remember her deep burgundy lip (which I wasn’t sure Degas could have painted more delicately) and resisted, instead deciding to fidget with her fingers in her demure lap.
“You did,” she admitted slowly. “It’s just that… it’s just that you’re acting a little strangely.”
I smiled and reached over to pat her on the knee. Oh, dear fucking God, I can’t believe that I patted her on the knee; it was the altar I longed to kneel before and I treated it like a good, good boy.
“I’m fine,” I told her, already turning—retreating, really—back to the passing Paris nightlife, sidewalk cafes, ash-consumed cigarettes, normal people who could say normal things. “I’m great.”
I cursed myself for behaving so ridiculously. But I was an actor left alone on a dark stage, blinded by the spotlight, with no script and no cues and what else was I to do but run away, dash offstage, nurse my embarrassment with whiskey?
I felt Delaney’s gaze linger on my shielding shoulder and I could practically hear the questions whirling around in her mind: did I do something wrong? Is this because of me? Could I have done something differently?
Yes! I wanted to shout at her. Yes, you have done something wrong. You’ve made me fall for you. Yes, it is you, all you, all terribly, terribly you. Yes, you could have done something differently, but one thing, one thing only: you could have walked away from me in that alley and never looked back. That was the single act that could have spared me this affliction. Save that, there was nothing, absolutely nothing.
I could imagine a million different scenarios between her and me. Every single one ended up with me in the same predicament: me in the back seat of this car with her, a woman I loved and no clue in hell how the fuck to actually do that.
With all the preparation of jumping off a cliff and hoping to “figure it out” on the way down, I whipped around to face Delaney, making her jump.
“Delaney.”
Her eyes were wide as she stared at me.
“Yes?”
I licked my lips (when had they gotten so goddamn parched?), but the ground was coming fast and I’d found nothing in my pockets but lint.
“Nothing,” I said irritably before turning back around to sulk.
That, at least, I knew how to do: stick out bottom lip, huff dramatically enough to fog up the window, cross arms, drum fingers, roll eyes in whatever direction, because. Nothing. Fucking. Mattered. Delaney bought the performance as I knew she would, as well trained as I was, and turned her head away to look out her own window. Same city, miles apart.
Well, fuck, what was I supposed to do? Just go out and say, out loud with no way to take it back, to reel it back in, that she was right, that I was acting strangely, that I had feelings for her, that I didn’t want things between us to end after the Le Ball, that I had no idea how to express that, that I had no clue how to act when you had real feelings for someone?
I couldn’t simply tell her how I felt. There had to be a performance to hide behind, a mask to don. Who was I to be? Romeo? Did Delaney want impassioned speeches from me? I could stand beneath a vine-covered balcony if I only knew that was what she wanted from me. Who? Who else? That guy who started a war for Helen of Troy? I could be him, whatever his name was, if Delaney wanted. I could start a war for her to show how I felt. The morals were a little grey, but wasn’t that my middle name? George Clooney? I thought next. What the fuck would George Clooney do?
Before I could find my script, the partition rolled down and the driver announced in French that we had arrived. Flash bulbs popped and snapped against the darkened windows like the white teeth of sharks ramming into underwater cages. Delaney watched with panic-filled eyes as the driver stepped out of the car. Her head swivelled to follow him around the back and her eyes darted to mine just before he opened her door.
“What do I do?” she asked in a whispered rush.
The words came before I even really considered them. I suppose there was no need to really consider them. I wasn’t forming them; I was plucking them like a fully blossomed daisy from my heart.
“Be yourself, love.”
Delaney’s hand jerked