Isla and the Happily Ever After (14 page)

“Interesting.” He raises a teasing eyebrow.

I smile. “Yes.”

Josh smiles back. His ink-stained fingers thread through my hair, and he leans in towards my lips. But then he pauses to smell my neck. A shiver runs through me. He kisses my neck softly and slowly, and my eyes close.

I want him to kiss me there for ever. But he pulls back, languid, letting his fingers fall back out gently through my hair. He smiles at me again. “Roses,” he says.

My head and heart are in full swoon. “Thank you. And thanks for saying such nice things about my hair,” I add. “Not everyone is that nice.”

“Who wouldn’t say nice things about it?”

“Ha-ha,” I say.

But he appears to be genuinely confused.

“Really?” I take a deep breath. “Well, okay. When I was little? Every grandmother would stop me on the street to tell me how much I looked like one of her grandchildren. ‘She has hair
just like yours,
’ they’d always say
.
‘Except hers is more orange’ or ‘hers is more auburn’. It was so uncomfortable, especially for someone as shy as me. Hattie’s the only one who ever talked back. ‘Then it’s not
just like mine,
is it?’ she’d say.”

Josh laughs.

“And when a redhead hits puberty? You become this magnet for gross men. A month doesn’t pass without one telling me that I must be good in bed because all redheads are sex fiends, or I must be a bitch because all redheads have fiery tempers. Or they’ll tell me that they
only
date redheads, or that they
never
date redheads, because we’re all ugly.”

Josh is stunned. “They say those things to you? Strangers?”

“At least a dozen men have asked if ‘my carpet matches my drapes’. And now there’s the ginger insult – thank you, England – and some cultures think we’re unlucky, and ohmygod, you know what the French say about redheads, right? They think we
smell.
”

“Like roses?”

“Then there’s the crap that comes with it naturally. The sunburn, the freckles—”

“I love the freckles.” Josh taps his sketch pad with an index finger. “I have plans to hang these on my walls, you know.”

He does?

He does.
The next day, my face appears in all of his prime-viewing locations – above his desk, beside his bed, on his fridge. Drawings with leaves in my hair and my eyes closed in rapture. Drawings with delicately exposed collarbones and neatly tucked legs. Drawings with a stare as direct as it is vulnerable.

I feel like his muse. Maybe I am.

“It’s still so surreal,” I tell Kurt, one afternoon in the Treehouse, “to be the object upon which
his
eyes are focused.”

“Object,” Kurt says.

“I don’t mean
object
object.”

“It’s wrong to objectify people.”

“You’re right. I used the wrong word.” It’s easier to agree than to explain the perplexing and disconcerting truth. When it’s Josh looking at me…I don’t mind.

Kurt is petting Jacque. He scratches underneath his chin, Jacque’s favourite place, and the grey tabby purrs accordingly. “Where’d you find that?” He inclines his head towards a heart-shaped stone.

“Oh. Um, near the Arènes de Lutèce?”

“So your boyfriend found it.”

“We found it together.”

“And you brought it here together?”

I pause. And then I nod.

Jacque jumps onto his lap, but Kurt pushes him off. “I have to work.” He yanks out his chemistry textbook, and someone else’s ballpoint-pen-drawn map of underground Paris flies out of his bag and hits my arm.

I hand it back to him. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. We come here sometimes at night.”

“
Mm
,” Kurt mumbles. We work until dinnertime, but the next day, when I ask if he wants to study at the Treehouse, he declines.

The following Sunday at the Treehouse, Josh surprises me with three brushes and a large plastic jar of cheap dark-green tempera paint. “The brushes are my own, but the paint was found. And free.”

“Where’d you find it?”

His expression turns devilish. “The art room.”

“Cheater.” But I return his smile. “What are you gonna paint?”

“I like that. Not what
do
you want to paint, but what
are
you going to paint.”

“I trust you, if that’s what you mean.” I tug out the plaid blanket from its trunk. “Not that I should. Art thief.”

“Paint thief, thankyouverymuch. The art will be my own.” He helps me arrange the blanket, folding it over an additional time so there’s more space than usual around the rooftop’s perimeter. “I’ll need the space to work.”

I shrug happily. It’s sunny, probably one of the last warm days of the year, so I’m already slathered in SPF. I slip out of my wedge sandals and wiggle my toes in the air.

He studies the concrete wall. “Where will we go when the weather turns?”

“I tough it out through mid-November. And some winter days aren’t so bad, you know? But Kurt and I usually hole up in the dorm, sometimes the library.”

Josh glances at me. It’s so sexy that my heart misses a beat. “But where will
we
go?”

“Everywhere,” I reply. “We’ll go everywhere together.”

“I want to show you my favourite portraits. The Van Gogh self-portrait at the d’Orsay. And there’s this Van Dyck that I’ve always loved at the Louvre.
Le Roi à la chasse.
I don’t even know why I love it so much. Maybe you could tell me.”

I close my eyes to feel the sunshine against my lids. “I’d like to take you to the restaurant inside the mosque. We’ll have mint tea and honeyed desserts.”

“We’ll ride the Ferris wheel at the Place de la Concorde.”

“And then we’ll walk through the Tuileries and drink
vin chaud
to stay warm.”

“The flea market in Montmartre,” he says. “We’ll shop for rusted bicycles and broken mirrors.”

“We’ll ride the
métro
to its furthest stops, just to see what’s at the end of each line.”

“Those,” Josh says to the wall, “are
perfect
days.” I open my eyes. He dips a small brush into the paint and pauses mid-air.

And then…he comes alive.

His plan unfolds quickly. He’s painting a mural on the inside of the rooftop’s wall. He begins with a sketch, an outline, and moves around the interior in a complete circle. It’s already clear what this mural will be.

I smile and let him work in silence.

Josh switches to a larger brush and bolder strokes. Fat green leaves and thick green branches appear across the wall’s peeling white paint. I lose myself in a book about the search for an ancient lost city in the Amazon, glancing up occasionally to watch the tree grow. But when he circles around again, unexpected shapes appear between the leaves. He’s creating a mock-up of the surrounding skyline. It’s precise but with his usual touch of whimsy – certain buildings rounder, others more square.

Jacque visits. He purrs against Josh’s leg.

When Josh doesn’t notice – which is a first, Josh adores Jacque – he scowls and saunters towards me. I feed him scraps of duck gizzard from the salad I had for lunch, and he allows me to pet him for a few minutes before disappearing back over the rooftops.

The sun beats down. Josh takes off his shirt. He’s so deep into his work that he’s forgotten I’m here. He’s a work of art himself. The lines of his back and arms are strong, more so than his slender body would suggest. He has a small mole on his right shoulder blade and a faded scar on his lower back. The skull-and-crossbones on his arm looks even more
him
against this backdrop of similar brushstrokes.

And…his hips. They jut out skeletally from the top of his jeans, and I find my eyes returning to this area again and again. This right-above-the-pants area.

Christ.

Josh removes a second jar of paint from his shoulder bag. As he circles a fourth time, yet another unexpected layer appears behind Paris. Towering skyscrapers. Suspension bridges. Statues of lions. He paints a Flemish building with climbing garden roses and a tiled roof, and then a brownstone with ivy window boxes and an American flag. What surely must be
his
house.

I was wrong. Josh didn’t just turn my rooftop into an actual tree house. He turned it into a tree house with a view of the world. Our world. Paris and New York.

He circles around one last time, sprinkling in a few birds among the tree branches. Some look almost real. Others are so fantastical that they must exist exclusively in his imagination. The complete mural takes less than six hours.

When Josh emerges from his trance, he is dazed and art-drunk. He blinks at me. Inexplicably, I burst into tears. He continues to stare at me without expression, and I continue to sob – embarrassingly fat tears. He tilts his head. Another blink. And then he drops to the blanket. His eyes are wild with fear.

“It’s…it’s
beautiful
,” I say.

Every muscle in his body relaxes. He laughs so hard that he collapses backwards. His paint-covered hands clutch the blanket, and his body shakes with uncontrollable laughter.

“It’s not funny.” I dab at my face with the blanket.

He doubles up even harder.

“I’ll have to wash this blanket now anyway.” I gesture towards his paint smears.

Josh slowly stops laughing. He smiles up at me – a beatific, godlike smile – and holds out his long arms. I nestle into them, green paint and all. He hugs me tightly. My ear is pressed against his naked chest, and his heart is beating a thousand times a minute. I run my hands down his body. He closes his eyes. I kiss his skin and the paint and his sweat. He lifts my face towards his and kisses away my tears. “Thank you,” he says. “That was the best reaction that anyone has ever given me. For anything.”

Chapter fourteen

My heart reacts to his news by shattering. A heap of fragile glass shards. “You’re going home? Why didn’t you tell me this could happen?”

It’s been exactly one week since Josh turned the Treehouse into a
tree house.
But tonight is too chilly for an open-air rooftop, so we’re slumped against each other on the top of my bed. At least he looks miserable, too. “I don’t know,” he says, tossing aside his phone. “I guess I hoped that maybe, somehow, they might…forget about me.”

“Your parents wouldn’t
forget
about you.”

“You’d be amazed at how many minutes we’ve spoken to each other since school began. Twenty? Maybe? And most of them just now?”

I sigh. “Happy birthday to you.”

Josh’s parents chose today – of all days – to inform him that they’re flying him home for the entire week of elections. He’ll be an interest story for the news: the eighteen-year-old who gets to vote for his father for the first time. His parents want footage at the polls, a gushing post-vote interview, the whole charade. “It’s so sleazy,” he says. “They’re bringing me into their world of sleaziness, and they want me to sleaze for their cameras.”

“Voting for your dad isn’t sleazy.”

“Everything else is.”

“Agreed.” The worst part is the timing. He’s leaving right after his run of detention ends, just as we’d be gaining full-time access to each other. “But,” I continue. “At least there’s cake.”

His brow raises hopefully. “Cake?”

I smile and slide off the bed.

“You’ve already done too much,” he protests, though it’s clear he’s okay with it. “The crème brûlée. The gifts.”

I laugh. “Only one of those gifts counted.”

“But I like them equally.”

After lunch, I gave him a – poorly made, by myself – papier-mâché fox with purple crayons glued into its butt. And then I gave him his real present, original artwork by one of his favourite cartoonists. I had it shipped overseas the week we started dating, right after he offhandedly mentioned his October 24th birthday. I’ve been worried that it’s too much too soon, but he seemed genuinely delighted by both.

My birthday is in late June. I won’t be able to vote until the next election.

I’m heading towards the mini-fridge for his cake, when…something stops me. The quiet. I peer into the hall. For once, it’s empty. Nate’s door is closed. There’s not a single person in sight. A wave of recklessness washes over me. Or maybe it’s desperation, the impending separation pounding throughout my body. My hand hovers above my door handle. And then I take action.

I shut my door.

Josh swallows. We’ve been so careful to follow the rules. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“My birthday is looking
much
better.”

I flick off the overhead light.

“Also much darker,” he says.

I fumble towards my desk, turn on a lamp, and remove something small and round from the fridge – a glossy chocolate mousse and hazelnut cake. I light a perfect ring of candles around the edge and softly sing “
Joyeux anniversaire
”. It has the same tune as its English counterpart. Josh grins at my singing voice, which he’s never heard before.

“Sultry,” he says.

I can tell he approves. It’s embarrassing, but pleasing. Josh closes his eyes and all eighteen candles are extinguished in a single blow.