tried to retain the silliness of Shakespeare. He loved playing around with language, and after living in France for 8 years, I know how much the French love a good pun. Rex and Zara's struggles to master each other's languages mirrors what my French husband and I went through in our early years of dating. But I wanted to give them a happy ending like I got, instead of the play's original ambiguous and somber ending.

  I hope Shakespeare doesn't mind, and that you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Thanks for reading!

  If you loved Love Lessons, please take a minute to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews are essential to an author’s success.

  And make keep reading for a preview of Rebound Boyfriend, a sports romance full of brooding YA romance.

  About Daphne James Huff

  Daphne James Huff was the least cool kid in her high school wind ensemble, but now gets to hang out with (fictional) cheerleaders all she wants, so things worked out okay for her in the end.

  Daphne works in the non-profit sector during the day talking to anyone who will listen, and spends her nights talking to no one while she writes, reads, and does yoga. Sometimes she comes out of her quiet cave to tell stories to her husband, son, and cat.

  The cat is the only one who actually listens.

  Get your free copies of her short stories at www.daphnejameshuff.com

  Daphne is the co-founder of a podcast and online community for indie author moms: www.writermomlife.com

  Rebound Boyfriend Sample

  Chapter 1

  “Jeremiah is staring at you again.”

  I glanced over to where my best friend, Staci, was gazing. She was right. He was staring at me.

  But he shouldn’t be. He was the one who’d dumped me.

  Me, Sammi Parsons, head cheerleader and the hottest girl at this school. Apparently Linzie was hotter, though, since Jeremiah was currently dating her instead of me.

  I turned my eyes to meet his intense amber gaze, and he didn’t even blink. He just looked…sad?

  My nostrils flared. Was that pity on his face? Because I was still single? It had barely been two weeks, and he was the one making out with Linzie before class every morning. If anything, he should be embarrassed. Or ashamed. Or
both.

  Not that I paid any attention to their daily face-sucking routine. But you couldn’t exactly ignore it. They stood in the middle of the hall and were as loud as possible. Though my jealous heart always got the impression she was way more into it than he was, my head told me that wasn’t true. He’d been the one to break it off with me, so he clearly must like her better.

  So then why was he staring at me? Again?

  As I passed him in the hall, I kept my gaze forward, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing how unsettled he made me. I didn’t care about him anymore. He’d dumped me. I’d be an idiot to still care about him.

  But when I came up next to him, I could feel his eyes on me, and it sent a thrill through me like nothing else could.

  Stupid Jeremiah and his stupid amber eyes.

  Staci looped her arm through mine and I leaned into her a little to show my thanks. She’d been there through a winter break full of buckets of tears and endless pints of ice cream, so she knew what a trial it was to just walk down the hallway sometimes. The basketball games were a whole other level of pain that I hoped would dissipate soon. A cheerleader was expected to be peppy, not red-eyed and morose.

  Thank goodness they were so awful and the season was almost over. I didn‘t think I could have handled many more Thursday nights screaming Jeremiah’s name with a huge smile on my face. Ten games left. That was all I had to get through.

  And about one hundred more days of school.

  Safely past the irritatingly beautiful, awful boy who I’d formerly called my boyfriend, Staci and I walked into to our chemistry classroom, heads held high. Once we were settled in at the lab bench, she turned to me with a thoughtful expression.

  “You really need to get over Jeremiah.” She had said it at least fifty times since Monday, but this time, she sounded particularly serious. “Veronica’s tongue has been wagging all week, but I’ve managed to keep her at bay—for now.”