Chapter 31
The Lovesick Mannequin
“She says your body is reacting to stress,” Juliana called from the adjacent room after thanking the nurse who lived upstairs for taking a look at Bastien.
It was the sixth evening in a row that he was lying on his sad little chaise, dramatically complaining of a fever.
“I wanted to suggest you were suffering from all the nonsense that fills up your head, but alas.” Juliana finally came into view, wearing a light green qipao that reached her ankles, two pearl earrings dangling at the sides of her face. “She believes you really are sick.”
“I wasn’t lying,” Bastien complained again.
“Why are you stressed then?”
Dried as his throat was, all Bastien could do was quirk a suggestive brow. Juliana already knew about what had happened between him and Celine at her birthday party and after. Including the bit where he had left the next morning without saying a word.
“Oh, my boy,” she hummed. “I’m afraid that disease already has a name.”
“Perfect.” Bastien tossed his covers away in a show of petulance. “I’m lovesick. Literally sickened by love.”
He had never felt like this before and for good reason. Love was a sickness. It was sickening.
It was making him weak, and heaving for breath, and almost losing his mind at the thought of Celine hating him forever after what had happened.
“I should have listened to you.” Throwing his head back, Bastien squeezed his eyes shut. “I shouldn’t have taken it this far. I’ve broken so many hearts before, but this was different.”
“Yes, you should have listened to me,” Juliana said, placing a steaming mug of tea in his hands.
Bastien took a scalding sip and hissed. At least the burning sensation on his tongue distracted him from his heartache for a bit. “Ugh, I was happier when I was philandering about the city.”
“Oh, grow up.” Juliana said, giving his forehead a flick.
He cut her a wry look. “I’m sick, Jules. You can't treat a sick person like this.”
“You’re not sick, you’re just dramatic.” A knock on the door prevented her from saying more.
Juliana was already shuffling away to answer it. Bastien cradled the mug in his hands, breathing in the herbal scent of the steam curling under his nose. Looking down at the leaves swirling in his tea, he strained to hear what was coming from the threshold.
“You’re a surprise.” He heard Juliana’s voice. The answer came muffled.
“Where…my brother…must…until…tell him.”
Despite the apartment being small, the entrance hall was narrow enough for the words to remain there and only fragments to reach him.
However, he could tell the voice belonged to his sister.
When Juliana returned with the hint of a frown stretched across her face, Bastien asked, “What did she want this time?”
“The same as every other time she has come here this week.”
Bastien was not in the mood to hear Ana?s’s complaints. “You mean besides seeing you?”
Juliana pinched his ear. “For someone who is allegedly sick, you sure tease a lot.”
“You just received proof that it is not an alleged sickness.”
“Your sister means well,” she insisted, rounding the conversation back to Ana?s. “She was only hoping I could convince you to change your mind. I told her you keep moaning about Celine and being heartsick, but she is persistent. She wants you to talk to her.”
“Ana?s can forget about it.” He stared at his hands. “You’ve heard me walk out the door thousands of times, get in the car, then come back in.”
“Yes, I have,” she mumbled. “The door creaks now because of your lovesickness.”
Bastien sidestepped the remark. “I cannot see her.”
“But if you just—”
“Don’t waste your breath, Jules. It’s over now. I ruined it.”
Juliana groaned. “And people wonder why I prefer women over your juvenile species.” Leaving him to nurse his tea, she stalked into the kitchen.
He placed the mug on the coffee table and dropped his head in his hands.
Ana?s’s visit tonight was not a surprise, even though Jules had called it such.
His sister had come by every day over the week, asking the same thing: for her to see Bastien and for him to see Celine.
Juliana had intercepted her at the doorway every single time, because even though she believed it was all nonsense on his part, she still liked mothering him.
So, if Bastien didn’t want to hear about Celine, she wasn’t going to force him to.
But Ana?s’s visits still carried Celine’s name with them, drilling its way through his mind and compelling him to replay every interaction between them, only to come to the same result: he loved her.
He loved her.
He loved Celine and he had been a coward and an idiot to run away from it.
Night and day Bastien had turned the thought over in his head, hoping it would stagger somewhere, prove false, and release him from this feeling of having his heart on the verge of bursting at the sound of a name.
And every time had been a fail. He knew now that if he opened one of those romance books he’d deemed foolish, he would simply find in them the contents of his heart translated into words.
His mother had read countless tales to him when he was young, French and Persian alike.
She’d told Bastien to believe them; that love existed and it did make people feel the way it was described in them. And she was right.
Grandfather was right, too. Find what’s meaningful in life, because believe it or not Bastien, not all pleasurable things are worth chasing after.
Bastien had been so petty and vindictive at proving his grandfather wrong that he had built an entire lifestyle on lies and rumours and meaningless purchases.
And now that he wanted something substantial, something actually worth having, he couldn’t possess it.
He had ruined it. Both Celine and the hope of reopening his mother’s studio had slipped his grasp.
Juliana’s footsteps padded back into the living room.
“God, I cannot stand to see you like this. This defeated.” She started pacing in front of him; the qipao brushing her ankles with every step.
“I told you karma was real. I told you to forget your whole vendetta with Jacques, but you wouldn’t listen. ”
“Okay, I get it.”
“I told you not to mess with her. I told you—”
“Jules,” he said sharply, though his voice broke halfway through the name. Tears prickled in his eyes when he looked up at her.
Juliana’s expression turned contrite, then softened immediately. She sat beside him on the chaise, drawing Bastien into a hug. He hid his face into the crook of her neck, where the faint, yet familiar scent of cinnamon comforted him.
“I’m such a prick, Jules.” His voice was muffled. “I ruined it.”
When they pulled apart, she swiped her fingers across his cheeks, wiping his tears away. Juliana took a good look at his eyes, bright grey now and glistening. “Oh, you really love her, don’t you.”
“It doesn’t matter now. She hates me.”
She pushed his hair back, baring his forehead. The coolness of her fingers soothed him. His entire body was shivering, and he wasn’t sure if it was the fever or the heartache or a mixture of both. But Bastien closed his eyes and simply breathed.
Eventually, Juliana asked, “Then why didn't you tell her?”
“Suppose I did,” he replied. “Then what? What if I couldn’t love her the way she expected to be loved?
She has spent a whole year with Jacques fawning and simpering over her and getting used to it and I’ve never done any of that.
” The next thought had terrified him the most up on that rooftop.
“And…what if she couldn’t love me? To lay my heart out for her and to find that it’s not good enough—”
“Bas...” Juliana’s voice was gentle. “You have already shown her what’s in your heart. And she already likes it.”
“How do you know?”
“I know,” she said. “I am all knowing—quite god-like. You just have to believe me.” Bastien was hardly amused.
Juliana puffed her cheeks. “Because,” she said seriously this time, “you have always shown a different side of yourself to the people you care about. And from what I’ve heard, you’ve shown a great deal of that other side to Celine.
Even I haven’t seen that studio. She was the first person you decided to let in. ”
Bastien jolted back. He hadn’t told Jules about the studio.
“I told you,” she said, “I am all knowing.” She brought his face in her palms, lifting it so he could meet her eyes. “Celine loves you, and from what you’ve told me, I know you feel it in your heart that she means it.” She picked up his mug again. “Drink.”
Bastien sniffled, “Merci, Jules,” and took a sip. The tea had cooled down, so the warmth that spread through his body was sedative. He leaned back on the chaise, head supported by the backrest. “I am such a fool,” he sighed.
“Maybe. But that is something that can be fixed.” Disappearing into her room briefly, Juliana came out again dragging Bastien’s trunk near his feet. Popping it open, she started rummaging.
“What are you doing now?”
“Finding you a shirt that doesn’t say depressed boy, give hugs all over it.” Bastien resisted rolling his eyes, only because his headache would return if he did. Once she found what she deemed proper, Juliana tossed it over his head. “Okay, get up. I’ll drive you over to tell her the truth.”
“I’m sorry”—he looked at her blearily—“but what part of I messed up don’t you understand? She doesn’t want to see me again. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was using my picture as a darts board.”
“Do you love her?” Juliana insisted.
“But the board—”
“Forget about board and the darts—do you love her?”
“Yes.” His voice nearly cracked as he said it. He was sure that his soul had though. Bastien’s next breath shuddered in his chest. “Of course I do.”
“Then let’s go. Ana?s said the proposal has been postponed for tomorrow morning. You still have time to tell her you love her. Use it.”
“But—”
“There are no buts.” She pointed at the shirt in silent command and changed her slippers for a pair of heels. “Come on. I can’t look at you like this anymore. A broken heart does not become you Bastien Ménard.”