The Distance from A to Z - Natalie Blitt Page 0,18

to have a grandmother who spoke French, a grandmother who loved what I loved.

I can’t even imagine it.

“Are you keeping the list going for Marianne? To prove that we’re really spending all this time talking?” I ask when we stop because Zeke wants a drink.

“Bien sûr,” he says, providing the pad in which he’d apparently been taking notes. How did I miss that?

As we approach the dorms, I glance at my watch. It’s been dark for the last little bit but I’m not prepared for what it says. “Mon dieu, il est presque onze heures!”

“No way can it be eleven o’clock,” he answers, flipping out his phone. “Merde.”

“That means we’ve been speaking for three hours.”

Three hours out of ten. We’re a third of the way through our weekly requirement and it’s only the first day.

“Un moment.” Zeke stares at his phone, swiping and tapping keys. After three hours of having his attention just on me, I can feel its absence.

Absence. Absence in French. I love words like that. I put it on the list, just because I can.

“Hey, man, I just got your message. Can we meet in five?” Zeke’s voice sounds completely different in English, and I can’t help it, I take a step back. “Great, great. Yup, definitely save me some.” He laughs and it’s not the way he laughed when I told him my favorite word in French: pissenlit. Dandelion. Or his: agrafeuse. Stapler.

It’s a harder laugh. Rough.

“I should go.” I’ve switched to English too, and it feels like I’m losing something. Now it’s the English words that feel awkward in my mouth. “Can I take the list so I can copy it down into my notebook?”

“I was planning to type it and e-mail you a copy.” All in English. All technically fine. All completely different from the last three hours.

“Okay.”

“Au revoir,” he says. Until I see you again. I used to think it sounded so much prettier than see you later. But right now, with Zeke back to being focused on his phone, it doesn’t sound that terribly different after all.

SIX

TUESDAY MORNING, I WALK INTO the cafeteria to find Zeke with his arm around Stephie, waiting in line for eggs. Which makes me skip the hot breakfast aisle and grab cold cereal and a muffin. And coffee. Because I wouldn’t care if Zeke were making out with Stephie under the coffee tap; I still need it.

When I get out of the line to pay, I make my way to the farthest table under the big leaded-glass window. I focus on eating my healthy high-fiber cereal with my black coffee. And my chocolate chocolate-chip muffin. I deliberately sit with my back to the rest of the room so I don’t see Zeke. When I turn back to the room, he and the redhead are gone. And I only have three minutes to get across campus for class.

After that, Zeke and I get into a daily pattern. We eat breakfast separately, though at the same time. He’s always at a table with three guys who look like they just came from playing basketball and anywhere between six and eight girls who flick their hair so much I’m not sure how stray pieces don’t make it into their food. And I sit by my window, watching the quad. We walk, separately, to class. I leave first, but he arrives at the building no more than thirty seconds later, sliding into his seat with a grin, looking like he just rolled out of bed.

“Morning,” he says as Marianne walks into class.

And each morning, I say, “Excuse-moi. Je ne parle pas anglais. En français s’il te plaît.”

I’m sorry. I don’t speak English. In French please. Exactly what Marianne encourages us to say when a classmate speaks in English.

And each morning his eyebrows waggle and he says, “Bonjour.”

Hello.

And each morning, I can’t help but shiver.

And I hate that for the next hour I’m still annoyed until we break off into partners, and then I thaw. And then we joke and tease each other through to the end of class. And then he disappears for a few hours, and reappears freshly showered. And we spend the next few hours walking around campus and bantering in French.

And then start again.

French Zeke is fun and charming and maybe, maybe the kind of guy I daydream about a bit. But English Zeke is not. English Zeke wears a baseball cap and a lazy smile and his hand in some girl’s back pocket as he walks across