Chapter 24
Inès had more or less recovered from her humiliation, and over the past three days she’d been trying to put the insult into perspective.
Maybe she’d shown up at a bad time and Milo, taken by surprise, hadn’t known how to react.
Boys could be awkward, she’d noticed, and they didn’t necessarily feel the way their behavior suggested.
After she’d gotten over her anger she decided, with her great goodness of heart, to give him a second chance.
At least that was how she liked to think of it.
She left school on Friday afternoon determined to try a different tack.
She headed straight home and, as she expected, found Nassim in front of his PlayStation and Tiphaine sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper.
Tiphaine greeted her warmly, folded up the paper, and offered her something to eat, which Inès gladly accepted.
Tiphaine made them each a cup of tea and brought out a plate of cookies, and they sat and chattered about school, life, the neighborhood, and the weather.
Then Inès turned the conversation to the topic she was really interested in.
“And Milo? He’s doing okay?”
“I think so,” Tiphaine replied, taking a sip of tea. “You know, he’s at the age where you don’t tell anyone much about what’s going on in your life, let alone your mother.”
“I don’t really know him, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to talk about himself much to anyone.”
“Why do you say that?” Tiphaine asked with curiosity.
“I don’t know. It’s just the impression I get.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, then Inès said, “Will he be home by now, d’you think?”
Tiphaine looked at her watch. “He should be, yes. Why?”
“No reason.” Inès bit her lower lip. She could feel she was getting it all wrong, and it was obvious Tiphaine wouldn’t be any help.
“Why don’t you go and ring the doorbell?” Tiphaine suggested. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to see you.”
“Do you think so?” said Inès, surprised to hear Tiphaine finally telling her what she wanted to hear. “Wouldn’t I be disturbing him?”
“Of course not! I’ll call him, if you like.”
“No, don’t worry. Do you have a message you want me to give him?” Inès had already stood up from the table and was heading for the entryway.
“You could ask him to empty the dishwasher.”
The girl winced: it wasn’t exactly the kind of message she wanted to give Milo, but she’d settle for it.
She bolted out of the house and into the street.
She took a deep breath before smashing her finger against the doorbell of the house next door.
On the sidewalk across the street, Madame Appleblossom was sitting on her folding chair with her suitcase beside her.
Inès looked at her with a mixture of compassion and repulsion.
Who was that crazy woman? What was she waiting for?
Milo opened the front door.
“Hi!” she said, before he had time to react. “Your mom’s over at my place, she told me I could swing by. Can I come in?”
An indefinable expression appeared on the boy’s face, a mixture of pleasure and irritation. He mumbled something and then, as if resigned, stepped aside to let her in.
“Who is that crazy old woman?” asked Inès, gesturing to the old woman.
“Madame Appleblossom,” replied Milo.
“Yes, I know, my brother told me her name. But what does she do there all day?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Have you ever spoken to her?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t you want to know?”
Milo shrugged. “What difference would it make?”
Inès looked at him. “You’re so weird.”
The young man didn’t reply and pushed the front door shut behind them.
They stood there in the entryway, ill at ease.
Milo shoved his hands into his pockets to give himself a sense of composure.
Inès seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
After a few moments of awkward silence, she took the lead.
“Can I see your room?”
“Yes . . . No!”
“You don’t want me to see it?” Inès exclaimed, alarmed by this unexpected rejoinder.
“It’s not that,” Milo stammered. “It’s just . . . it’s a mess.”
Inès laughed. “Who cares if it’s a mess? You should see mine.” Without waiting, she walked to the stairwell and up the stairs. Discomfited, Milo followed.
Both houses having been built according to the same plans, she saw immediately that Milo’s room was exactly the same size and configuration as hers.
But that was the only thing the two rooms had in common.
The young man’s bedroom was furnished in a no-frills, functional way, with a few ungainly decorative touches: some posters pinned haphazardly to the walls; his childhood curtains, with their jarringly na?ve design; a cluttered shelf displaying a few books and a jumble of disparate objects; a large, unspeakably untidy desk; and the obligatory unmade bed.
Inès was careful to make no comment. She glanced around the room and then went to look at the books on the shelf.
“Viper in the Fist. Have you read it?”
“Yeah, I had to.”
They both laughed. Gradually, lulled by Inès’s easy manner, Milo let himself be won over.
Inès had a knack for talking about anything and everything without sounding frivolous or inappropriate.
He cast shy glances at her, touched by her gracious chatter, the enthusiasm she put into everything she talked about, the questions she asked, the way his brief responses didn’t seem to irritate her.
She seemed to like him as he was, without judgment, and Milo felt his defenses melt away like snow in the sun.
God, he liked this girl! How gratifying it was to give in to the thrill of flirting, even more so when it was without any insincerity or pretentiousness.
For the first time in a long time, Milo was enjoying hanging out with a young person who seemed also to like his company.
Being weird was his hallmark, and yet now here he was enjoying a normal conversation, relishing the surprising pleasure of what was, for most young people his age, completely ordinary.
His unremitting preoccupation with death was diluted by the buoyancy of the exchange, and all of a sudden life seemed strangely uncomplicated.
An hour or so later Inès decided it was time to go home.
She told Milo and he nodded, though his heart sank at the thought of her leaving. They went back downstairs. She was about to leave and he wanted to stop her, or at least tell her how much he’d enjoyed spending time with her.
“Well, bye then!” she said, rising slightly on tiptoes to kiss him goodbye.
He felt her lips, too fleetingly, graze his cheek.
It was one of those moments when the seconds flee like thieves in the night, when it’s obvious an opportunity is presenting itself, but by the time you realize and try to grab hold of it, it’s already too late.
“Bye,” he replied awkwardly. She had already turned away. Then she stopped and looked back at the young man with a touch of reproach in her eyes.
“Do I have to do everything myself, then?”
“What do you mean?” Milo asked in bewilderment.
She sighed loudly, retraced her steps and, rising on her tiptoes again, placed a kiss on his lips as if leaving an offering on an altar that she feared might be unsound.
Milo’s heart exploded in his chest.
He couldn’t breathe, was paralyzed with emotion.
He felt like he’d been turned to stone, even though neurons were firing in his brain, telling him to react.
This was his chance, and if he missed it he’d have no choice but to disappear off the face of the earth.
The fear of regret was stronger than panic and so, his body inflamed with desire, he leaned toward Inès, who lowered herself back onto her heels.
He took her face between his hands and returned the kiss, in an embrace whose awkwardness was equaled only by its passion.
The sensations going through him were so intense they seemed to destroy any possibility of conscious thought.
Of this first kiss, Milo would remember an explosion of emotion that contained as much joy as terror.
When their faces separated, it felt like his lungs, deprived of air for too long, were at last able to take in life-saving oxygen.
He looked at Inès, who was smiling at him mischievously, a bit like in her Facebook profile picture: she looked like she’d enjoyed the embrace, and Milo would have given anything for it to be true.
“I was worried there,” she murmured, giving him an impish look.
“Worried about what?” asked Milo, bewilderment inscribing itself on his features once more.
She laughed and shrugged. “That you weren’t making a move.”
It took him a moment to understand, but she turned away, this time for good, and went to the front door. A moment later, she left the house and ran the few steps along the sidewalk to her own house, while Milo stood and watched her go.
Just as she was about to reach her front door, a moped driving on the sidewalk sped around the corner.
Surprised by the sudden ear-splitting appearance of the two-wheeled vehicle, Inès froze, as if paralyzed by the choice she had to make: run back toward Milo, or ahead to her front door.
Her hesitation made her lose precious seconds and the moped was heading straight for her.
Milo had just enough time to leap up and spring at her to pull her back as the driver of the moped swerved away.
An accident had been avoided. Just. The moped sped off as quickly as it had appeared, leaving no time for the young people to express their indignation.
“Are you okay?” asked Milo, discovering Inès in his arms.
Instead of an answer, she kissed him. Disconcerted, the teenager let himself be carried away by the intoxication of the embrace.
But a cold shiver ran down his spine. A retrospective fear.
What if he hadn’t intervened? Might Inès have been hurt?
Had she been in real danger? In his mind, the irony of such a twist of fate shot through him like an electric current, triggering an alarm.
A dull anxiety thudded in his chest. It had been a close call.
Was this some kind of a warning from the depths of the curse that had imprisoned him since he was a child?
Was this destiny refreshing his memory about the terms and conditions of an agreement, made with whom and for what reasons he didn’t know, condemning him to endangering anyone to whom he became attached?
He felt a lump in his throat, and a sense of bleak inevitability.
He clutched Inès by the waist and held her tightly against him, folding her into an embrace that he made last as long as possible.
He knew it would be the last time.