Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
I watched the Champion’s League game against Porto from the sitting room sofa next to my dad, already on his third beer. Max sprawled in a beanbag on the floor; he’d followed the entire pre-match build up, though I wondered how much of it he’d taken in. Having cooked a beef lasagne for dinner, my mum had eaten nothing, declaring herself full after an earlier slice of cake. None of us called her out on it. She’d headed to bed early.
There were no prizes for guessing where Zo? hid herself. Allegedly, she hadn’t been hungry either.
“I suppose I could see if Zo? wants to come down and watch,” Max suggested with a lack of enthusiasm. Did he miss his younger sister? They were nearer in age to each other than me and Zo?, separated by a little over two years. Once upon a time, before all this happened, they’d been as close as an arse and tucked shirt tails. These days, they skirted each other, as if to avoid the sorrow in the other’s eyes.
I swung myself off the sofa. “I’ll go.”
My mum used to joke that entering Zo?’s room was like shopping in IKEA. You went in with a single mission and came out with six cups, four bowls, a wastepaper bin, and some random cutlery. These days, however, it was clean as a new cent. Like a ghost lived there.
I chose the bold step of taking a pew, uninvited.
“You okay?”
The Zo? of our lives before would have demanded I get my stinky fisherman’s jeans off the fucking bed. Older by ten years, I oscillated between the fraternal roles of protector or nemesis, depending on our relative stages of adolescence. In her eyes, the disruptive teenage boy of her young childhood had become an interfering, annoying twat of an older brother, but also a reliable soft touch for a few euros if she was skint.
This after version of Zo? didn’t care. Not turning, a cotton wool ball halfway between her face and the neat dressing table, she shot me a blank stare through the mirror.
“Yeah. You?”
No, I wanted to say . I’m lost too. We don’t talk anymore. “Yeah, not bad. Fancy coming down and watching the footie?”
The blank expression switched to distaste. “Uh… no?”
I shrugged. “Just asking.”
As if I wasn’t there, she resumed pasting gloopy cream onto her face. I resisted the temptation to tell her I thought she didn’t need that stuff, that she was very pretty with her skin bare. Experience, however, and an awareness that my opinion and the opinion of every other man who walked the planet was irrelevant, told me that wouldn’t go down too well. Often experimenting with different styles, she planned on becoming a beautician when she left school. The Zo? of before used to beg me to let her practise by painting my toenails. Come to think of it, she hadn’t mentioned her career plans for a while.
“Your eyes look good,” I offered, with a vague gesture. “That… um… dirty… um… smudgy black stuff around the edges.”
I had managed to entice women to sleep with me, honest. I could be quite the charmer—unless the girl in question was my scary seventeen-year-old sister.
“Gel eyeliner,” she corrected in a bored tone. “Not smudged.” Her hand paused again. “Was there something else?”
“No, I… I just thought we hadn’t talked, you know, properly in a while. You don’t spend as much time with us downstairs as you used to.”
“I prefer being in here.” With a brisk, circular motion, she rubbed cream into the side of her nose, then frowned. “To hanging around death’s waiting room.”
“Hey, don’t be like that.”
“Like what?” She swivelled on the chair to face me, shrewd blue eyes narrowed, challenging me. The spitting image of my mum. “Honest, you mean?”
“That’s not honest. It’s just…”
“It’s just what? Too close for comfort? I’m sorry. You want me to be more like you, do you? Carrying on as if nothing’s wrong? Going to football matches, having a beer with your mates, getting up and heading in to work like everything is fine and fucking dandy?”
“We’ve still got to pay the bills, Zo?.”
“You and Dad do that across the bar at L’Escale, do you?”
Her words might have been angry, and her body language was fucking livid, but I wasn’t so many years beyond being a teen myself. Hot tears weren’t far away. At her age, I’d been up one minute and down the next, brittle moods swinging like a pendulum. The prickly bundle of hormones, now twisting away from me again and furiously dabbing at her face, was navigating all the emotional shit that came with being seventeen and assimilating the fact that she was soon to be motherless.
In that moment, more than anything, I wished I was better equipped to cope.
“What else can I do, Zo??” I asked, resisting the urge to yell back. “None of it feels normal for me either. Nor Max. Not for a second. But we can’t just… she doesn’t want us to sit around… I don’t know… moping and waiting. I’m trying to get through the days, like you are. That’s all. Why don’t you see if you can go out, arrange to do something with one of your friends?”
“What do you suggest?” She jabbed her finger into the pot of cream. “Because it’s a bit of mood killer going over to Sabine’s or Isabelle’s and slipping into the conversation that no, you’re not going on holiday this year because your mum’s dying of cancer. And no, you can’t come back to mine, because there’s a pharmacy and a day bed set up in the fucking lounge. And, oh yeah, that cancer thing? It’s due to a gene apparently. So, I’m probably going to fucking die of it too. But yeah. Let’s go and watch that new Marvel film. Sounds fucking fantastic.”
The tears flowed after that, straight from the heart and brimming with all the pain and fear her head needed to offload but couldn’t put into words. Though no consolation, I knew too well how she felt. And sometimes, an annoying big brother had his uses. Like providing two strong arms built for hugging.
“It’s okay, ma chérie,” I soothed, rocking her. A fucking fat lie if ever there was one. As I said, I was ill equipped to cope. But my shoulder would always be available for her to sob into; as a big brother, I could at least offer her that. “It’s all going to be okay.”
“No, it’s not, Nico. She’s going to die. And I don’t want her to.”
“I know, sweet. I don’t want her to, either.”
Communicating with éti through hand signals and blown kisses on national television was not a wooing strategy I was keen to pursue. Therefore, I popped my mobile number into her letterbox prior to the Champion’s League match and waited. And no way did I check for messages at approximately five-minute intervals from the moment the players left the field. In triumph, too, because they won a tough match one goal to nil, the winner scored by Ruiz, with éti providing the cross.
Watching éti from the sofa, with my arm around my teary sister, was a hell of a lot less stressful than in the stands. Or maybe I’d become a little better acclimatised to going on a date with the world’s finest soccer player.
Regardless, I was still a bag of nerves when I picked éti up on my motorbike the following lunchtime. I told myself my anxiety was down to éti being éti and not, like, because of feelings or anything. Which didn’t fully explain the tug in my chest as she launched herself at me, throwing her arms around my neck like I was rescuing her from a desert island.
“?a alors , Nico! This is so exciting! I’ve never ridden on the back of a motorbike! Show me where I put my feet. And my hands. And how do I fix this strap on the helmet?”
Anxiety felt redundant when the subject of it unceremoniously hitched up her long flowing skirt and tucked it into her underwear. Chunky boots, another floral (home-made, she informed me in a rush of words) floaty thing, and a fitted soft leather jacket (which I guessed cost more than my bloody bike) was super cute. My sister’s pink helmet squashed onto her head was even cuter. When she finally stopped circling the bike and bombarding me with questions, she climbed up behind and clamped her arms around my middle, making sure to give my belly a friendly tickle.
“Are you sure you’re not étienne Salvador’s younger, more annoying sister?”
She banged her helmet against mine, pinching my belly again. “I’ll let you off, Nico, but only because you said younger. Now, where are we headed? And I’m an adrenaline junkie, by the way. So you are going to need to show me how fast this thing goes.”
Having already decided the gossipy patrons of L’Escale didn’t need to be kept abreast of my romantic habits or peer too closely at my date, I’d phoned ahead and reserved a corner table at an out-of-the-way seafood place on the north of the island, in the village of Les Portes. The swankier atmosphere guaranteed I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. An added bonus was the large heated outdoor seating area overlooking the ocean, which meant éti could legitimately hide behind her giant sunglasses. Playing it safe, I parked her with her back to the other diners.
“I’m starving,” she announced, rubbing her flat stomach and perusing the menu. “Are these your oysters?”
I shook my head. “No, but don’t let that stop you. I won’t be offended. They’re still locally grown here on the island.”
“Absolument, non.” éti wrinkled her nose. “I’ll pass. I’m nothing if not loyal.”
Another brief perusal, before her eyes lit up and she leaned forward to whisper at me. “Hey, why don’t I order them and then pretend to be violently ill, like horribly poisoned by a… a seafood poison, and we could complain massively and then the restaurant would stop buying from that supplier and buy from you instead. Why don’t I do that?”
“Two goat’s cheese souffles, please,” I said to the approaching waitress.
“Spoilsport. How about we just share six oy…”
“Do you like moules?”
“Yes, but we could just…”
“Followed by the moules frites , please. For both of us.”
“With extra frites,” hissed éti, her face buried behind the menu. She needn’t have bothered. Frankly, in her oversized sunglasses with frizzy curls obscuring her features, I doubted even her mother would recognise her. “And more bread and butter. As well as the extra frites. I’m never normally allowed them. I promise I’ll do a hundred sit-ups later to atone.”
Nodding to the waitress, I added, “And some extra bread and frites, thank you.”
After she’d gone, I turned back to an innocent éti. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
“Yes.” She beamed. “Absolument. But I’m growing on you, non?”
“Indeed. Like a troublesome verruca.”
She giggled, and with no further need for the menu, put it down. And picked up a knife instead, testing the sharpness before slathering butter over a hunk of bread.
“Do you get the chance to eat out often?” I asked as she lined up another hunk. “Or… um… eat at all?”
Popping the morsel into her mouth, she tipped her head to one side, curls dancing. “Yes, all the time, but not like this. My PA, Rebecca, books out a whole restaurant or at least a private room. And there tends to be an entourage. It’s never spontaneous, you know?”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but I’d have liked to have seen her eyes. “And because everyone’s watching, I always feel obliged to order the fucking green salad or something, and sparkling water. Inside, I’m fantasising about the cheeseburger and deep-fried onion rings washed down with a glass of Bordeaux.”
Another doorstop of buttered bread disappeared. Wordlessly, I passed mine across to her. “Tant pis, I’m used to it. It comes with the territory. I’m also used to sitting with my back to everyone.”
“Trust me, you’re not missing much today.” I pretended to peer over her shoulder. “Although… no… it can’t be…” I gave a mock gasp. “No. I mean, I know we get our fair share of celebs around here, but merde, I think… I think Timothée Chalamet has just walked in.”
“Putain de merde. Where, where?” éti craned her neck in time to see a couple of pensioners take their seats. “You fucker.”
I grinned broadly. “Never mind. You’ll just have to look at me, instead.”
Our cheese soufflés arrived, and éti attacked hers with gusto. Half vanished before I’d even tasted my first mouthful. Between swallows, she dropped her sunglasses down her nose to stare at me. A very fucking sexy manoeuvre, although I sensed she didn’t know it.
I rubbed at my mouth, praying I didn’t have melted cheese dangling. “What are you doing?”
“Looking at you. Like you told me to do. It’s either you or the plain brick wall behind you. And you’re a fraction more interesting.”
“I’m flattered, truly.”
A cute divot appeared between her expressive eyebrows. “Nico, what’s it like to kiss someone with a lip piercing?”
A promising line of conversation. I ran my tongue over the ring through my lower lip. Most of the time, I forgot it was even there. “If the other person has a tongue bar, fraught with peril. It’s wise to check first, because if things became heated, it could rip out. And take half my lip with it.”
“Beurk.”
God, she was fun to tease. “Fortunately for me," I added, “you don’t appear to have one.”
That kept her quiet for a few minutes.
Having demolished the soufflé, éti made short work of the moules, picking each one out at lightning speed and tossing the empty shells into the bowl between us like it was a race to fill it. Sparkling in the lemony early afternoon sun, a cluster of diamonds sat adjacent to the plain gold band on her middle finger, matching the enormous ones in her ears.
“You… um… have quite the appetite, don’t you?”
“So would you if you’d run 10.2 km in ninety minutes last night and burnt around 1500 calories,” she answered smartly. “Did you see me sprint the length of the pitch—twice—only for Dubois to foul that ugly Porto defender as soon as I got there? Both times, the connard!”
Hoovering up another moule, she screwed up her nose in disgust. “I have a nice enough breakfast on match days, toast and eggs or whatever. And then I’m allowed pasta or potatoes or something just as dull and yellow around three hours before kick-off. But from then on, and at half time, I’m simply a girl, standing in front of packets and packets of stinky energy gels and wishing they were steaks. I deserve a medal after every match for remaining alive!”
I tried not to smile as she pouted adorably. The desire to put my own lips on hers was stronger by the second, which both thrilled and scared me in equal measure. “You could save some of your energy by not pulling that ridiculous face. Why didn’t you grab some food afterwards?”
“Because I was in too much of a rush to drive down here, a fact I didn’t intend to share with you, so please erase the last ten seconds from your life, and instead let me explain that, what with endless interviews and post-match physio, I omitted my evening requirement to replace lost fuels. Which was supposed to be a delicious and nutritious high protein/carbohydrate mix comprising green vegetables and grilled chicken with a sweet potato side, but ended up being a bar of chocolate from a vending machine at a service station halfway down the A10 at two a.m. And now this is me, pretending I’m not stupidly excited to be here and multitasking by catching up on my calorific intake while flirting and holding an absorbing and insightful conversation about maximising nutritional input in top-flight athletes. And also trying not to tell you how hot you are in black leather and straddling a motorbike. And hot in general.”
She ran out of breath. Reddening, she slid the sunglasses firmly back up her nose, clamping her lips shut.
A snort of laughter escaped my throat.
“It’s not funny, Nico! Monitoring my oral intake is someone’s full-time job back in Paris!”
Resisting the temptation to say something wholly inappropriate regarding her oral intake, I pushed the bowl of frites over to her. “That wasn’t the part I was laughing at. Here, get these inside you.”
Equating this funny woman with the megastar took some getting used to. Especially when she unselfconsciously moaned around a mouthful of frites drowning in mayonnaise like… well. Mermen and all that. While the food occupied her attention, I rearranged myself down below.
“Watching you play was surreal,” I remarked, changing the subject. “Thanks for the tickets. And that goal wasn’t too bad either.”
She waved away my compliment, like she already knew. éti didn’t do false modesty. “Yeah, it was a good one, wasn’t it? Even Fabien reckoned he wouldn’t have saved it. Pachow! Right into the top corner. The goalie didn’t see it coming. Mind you, I was only half paying attention.” She drew her sunglasses down her nose once more. “Because a very handsome chap in the crowd was distracting me.”
Mon dieu, and if I hadn’t been there? She’d have blown the back of the goal net out.
“Anyhow, thanks to your presence,” she carried on, “everyone now believes étienne Salvador is dating a very pretty brown-haired American actress called Natasha. Which will keep the press nicely occupied for the rest of the season. Who were those devilishly attractive men either side of you, by the way?” She waggled her eyebrows at me. “I may need to take a closer look at them.”
Not happening this millennia. “The lanky one was my brother, who you briefly saw when you came searching for me at the oyster sheds, and he’s way too young for you. The other was my best friend, Florian, who is very much taken. And very gay.”
“Tant pis. I’m stuck with you then. Tell me more about you, Nico. We talk about me—blah blah blah—all the time.”
“There’s nothing to say.” I lifted my shoulder in a shrug. My mum’s dying, my sister coated my shirt in black eye makeup last night, and my dad drank himself to sleep on the sofa . My brother is mostly mute.
When was a good time to mention to your new, superstar friend that, although you seemed a chilled bloke, actually, your mum was near the end of life and your family falling apart? And that, although you couldn’t stop smiling when she was with you, because she was so fucking awesome, as soon as you walked away, you were swamped by guilt for feeling so happy?
“I’m very straightforward,” I added. “The oyster farm, my mates, an occasional night out. What you see is what you get.”
“Mmm.” That cute divot reappeared, and her eyes narrowed. “I’m not convinced. You’re hiding something. You’ve checked your phone twice in the last ten minutes. Is there somewhere else you should be? Or someone else you should be with?”
International superstars weren’t used to less than one hundred percent of anyone’s focus, but checking whether my family had been trying to get hold of me had become ingrained. As had keeping my personal business to myself. “No, nowhere. And most definitely not someone.”
I racked my brain to come up with an excuse. What stopped me from just fucking telling her the truth?
Well, for a start, it would annihilate all the happy, burgeoning romantic vibes. The anticipation of this lunch and escaping into éti’s world for a few hours had been the only thing keeping me sane this week. I didn’t want real life to get in the way of our date. And anyhow, did éti even have an appreciation of real life? Or was it all private jets and limousines and flunkies tying her boot laces?
“My brother promised to text me when a big order was shipped out this afternoon. That’s all. Sorry.”
“Oh, okay.” She seemed mollified. “I’m incredibly excited to be here with you, Nico, but you can understand why I’m a little wary.”
“I can. Sorry for not explaining earlier.” The white lie had me feeling all kinds of guilty. “You have nothing to fear. And believe me—you’re not the only one excited.”
To demonstrate, I shoved my phone away in my back pocket and threw her my most charming smile. “I’m all yours.”
I think she bought the excuse. At any rate, the appearance of a hot chocolate mousse soon distracted her. And her pink tongue, repeatedly darting out to lick it off the spoon, soon distracted me, too.
After éti insisted on settling the bill, we joined the afternoon strollers enjoying the unexpected early season sunshine. Relaxing, I basked in her joie de vivre as she made it her mission to peer into every shop window, even the tacky touristy ones. Determined to squeeze every drop of zest from every experience, her inexhaustible enthusiasm had a magical quality to it, whether shucking oysters on the beach or choosing a saucy postcard to stick on the fridge. Enchanted, I walked alongside, and when she grabbed my hand to point out a gnarled vine twisting prettily along the front of a row of old fisherman’s cottages, I didn’t let go. Her pillowy lips, which I was determined to taste before the day was out, parted in surprise as she stared at our joined hands.
“Is this okay?” I checked.
“?a alor, yes! I’m promenading. And handholding.”
I squeezed her fingers, and she squeezed back. “You’re doing it remarkably well, too. At an appropriate pace, and so far, you haven’t kicked anything.”
“Believe me, I’m trying very hard. And I have an overwhelming urge to run down the street, yelling ‘ look at me!’ from the top of my lungs.”
“Best not, sweetheart.”
“One day I will, you know,” she promised. Her usually restless gaze took on the same calm determination as when she stepped up to fire off a penalty. “One day, étienne Salvador will cease to exist, and éti will take his place. And écoute, Nico. She’ll do whatever she damn well pleases.”
I didn’t doubt it.
On the way back, the speed demon wedged behind me on my Kawasaki gripped my waist even tighter. Thank God she’d devoured both our puddings, because the way she squeezed my middle, I’d have felt like a snake that swallowed a football by the time we dismounted. Avoiding the garlicky razor clams had been a wise decision, too. In case I hadn’t made up my mind earlier, then her warm body pressed against mine did the rest. There was something I badly needed to do after I cut the engine and peeled away my helmet. I stayed straddling my bike, needing to get home. Max and my dad were working, and my dad had asked me to check on my mum before I joined them.
She started rabbiting away almost before she got her own damned helmet off.
“?a alors, Nico! Did you see that guy in the red Honda? He was all over the place! And this helmet! Why are the insides of them made to be so itchy? And look what it’s done to my hair! Why does my hair insist on growing out instead of down? I look like the Lion King!”
She glared at the pink helmet as if it had set out with the express purpose of annoying her, before grinning up at me, cheeks flushed from being squashed inside the stuffy headgear now dangling from her wrist. Spirals of hair stuck up all over the show, like she’d jammed her fingers in a plug socket. Ridiculously cute, cuter than any woman had a right to be.
I crooked a finger at her. “Come over here, you.”
She mock saluted as she stood to attention beside me. “Yessir.”
“Open wide and show me your tongue,” I ordered.
“Why?”
I made my voice stern. “Just do what you’re told.”
Reaching closer, I damped down her hair at the same time as she crossed her eyes at me, and the tip of her wet tongue appeared through parted pink lips.
“Why am I doing this?” she asked, in a muffled voice. Only éti could talk and stick out her tongue.
“I’m just double checking you’re not hiding a tongue bar somewhere. Because I’m going to do this .”
The tip of my tongue grazed the seam of her lips as I pressed my mouth to hers. Only for a short second, but the imprint of that kiss would last forever. In that brief sliver of time, I’d captured joy and sunshine, and everything good in between.
The pink helmet thudded to the ground.
“What the hell was that for?”
“It was the only way I could think of shutting you up.”
“Waouh.”
Almost bewildered, she rubbed with her fingertips at her thoroughly kissable mouth, then gave a funny, choked laugh. “Grab my face and shut me up again. But for longer this time.”
I didn’t grab her face so much as cradle it between my palms. Twisting her fingers in my sleeves, she leaned into me, tipping her face down to mine. My eyes drifted closed as our lips met again. Mon dieu. If our first kiss was locked forever in time, then our entire future breathed down the neck of this one.
With a soul-hugging sigh of pleasure, éti whispered, “Nico, I’ve never…”
“Never been kissed before?”
“No. Not really.” Her face held an odd expression, like she wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it.
“Would you like me to kiss you again?”
“Can… can I kiss you instead?”
I smiled, amused. Of course, éti had to be in the driving seat.
Mimicking me, she cupped my face in her hands. Her grip was firm, more possessive than I was used to. In the gap before her soft mouth landed at the corner of mine, I sensed her studying me. She traced over my piercing with her tongue, wiggling it, blissfully unaware of the fire she was stoking below. When she finally pulled back, it was with a hungry, drawn-out sigh. “La vache, I like doing this. Does lunch and kissing mean I’m your girlfriend now?”
I spluttered a laugh. “Is that a vacancy you’re interested in filling, mademoiselle?”
“I could be persuaded.” Tipping her head to one side, she pretended to contemplate it. “Let me kiss you once more, to be sure.”
She did, her mouth growing in confidence.
“The verdict?”
“I think I might be interested. Maybe one more check.”
Putain , this could go on indefinitely. I wasn’t complaining, but I had a job to go to. With reluctance, I disentangled us.
“I’m afraid I have to go, girlfriend . Oysters don’t farm themselves. They tend to swim off.”
“Come over after work. I’m only here until tomorrow afternoon. Then I have to get back to Paris for a charity thing I can’t miss. And training.”
“It will be late. Eleven perhaps.”
She pulled a face. “And? Your point is?”
Where did I start? That, until today, I have never considered my heart as anything more than an efficient muscle, pumping blood from A to B? That concepts like love and I have never been more than passing acquaintances, yet if I kissed you again, we could develop into firm friends? Even though I hardly know you and we’ve only just met?
“I’ll see you at eleven.”