He’s caught me off guard. I’m not ready for this. I have to prepare for this. “How long will you be in town?”
“Just tonight. We’re catching the train to Chambéry in the morning.”
Hattie is nodding her head like a madwoman.
“Um,” I say. “Sure. I guess I could be there in…twenty minutes?”
“Great!” Josh says. “Okay, bye.”
I stare down at my phone’s screen. “He hung up.”
“He was afraid you’d take it back,” Hattie says.
I put my head between my legs. “I feel ill.”
“That was the strangest timing. The strangest. It’s like fate, if I believed in fate. I don’t know. Maybe I believe in fate now.”
The tone of her voice makes me lift my head. She grins.
“Hattie.” My heart seizes. “What did you do?”
“Jeez, nothing.”
“Tell me what you did!”
“Ow.” She covers her ears at my shouting. “Maybe I mailed your stupid book to his dad’s stupid office in DC, I don’t know.”
I frown. “Huh? What book?”
“The one you brought home from Angoulême, thanks for not inviting me, that I stole from your room to read and discovered you’d had personalized? I thought it was so sad and pathetic that I mailed it to him. And maybe I attached a note saying how much you were totally still in love with him, and he should try calling you again.”
It’s the only thing that could shock me more than Josh’s call. Finding out that I have Hattie to thank for it. I’m speechless.
“You’re welcome,” she says.
“Thank you? I think? I’ll let you know when this is all over.”
“You’d better.” She pulls me to my feet, leads me through the trapdoor and down the stairs, locks the door, and slides the key into her pocket.
The pressure inside my chest grows at a paralysing rate. “I don’t know about this.”
“Shut up. You’re being annoying again.” Hattie leads me, stumbling, into the closest métro station. I feel like I’m moving both too fast and too slow. She shoves me through the turnstile and says, “Don’t be a chickenshit. Tell him how you feel.”
“What if he doesn’t love me?”
“He does.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Ugh, then who cares? You won’t lose anything you haven’t already lost.” She flicks a snowflake from the tip of my nose. “For once in your life, listen to your younger sister. She’s taller, and she knows better than you.”
The flakes are scattered, here and there, as they float down to earth. I glance at the grey-white sky. If only a blizzard would burst from above and bury me alive. That would be better than what I’m about to do. The temperature is below freezing, but I’m sweaty and feverish and short of breath. My feet touch Pellino’s threshold, but my body won’t go any further. One step at a time. I place my hand on the door.
Pushing it open has never felt so impossible.
A chain of brass bells signals my entrance. The maître d’ brightens at the sight of me. “Où est Monsieur Bacon?”
“Kurt has other plans tonight,” I reply in French as my gaze darts around the room.