Chapter 18
We pass the same doorman as earlier and I send him a smile as he holds the door open for us and we step out into the early evening.
The rain has almost completely stopped and the air smells clean, like the downpour washed away the grime of the city, at least until tomorrow when everyone will dirty it up again.
“So, where are we going?” I ask, falling in step with him.
“We could just wander?” he suggests. “I’ve heard that’s the best way to see Paris.”
Seeing Paris. That sounds nice and it’s something I’ve been dying to do since we arrived. The Seine is right across the street, and I know enough from our car rides back and forth to the arena that if we follow it, we’ll probably see a lot of the city.
“Let’s walk along the river,” I say, nodding toward the Seine.
“Let’s,” he agrees.
The city is older than Boston by almost two thousand years, but it’s been rebuilt enough over the centuries that the stone and the buildings and the bustle of people going about their daily lives almost feels like I could be at home.
“It almost feels like home,” Freddie says, echoing my thoughts.
“Like Atlanta?” I ask, not turning to him, but looking out over the river.
“Atlanta’s not home. It’s just where I train.”
“Oh.”
He means Boston, then. Boston is his home. Just like it’s mine.
It’s still winter, technically, but despite the clouds and the earlier rain, it’s actually not that cold outside, which is a relief since I didn’t think to put on a jacket before we left. I didn’t really think about anything at all, except how much I wanted to go.
The silence stretches out in front of us and I eventually give in to it.
“Ben’s still with Riley?”
“Yeah,” he says, “I hope he can get through to her. I told her that she’ll come back better than before, but I don’t think she believed me. It might resonate more coming from him. He’s been there, you know, with the injury.”
“She’s afraid you’re going to drop her as a partner.”
“What?” he asks, his eyes flying wide open with panic. “There’s no way I’d do that. I would never.”
“I know,” I say softly. “That’s what I told her.”
“Good.”
“You should tell her, though.”
“I will.”
“Good.”
I could kick myself for bringing this up. There’s too much baggage here, but when am I ever going to get another chance to do this?
“I never thanked you, you know, for staying with me, back then. I should have.”
“Adriana, you don’t have to—”
“Yeah, I do, especially after I didn’t—”
He shakes his head, stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk. “You did what you had to do. It took me a little while to realize that, but it was the right call, for the both of us. I wouldn’t have been able to make a call like that.”
And just like that, two years of awkwardness are erased, and my shoulders feel light and I pull in a breath of crisp air.
“We should get food,” I suggest randomly.
“Food?”
“We’re in Paris and all we’ve done is eat at the hotel restaurant. We should have food.”
“French food?” He sounds unsure.
“I mean, it’s Paris, there’s probably all kinds of food. We could probably find a McDonald’s if you want. We could be those kinds of tourists. The ones that come to Boston and eat at Red Lobster.”
He sighs. “French food. Let’s do it.” And then he hesitates for a second. “What are the odds you’ll try snails?”
“Ha! One in five. Same for you, though.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Forget it, no snails.”
We find a bistro with a menu outside where we recognize at least some of the words and order a few things the waiter insisted are light because if I’m going to win a World Championship in three days, gorging myself on French food isn’t a great idea.
I take a few bites from each plate, one with veal, another with crepes, another with gratin potatoes, and yet another dish called coq au vin that I’d definitely order for my last meal if I ever found myself on death row.
Freddie finishes them off. I drink water, and he drinks wine the waiter recommended, which feels like a very grown-up thing to do.
This entire day has been a lot of grown-up stuff, to be honest, but there’s something about the way he sips the wine from the glass instead of chugging it like people down beer at parties that feels right.
Like the way walking down the street earlier felt.
“Is…is everything okay with you?” he asks, sopping up the last bit of sauce from the coq au vin with a piece of flaky bread that I kind of want to snag out of his hand for myself.
“Uh, yeah? Why?” I blink at him.
“I don’t know, maybe I’m way off base here and you can tell me to shut the fuck up if you want, but it feels like something’s wrong, like something’s been wrong for a while.”
I sigh, falling back against my chair. “But we were having such a good time.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he says with a casual shrug that I know is anything but casual. He’s worried, I think.
I don’t have to tell him anything. And that makes me want to spill my guts even more, because sitting across from me isn’t the guy who could barely look at me when he first got to Kellynch, or even the guy who looked at me with cold detachment outside of Fenway Park on a cold Boston morning, and not even the guy who I pressed against in the club while for a second I let myself forget everything else in the world.
He’s just Freddie O’Connell, the boy I grew up with, the boy who knew me better than anyone. Him? I can tell him anything.
Except I can’t. I promised Brayden.
Shit.
“It’s just, you know my dad. Money’s tight and there’s a lot of pressure and now this thing with Brayden is a lot and confusing,” I say, trailing off, hoping that’s enough for him to get it.
“Is he pressuring you or something? I’ll kill him.” And he looks serious as he shifts forward in his seat, like that’s not an idle threat.
“No,” I say, in a rush. “Nothing like that. It’s all just a lot. Have you ever gotten in over your head with something, thinking you wanted one thing and it was the right call and you sort of wish that it wasn’t?”
Freddie sits back, clearing his throat roughly, his eyes avoiding mine. “Yeah, yeah, I have.”
“So now I’m sort of stuck and it’s not a bad stuck, necessarily, but it’s still stuck, and I don’t really know what to do about it or if I even should do anything about it, especially since I definitely thought I was doing the right thing at the time. Is any of this making any sense at all?”
For a moment we sit in silence and then Freddie leans in his chair.
“I honestly have no idea,” he says, “but at least we can distract you from it a little. C’mon, we’ve barely seen any of Paris and it’s getting dark. We should watch the Eiffel Tower lights and then get…is it gelato in France or just ice cream?”
“Glacé,” the waiter says helpfully as he lays the check down on the table.
Freddie smiles at him. “Glacé,” he repeats.
I pay, which makes Freddie grin.
“Charles has really come through with sponsorships,” I say with a shrug, and it’s true.
Every other day or so we post another random thing about a headband or a type of makeup or socks that we wear after training, and while the money isn’t huge amounts, like the contract he’s working on with Nike, for now, I feel more than able to pay for this meal and maybe the ice cream too.
“Big-time,” Freddie says with a laugh.
“I guess.”
“I’m sorry, mademoiselle,” the waiter says, coming over with our check and my card. “It was declined.”
My brow furrows and I take the card back from him. “Declined? That’s impossible.” And then realization washes over me.
Elisa’s new boots.
Dior boots.
Those things can run into the thousands. She must have used the same credit account to buy them and I’d been too distracted by this thing with Brayden to notice.
Well, so much for big-time. I’d be mortified if I didn’t feel like such a fucking idiot. Where did I think the money came from? Thin air? Ugh.
“It’s okay,” Freddie says, pulling out his wallet and handing his card over. “I’ve got this.”
The waiter takes it and makes himself scarce, but that doesn’t stop the fiery heat building from my chest, up my neck, my blood boiling. I can practically feel the steam coming out of my ears.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumble, fumbling with my phone to check the card’s balance. Sure enough, there’s Elisa’s boot purchase from this morning for more than two thousand euros, maxing out the card.
“Family,” Freddie says carefully. “Family is hard.”
“Easy for you to say. Your family is wonderful.”
“They are pretty awesome. I’m lucky,” he says, and when I don’t respond, he drops it entirely. “C’mon, let’s get out of here and see more of this city.”
Stepping outside into the early evening, the sun is setting in the distance and the sky has lightened, with streaks of orange and pink. It’s warm for March, but still cooler than earlier and I shiver, shifting the collar of my sweater a bit so it covers both shoulders a little better.
“Can you believe we made it here?” I say as we fall into step again on the stone walkway along the river. If he’s willing to ignore what just happened, I want to do that too, at least for a little while. “We always talked about Worlds when we were kids, getting here, and we did it.”
“Well, second time for you,” he says, laughing, though when I glance up, I can see some tension in his eyes, “and while I’m here technically, not so much with the competing.”
I wave it off. “Temporary setback. Riley will recover and you two will be on the ice again in no time at all.”
“Yeah, though whether she’ll ever trust me again after what happened…”
“You know that it’s not your fault, right? There’s nothing you could have done. But the good news is, when Riley wants something, there’s no stopping her. Like I said, you guys will be back.”
He shrugs and I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I can do to convince him.