I mean, who needs Christopher when Étienne St. Clair is in the world?
But as soon as I think of Toph, I get that same stomach churning I always do when I think about him now. Shame that I ever thought he might wait.That I
wasted so much time on him. Ahead of me, Étienne laughs at something Josh said. And the sound sends me spiraling into panic as the information hits
me again and again and again.
What am I going to do? I’m in love with my new best friend.
Chapter thirty-two
It’s a physical sickness. Étienne. How much I love him.
I love Étienne.
I love it when he cocks an eyebrow whenever I say something he finds clever or amusing. I love listening to his boots clomp across my bedroom ceiling.
I love that the accent over his first name is cal ed an acute accent, and that he has a cute accent.
I love that.
I love sitting beside him in physics. Brushing against him during labs. His messy handwriting on our worksheets. I love handing him his backpack when
class is over, because then my fingers smel like him for the next ten minutes. And when Amanda says something lame, and he seeks me out to exchange
an eye rol —I love that, too. I love his boyish laugh and his wrinkled shirts and his ridiculous knitted hat. I love his large brown eyes, and the way he bites his nails, and I love his hair so much I could die.
There’s only one thing I don’t love about him. Her.
If I didn’t like El ie before, it’s nothing compared to how I feel now. It doesn’t matter that I can count how many times we’ve met on one hand. It’s that first image, that’s what I can’t shake. Under the streetlamp. Her fingers in his hair. Anytime I’m alone, my mind wanders back to that night. I take it further. She touches his chest. I take it further. His bedroom. He slips off her dress, their lips lock, their bodies press, and—oh my God—my temperature rises, and my stomach is sick.
I fantasize about their breakup. How he could hurt her, and she could hurt him, and all of the ways I could hurt her back. I want to grab her Parisian-styled hair and yank it so hard it rips from her skul . I want to sink my claws into her eyebal s and scrape.
It turns out I am not a nice person.
Étienne and I rarely discussed her before, but she’s completely taboo now. Which tortures me, because since we’ve gotten back from winter break,
they seem to be having problems again. Like an obsessed stalker, I tal y the evenings he spends with me versus the evenings he spends with her. I’m
winning.
So why won’t he give her up? Why why why?
It torments me until I cave, until the pressure inside is so unbearable that I have to talk to someone or risk explosion. I choose Meredith. The way I see it, she’s probably obsessing over the situation as much as I am. We’re in her bedroom, and she’s helping me write an essay about my guinea pig for French
class. She’s wearing soccer shorts with a cashmere sweater, and even though it’s sil y-looking, it’s endearingly Meredith-appropriate. She’s also doing
crunches. For fun.
“Good, but that’s present tense,” she says. “You aren’t feeding Captain Jack carrot sticks right now.”
“Oh. Right.” I jot something down, but I’m not thinking about verbs. I’m trying to figure out how to casual y bring up Étienne.
“Read it to me again. Ooo, and do your funny voice! That faux-French one you ordered café crème in the other day, at that new place with St. Clair.”
My bad French accent wasn’t on purpose, but I jump on the opening.“You know, there’s something, um, I’ve been wondering.” I’m conscious of the
il uminated sign above my head, flashing the obvious—I! LOVE! ÉTIENNE!—but push ahead anyway. “Why are he and El ie are stil together? I mean they