One month. I can hardly wait.
I should be seeing them next week, but Dad doesn’t think it’s worth the money to fly me home for such a short holiday, and Mom can’t afford it. So I’m
spending Thanksgiving here alone. Except . . . I’m not anymore.
I recal the news Mer dropped only minutes ago. St. Clair isn’t going home for Thanksgiving either. And everyone else, his girlfriend included, is
traveling back to the States. Which means the two of us will be here for the four-day weekend. Alone.
The thought distracts me all the way back to the dorm.
Chapter eighteen
Happy Thanksgiving to you! Happy Thanksgiving to yoouuu! Happy Thanks-giv-ing, St. Cla-airrr—”
His door jerks open, and he glares at me with heavy eyes. He’s wearing a plain white T-shirt and white pajama bottoms with blue stripes. “Stop.
Singing.”
“St. Clair! Fancy meeting you here!” I give him my biggest gap-toothed smile. “Did you know today is a holiday?”
He shuffles back into bed but leaves his door open. “I heard,” he says grumpily. I let myself in. His room is . . . messier than the first time I saw it. Dirty clothes and towels in heaps across the floor. Half-empty water bottles. The contents of his schoolbag spil from underneath his bed, crinkled papers and
blank worksheets. I take a hesitant sniff. Dank. It smel s dank.
“Love what you’ve done with the place. Very col ege-chic.”
“If you’re here to criticize, you can leave the way you came in,” he mumbles through his pil ow.
“Nah.You know how I feel about messes. They’re ripe with such possibility.”
He sighs, a long-suffering noise.
I move a stack of textbooks off his desk chair and several sketches fal from between the pages. They’re all charcoal drawings of anatomical hearts. I’ve only seen his doodles before, nothing serious. And while it’s true Josh is the better technical artist, these are beautiful. Violent. Passionate.
I pick them off the floor. “These are amazing. When did you make them?”
Silence.
Delicately, I place the hearts back inside his government book, careful not to smudge them any more than they already are. “So. We’re celebrating
today.You’re the only person I know left in Paris.”
A grunt. “Not many restaurants are serving stuffed turkey.”
“I don’t need turkey, just an acknowledgment that today is important. No one out there”—I point out his window, even though he’s not looking—“has a
clue.”
He tugs his covers tight. “I’m from London. I don’t celebrate it either.”
“Please. You said on my first day you were an American. Remember? You can’t switch nationalities as suits your needs. And today our country is
gorging itself on pie and casseroles, and we need to be a part of that.”
“Hmph.”
This isn’t going as planned. Time to switch tactics. I sit on the edge of his bed and wiggle his foot. “Please? Pretty please?”