Janey
The next morning, Monday, I went to Antoine’s office at the journalism department. He noticed my empty hands first.
“Well?” he said. “The article is not ready? It was supposed to be a standard interview, mademoiselle. Perhaps a glossy photo or two of Adrien in a game. It seems as if this simple assignment is beyond you.”
I bit back an angry retort. “I need another extension,” I said. “The story is bigger than one interview.”
He hmmph’d. “So you say. Or is this a ploy to spend more time with Monsieur Rousseau?”
I bristled even as my cheeks flushed. “It’s for the sake of the story,” I said. “Please. Let’s see how Paris Central does against Lyon-Dejeres this weekend. Or even better, wait until the final in two weeks. If Central stays in the top three and advances up, that is a much bigger story, oui?”
“Mon Dieu, I never asked for an exposé. What’s the angle?”
I bit my lip. Adrien’s real story was almost entirely off the record. I wasn’t about to betray his privacy, but my instincts told me if I had a little more time, something big might happen.
“Following the star center forward through his last games as a semi-pro. The finale is PC advancing, maybe even winning the championship.”
Antoine frowned. “I don’t care about the championship. PC winning or losing isn’t the story. Adrien Rousseau is the story.”
I agree completely.
“Please,” I said. “One more week?”
Antoine pursed his lips. “One more week, and that is final.”
But that week, whatever I’d been hoping to happen with Adrien’s story never came to fruition. Over the next four days. I hung out at La Cloche with the footballer group, ignoring Olivier’s crude jokes and innuendo, and becoming better friends with Brigitte and Lucie.
“Olivier’s a bastard, but he’s one of the best defenders in the league,” Brigitte had told me on Monday night as we sat gathered in their booth—our booth, now that they welcomed me as one of their own. We drank kir and listened to a never-ending stream of American music.
“He’ll probably get called up by scouts, too,” Lucie said, her lips pinched, “where he can be an ass to a whole new set of teammates.”
Things were tense between Olivier and Adrien, which made Robert nervous. But Adrien ignored Olivier. Most nights, he joined the group late and left early, though he never brought another girl around like he used to. More than once, I found him watching me, his eyes heavy with something that looked like longing, but I couldn’t let myself believe it was for me. On the field that Sunday, I’d asked Adrien to deny his playboy reputation and he never did.
And I refuse to be another notch on his belt.
But Antoine’s snide commentary played in my mind. Was I prolonging the article just to spend time with Adrien? What did I think was going to happen all these nights at the club? That Adrien’s story would miraculously break open?
So I sat, wedged between the girls every night, and not talking to Adrien. The guys ribbed him about the fast-fading bruising under his eyes, but he never told them how he got them. Every night, a different story. Once, he walked into a pole. Another, Sophie had punched him.
He joked the questions away, and never looked at me as he did.
By Friday night, I’d begun to feel like an extra in a movie, taking up the same spot in the booth, steadfastly trying not to look at Adrien. It had become painful; the sight of his beautiful face conjured a frustrating mix of emotions.
I wanted him to take me seriously as a journalist and as a woman, but some moments, a surge of heat would rush through me to remember him on the field, sweaty and fast, and better than any player there. In those moments, I had wild fantasies of him taking me home with him, of being one of his women. To lose myself in him and damn the consequences.
I felt stuck, immobile with confusion, and irritated at my girlish heart that couldn’t stop thinking about him.
That Friday night, the club was playing all of Jefferson Airplane’s album, Surrealistic Pillow. When “White Rabbit” came on, Brigitte and Lucie decided we had to dance. They tugged me to the dance floor where, under beams of white and blue light, the dozen or so dancers looked as if they were underwater.
I was self-conscious at first, but it was just what I needed. To stop thinking so damned much. I swayed to the music, losing sense of time and place. My eyes fell shut and my friends, La Cloche, all of it just fell away. Grace Slick’s haunting voice took me back to America—but for the first time, I felt no pang of nostalgia. I drifted along the currents of the music.
Someone nudged my arm. “What is it about?” Lucie asked. “These words?”
“Drugs,” I said, with a lazy smile, then closed my eyes again. “Escape.”
The music ebbed and flowed through me, and I was sorry when it ended. I started to move off the dance floor and then Adrien was there.
“Dance?” he asked, staring down at me, his blue velvet eyes even darker in the dimness of the club. His smile was his usual cocky grin, and I hated that my heart stuttered at his sudden nearness.
I tried to push past him. “No, thank you.”
Adrien caught my arm, held it gently but firmly. His grin slipped away. “Please. I want to talk to you.”
“You can talk to me at the table,” I said, tugging my arm free.
“Can I? Or will you barricade yourself between Lucie and Brigitte, and hardly look at me? What I have to say isn’t for everyone.”
I turned to where our friends sat. They were watching us as we stood in the middle of the dance floor; Brigitte raising her brows at me.
“Come on,” Adrien said. “One dance.”
I nodded vaguely and let him take my left hand in his, while his arm slipped around my waist. My breath caught, and I turned my face away from his, the beauty of it.
“Is this so terrible?” Adrien asked lightly. “Do you still not like me?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Is that so?” Adrien laughed. “You work awfully hard to not like me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t like Olivier. That’s obvious. So you ignore him, and it’s easy.” Adrien’s voice softened. “But with me, you have to put effort into avoiding me.”
“I don’t—”
“You do,” Adrien cut me off. “I catch you, you know, looking at me. You look away but I see you try not to see me.”
“Your imagination.” My cheek was resting on his chest and I wasn’t doing anything to stop it.
He lowered his voice again so that I alone could hear him. “And when I try to get close to you, you move away.”
“I told you, I don’t like you,” I said.
He pulled back and looked down at me, and I couldn’t look away. He caught and held me with his gaze, and his hand holding mine…Our fingers had somehow become entwined and he held our hands to his heart that was beating too hard.
“You keep saying that,” Adrien said softly, “but right now you look as if you want me to kiss you.”
“I don’t…”
He leaned closer. “I want to kiss you. I’ve wanted to kiss you since the moment we met.”
The words traveled through me like a current. Now my heart was pounding too and I couldn’t catch my breath. Adrien was stealing it.
“No,” I whispered.
He bent his head. “Say no again,” he breathed, “and I won’t.”
I didn’t say no.
Adrien hesitated a moment more, his eyes searching. Then he closed them, brows furrowed, and then touched his lips to mine. My eyes closed too, and a small sound escaped me, a soft little cry that turned into a breathy gasp as he deepened the kiss. My lips parted and his tongue slipped inside, softly. I gasped, utterly unprepared for how the taste of him, the feel of him touching me like this, turned my bones to sand and stole my breath. I moaned softly into his mouth and felt him react to my obvious want; I couldn’t hide it. I couldn’t pull away. My entire body vibrated with electricity, and Adrien felt every bit of it.
He angled his head to kiss me harder, thoroughly, his tongue no longer hesitant, but sliding against mine. God, he tasted so good. I tasted the kir he’d drunk: the sweetness of the black currant liqueur, and the sharper bite of wine.
All these thoughts flashed through me in the space of a heartbeat, as the La Cloche, our friends, the pulsing music…it all faded away, leaving me with Adrien’s mouth on mine and nothing else.
I don’t know how long we’d been kissing when Adrien finally pulled away, gasping for breath. Our bodies were pressed tightly together, his arms wrapped around me, and I was dimly aware of a hard, hot pressure through his jeans straining against me.
“Janey…” he whispered.
I slid my gaze to the group; they were all snickering and whispering; grinning at us with knowing looks I didn’t like. I’d agreed to come to France to try to avoid being the silly girl who wrote about men, and men’s games, and men’s victories and triumphs, and here I was, falling under the charm of just one of those athletes who saw women as nothing more than another opportunity to score.
It’s not true; he’s different…
But if I continued with him, I wouldn’t know if that were true until it was too late to protect myself. My heart, normally so guarded, was falling for him fast. Too fast.
Tears burned my eyes, and I pulled back from Adrien, from the strong, warm feel of his arms. “I’m not going to be one of your women.”
His brows furrowed. “What? No…?”
Confusion flashed over his deep blue eyes, and then something I hadn’t been prepared to see: pain. Not the pain of lust unfulfilled, but something stronger. My pulling away left a wound. Maybe a small one, but a wound nonetheless.
His ego is bruised. What woman turns down Adrien Rousseau?
“I have to go,” I said stiffly. I left the dance floor and returned to the table.
“Janey…?” Brigitte’s voice was soft with concern.
“That’s what I call in-depth reporting,” Olivier said. “Next, she goes under the covers to get at Adrien’s big story.”
“Shut up, crétin!” Brigitte hissed.
My cheeks burned but I managed a tight smile for Brigitte. “I have to go. Lots of studying to do.”
I hurried out of La Cloche, not looking back, half-hoping Adrien would follow me. A man’s voice called out for me to stop. My heart jolted but then sank when I realized it was Robert.
“Yes?” I said tightly. “It’s late. I want to get home…”
“I’m going to be perfectly blunt: I want you to stay away from Adrien,” Robert said, his dark eyes hard under the street lamp. “At least until the season is over.”
“What? Why…?” My words burnt up in anger. “Actually, it’s none of your business—”
“It is my business. Adrien is the leading scorer on our team. A striker. The best striker in the league, if not all of football. He’s been different since you showed up. In his head a lot.” Robert rubbed his hand over his mouth. “You’re not like the other girls he’s brought around.”
I felt my body go stiff all over. “Exactly. I’m not one of his girls. I’m writing an article—”
“You were doing more than writing an article just now on the dance floor.”
Humiliation inflamed my skin and I stared, unable to find a retort.
“We need him to keep playing his best,” Robert said, simply. “Stay out of his head.”
He turned and stepped back inside the club, leaving me alone in the dark.