1,022A/N: This chapter is dedicated to the lovely DancingChaChaFruit for her suggestions and help in breaking me out of my writer's block. Lots of love!
Chapter 19: La Vie en Rose
Paris: the city of love. In light of recent events, I couldn't help but be sucked into its magic. As soon as I saw my first accordion-wielding, sunglass-wearing street musician playing La Vie en Rose, I just wanted to grab Kurt and have the corniest, most deliciously clichéd kiss in the history of the universe. I resisted, though, as I didn't particularly want the poor boy to go into anaphylactic shock.
The concert in Rome had gone fairly well. I'd nailed my aria, and the look of glowing pride on my brother's face was enough to make tears of joy begin to trickle down my cheeks. Andreas had shown up as well, and I'd been faced with the unenviable task of letting him down easily. After the concert had ended, I'd located him and taken him aside for a brief chat. He'd been quite understanding, agreeing that it was pointless to maintain a transatlantic relationship when we'd known each other for less than a week. We'd exchanged contact information, though, if only for the sake of cordiality.
The following morning, I'd boarded a plane for Paris, and that was that.
"I swear, Lotte, if you don't hold still and I wind up poking you in the eye with this thing, it's not going to be my fault!"
"Sorry," I muttered, trying to sit still on top of a little stool in some huge French department store as Jane huffed indignantly.
Eden looked over her shoulder warily. "That saleslady's giving you a nasty look, Jane."
"Screw her," she replied, dipping the disposable mascara wand clutched in her right hand back into the tester tube of black gunk with a fancy French name.
"I don't get why this stuff is so expensive," I mused, glancing at the absurdly high price (twenty euros) printed on the sticker on the side of the product. "It's exactly the same as the mascara from home that I use except for the fact that it's called Le Eye-gunk Expenseeve or whatever. Not to mention the fact that exchange rate of dollars to euros is terrible, meaning it's even more expensive relatively, which isn't even accounting for inflation-"
"Lotte, if you don't stop fidgeting and spouting out all this random economic mumbo jumbo, I'm going to give you a unibrow with this mascara."
That shut me up. The last thing I wanted to do was walk around Paris looking like Bert from Sesame Street.
Giving the three of us a suspicious glance, the aforementioned saleslady approached and posed what seemed to be a question in rapid French.
Speaking a bit slower, Eden gave her a reply. That seemed to assuage whatever concerns she had about the stupid Americans fiddling around with her precious cosmetics, and she sauntered away.
Eden's French abilities had really come in handy over the past three days, considering that no one in Paris seemed to enjoy speaking English with us. I really had no idea why, since we weren't exactly your stereotypical obnoxious tourists with Hawaiian shirts and huge cameras slung around our necks. Still, every time I'd ask a question, I'd receive an answer in French. My first day in the country had been a poignant example:
Me: Excusé moi, could you tell me where the restrooms are, sil vous plait?
Random Dude in Coffee Shop: Cornemuse puisque tu viendras avec moi aisselle, raicaille?
Me: Er…I non parlé Français? Sorry?
RDCS: Cochon tanguoter eau gazeuse.
Me: Er…right…
I'd then headed off for a door that looked promising. It had, of course, turned out to be a broom closet.
"There," Jane announced, screwing the cap back onto the tube of mascara. "Finished."
"Great, let's go." I hopped off of the stool and made to head for the exit.
Jane grabbed my arm, yanking me back. "Hold on there, Lottiekins. We're heading to the women's section to try on absurd amounts of clothes that we won't buy."
"But why?" I whined.
"This is therapeutic shopping," she stated matter-of-factly. "It's hardcore."
I rolled my eyes. "How is that therapeutic?"
Eden shrugged. "It helps us forget stuff that we don't want to think about."
"And it helps us to find you ridiculously cute French outfits to show off in front of Kurt," Jane added.
"I thought you said that we weren't buying anything?" I pointed out.
She grinned evilly. "I lied."
With that, she all but dragged me over to the escalator, Eden strolling along beside us. I pouted at her, indicting her for not helping me escape from Jane's clutches. She merely smiled at me.
We reached the second floor, where the women's clothing was located. Sighing, I absentmindedly browsed through some skirts. It's not as though I didn't like shopping. I simply wasn't in the mood for it at the moment. I couldn't help but wonder where a certain someone was, and my mind kept insisting that going off in search of him would be a fabulous idea.
Something soft was suddenly shoved into my hands. I blinked, confused, and looked down at the piece of blue fabric I was now holding.
"Well," began Jane impatiently. "Go try it on!"
Still somewhat zoned out, I headed off toward a large door in the wall behind the lingerie section that appeared to be a fitting room. I wasn't really looking where I was going, of course, but I was nonetheless surprised when my left foot caught against something metal and ceased to move forward with me, causing me to fall flat on my face with a loud "Oomph!"
My ears were greeted with the sound of laughter that was all too familiar. Clambering to my knees, I turned to the source in disbelief.
Upon realizing who he was laughing at, Kurt Matthews immediately sobered.
I stared at him, my heart fluttering a bit. "Kurt? What are you doing here?"
He had been holding something in his hands, but he quickly shoved it behind his back. "Uh…shopping?"
"In the ladies' lingerie section?" I inquired, getting to my feet and raising an eyebrow.
My question was met with the classic deer-in-the-headlights look.
Setting my dress on a nearby table, I walked over to him. "What's that behind your back?"
He started to turn pink, and I melted a bit at his absolute adorableness. "Nothing!"
"C'mon, let me see," I persisted, attempting to be playful.
He shook his head vehemently.
"Fine. I'll just have to get it myself, then." So saying, I began to tickle him mercilessly, enjoying the feel of his body beneath my fingertips and knowing that he would eventually give in.
"No!" he exclaimed, moving his hands from their hiding place and attempting to bat me away.
I took the moment to seize the object dangling from his right wrist and crow in triumph. Then I took a good look at it. When I figured out what it was, I practically died laughing.
There, in my hands, was a hot pink thong.
I doubled over, practically suffocating from lack of oxygen, tears of mirth starting to leak out of the corners of my eyes. Attempting to calm down, I took a couple of deep breaths in and turned my gaze back to Kurt.
His face was about the same color as the piece of lingerie he'd picked out.
I grinned at him. "Why Kurt, you have such fabulous taste in undergarments."
"It was a dare!" he claimed, turning from pink to red.
"Uh-huh," I replied. "Sure, it was."
"No, really!" he insisted. "I'm supposed to buy a thong, give it to a random French woman, and say 'Voulez vous coucher avec moi?'"
Ah, the only full phrase of French known by all American teenagers. "It's alright, Kurt," I chuckled. "I believe you. It's just really fun messing with you sometimes." I gave him a little wink, commending myself on my wonderful flirtation tactics.
His panicked face relaxed into an adorable embarrassed smile.
My heart skipped a beat or two.
"Do you, er, do you want to help me find a…victim?" he asked.
I grinned. "I'd love to. In fact, I have the perfect woman."
He raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Care to show me who?"
I nodded, and he took my hand in his, sending a tingling sensation up my arm. Still grinning, I led him in the general direction of the escalator and the cosmetics section. That snooty saleslady was sure in for a surprise.
"I don't care what those stupid scientists say. Pluto is a planet!"
Kurt rolled his eyes at me good-naturedly as we walked down a hallway in the Louvre. We'd somehow gotten separated from the group of people we'd been with, but neither of us particularly cared. "Lotte Leisch, you are way too stubborn for your own good."
I gave him a playful shove.
"Hey!" he yelped indignantly, nudging me with his elbow in retribution once he'd regained his balance.
"Pluto will always be a planet to me," I sniffed haughtily. "Besides, if it weren't, it would completely mess up the acronym sentence thing that they teach kids to help them remember what order everything goes in."
"My-very-excellent-mother-just-served-us-nine-pizzas?" Kurt supplied.
"See? You can't just end with nine," I insisted.
He shrugged. "You could change it to 'My-very-excellent-mother-just-served-us-nutella.' Everyone likes nutella."
"True enough," I conceded, grinning at the thought of the delicious, chocolaty hazelnut spread. "That stuff is pretty much orgasmic."
Oh my God, I thought. Did I seriously just use a word that has 'orgasm' in it in front of Kurt? Scheiße!
I snuck a peek at my companion. His face had taken on the color of a flamingo's feathers, and he was gazing at the marble floor with apparent interest as we walked along. Almost as if he could feel my vision upon him, he turned to look at me.
Our eyes locked. He grinned nervously.
It suddenly occurred to me that having a happily-ever-after-type kiss in a museum filled with romantic statues and paintings would be an absolutely fantastic idea. The notion hit me like a ton of bricks…
"Oof!"
…a ton of bricks that were awfully similar to those in the wall I had just walked into.
As I regained my balance and dazedly shook my head, I listened for the laughter that I was sure would be coming from Kurt's direction.
It didn't come. When I turned to look at him, I saw nothing but concern etched across his features.
"Are you alright?" he inquired, gently taking my chin in his hand and moving it to see the side of my face that had hit the wall directly. His eyes widened a bit. "You're bleeding."
I automatically lifted a hand to my cheek, feeling the blood from a small scrape across it. "Oh."
Kurt watched me silently for a moment, the emotions swirling about in his hazel eyes unreadable as always. Then, slowly, he began to lean in toward me. I closed my eyes, waiting and praying for the kiss that I so ardently desired.
It came, but not where I wanted it. Kurt gently placed his lips upon my cheek, tenderly kissing my small wound. The contact sent a deliciously exciting shiver up my spine. I wanted so badly to turn my head and make our lips collide, but I simply didn't have the guts. Pathetic, eh?
He suddenly pulled away, face once again turning a brilliant pink, and bit his lip, looking at a spot somewhere to my left. "I, um, I kissed it to, uh, make it feel better."
Sort of disappointed, I looked down at my flip-flops. "Oh… right."
"So, er, hopefully it, um…worked."
There was a highly prolonged and awkward silence.
"So, um," he finally ventured. "Shall we continue?"
"Er, yeah," I answered. "There are some things I'd like to see."
We continued our walk down the corridor, pausing in front of a large placard on the wall that displayed a map of the museum.
"Do you have any idea where we are?" asked Kurt.
I furrowed my brow, trying to discern the direction we'd come from. "They really should put one of those 'you are here' dots on this thing. I think we're in this hallway, though." I pointed to a small line going along the ground floor of the Sully Wing of the Louvre. "I'm pretty sure that we just passed that room."
"Alright," Kurt replied. "Let's go in here, then." He pointed to section twelve of the wing we were in, then turned to head off in the correct direction, motioning for me to follow him.
When we reached our destination, I had to pause at the archway to stare in awe at the priceless work of art before me. I began to get goosebumps at the mere thought of being in the same room as the most famous and beautiful Roman statue of them all.
"It's the Venus de Milo," I whispered. "Oh, good Lord, it's beautiful!"
Kurt didn't reply.
I raised an eyebrow at him. "Well? Say something!"
"It's...er, nice?"
I stared at him incredulously. "It's nice?"
"Hey, don't get me wrong," he hastily defended himself. "It's a great sculpture. But as a woman, she's…you know, stone. The real thing is what's beautiful. Why would I be fascinated by a statue when I have the real thing right in front of me?"
I suddenly felt as though the butterflies in my stomach had started throwing a wild house party. A smile tugged at the corners of my lips.
Upon realizing that he had just inadvertently called me beautiful to my face, Kurt blushed heavily and began to babble. "You know, not that I don't like art and all. I love art! Yep, I love art. In fact, I love art so much that I'm going to go look at some more of it right now." So saying, he high-tailed it out of the room.
I couldn't help but giggle a bit. Kurt was so adorable when he was flustered!
Oh, Kurt…
My heart did a little flip-flop at the mere thought of him. Head in the figurative clouds, I ambled into the next room, only to find Luke and Jane making out like there was no tomorrow. I did a quick about-face and hurried back the way I'd come, attempting to erase the image from my mind and pretending that it didn't make me feel rather lonely.
"Will you just fucking kiss him already?!"
"Shut up, Jane," I groaned, burying my face in my pillow.
"You are missing a lot of great chances, Lotte," Eden gently pointed out.
"Yeah, I know," I admitted.
Brigid sighed loudly. "Just put the poor boy out of his misery! It's so obvious that he's completely butt-crazy in love with you, and we all know that you like him back. Well, everyone besides Kurt knows, anyway."
Frustrated, I sat up on the bed and chucked the pillow at my freshman friend. "I KNOW, OKAY?"
"Then what the fuck are you waiting for?!" demanded Jane, throwing her arms up in the air.
I didn't have a decent answer for that one, so I tried borrowing one from Jack Sparrow. "Er…the opportune moment?"
That earned me a smack upside the head, courtesy of Jane. "The opportune moment? Are you shitting me? There is no opportune moment. For God's sake, EVERY moment is an opportune moment for that. There's never a moment where it's not a good idea to give the guy you like a smooch. In your case, it can't happen soon enough! The sexual tension is fucking killing me. It's killing me, Lotte, you hear?"
"Oh, let her be a romantic, Jane," Eden interrupted. "It's kind of a big deal for her and Kurt to get together. Let her have her perfect movie kiss."
"She's just being a chicken and procrastinating!" Jane retorted.
"I can see where she's coming from, though," Brigid commented.
"HELLO!" I shouted, attempting to remind my friends of my existence. "I'm in the room, too, people! Stop talking about me in the third person! Besides, who says that I have to be the one to take the initiative? Why don't you go bother him about it?"
Jane rolled her eyes. "Lotte, in the eleven years that you've known Kurt Matthews, has he ever taken the initiative? Has he ever made a legitimate move on you?"
"Well…" I began.
"And I'm not counting the time that you got drunk and mauled him!" she interrupted.
I sighed. "No," I conceded.
"Then what in the bloody fucking world makes you think that he's going to do it now?"
I remained silent.
"Look, Lotte," Eden began, coming to sit next to me on the bed. "Tomorrow is August tenth - Kurt's birthday, right?"
I nodded.
"Why don't you tell him then? Wouldn't it be a great birthday present for him to find out that you like him back?"
"But I don't like him," I whispered. "I love him."
The room fell silent for a moment as my confession sunk in.
"Oh, Lotte," Eden cooed, scooping me up in her arms and pulling me into a hug. "That's even better. Love is such a beautiful thing. You should tell him."
"But what if his feelings aren't that strong?" I protested. "What if it's just a crush and I wind up making a complete fool of myself?"
"Crushes don't last for eleven years, sweetie," she replied. "It's definitely something stronger than that."
I snorted. "As if Kurt's actually liked me since I was seven. That was back when I had cooties and all that."
"Kurt doesn't strike me as the sort of person who ever believed in cooties," Jane commented. "If he had, he wouldn't have bugged you so much, since he'd think that every time he pulled your hair or whatever, he'd be getting contaminated."
"Besides," Brigid teased. "He likes you now, even though you still have cooties."
"Your mom has cooties," I retorted.
Jane grinned. "That's what she said."
Oh yes, we were just that mature.
"So," Brigid began after we'd had a few moments of silly laughter. "Are you going to tell him?"
To be perfectly honest, the very idea of it was making me somewhat queasy. "I don't know…I mean, I know I should and all. I just don't know if I can bring myself to do it. I'd probably get all nervous and tongue-tied."
Jane let out a frustrated sigh. "Lotte, it's Kurt. It's not like you're talking to the Dalai Lama or something. Will you man-up and just kiss the poor kid already?"
"Jane," Eden hissed. Turning to me, she placed an understanding hand on my shoulder. "Just think about it, Lotte, okay?"
I nodded, deciding to go for a walk to clear my mind. "I'm going to go out for a while," I announced.
Eden seemed to understand my need to be alone perfectly. "Alright, sweetie," she consented.
"Don't get lost!" warned Brigid as I grabbed my camera.
"Don't get mugged!" added Jane.
"Don't get kidnapped!"
"Don't get raped!"
"Alright, alright, I get it, already!" I interrupted. "I won't go down any dark allies or do anything stupid, okay?"
"Where are you going, anyway?" asked Eden.
I pulled the door to the hallway open, pausing to give my best friend a gentle smile. "Montmartre, I think."
Returning my grin, she nodded. "Have a good time."
"I will."
With that, I left the room, pulling the door shut behind me. I walked down the hallway toward the stairs, pausing to watch (and have a good chuckle at) Bryce chasing Luke in the other direction and attempting to smack him with a roll of wrapping paper. They both gave me a hurried wave as they ran by. Greatly amused, I shook my head at their lunacy and continued on my way, thinking about the dilemma at hand.
I really did need to tell Kurt, I knew, and what better place to do it than Paris? Still, I couldn't figure out a way to go about confessing my feelings to him without sounding stupid, random, insincere, and/or a host of other negative adjectives. As I entered the stairwell and headed down to the ground floor, I ran through possible scenarios in my mind:
Scenario One: The Direct Approach, Room Style
I would simply run to his room, bang on the door until he let me in, leap into his arms, and kiss him for all I was worth. There were a few problems with this idea, though, primarily that his roommates might be around, which could make the situation incredibly awkward. Besides, going to his room and just plain jumping on him could lead to, ahem, more than I bargained for. Not that I didn't want to do that sort of thing with Kurt - oh boy, did I! I just figured that the same day as us getting together would be a tad soon, particularly since Kurt was a virgin. If, God willing, things worked out, I wanted our first time to be special.
Realizing that I was mentally drifting toward the dangerous territory of sexual fantasies involving one Kurt Matthews, I shook my head and moved on to the next possible situation as I reached the ground floor of the hotel and headed into the lobby:
Scenario Two: The Direct Approach, Public Style
If we all went out somewhere as a group, I would simply transplant the whole leap-into-his-arms thing to wherever we happened to be. This would eliminate the possibility of things getting out of hand in a physical sense. However, the problem of other people being around and making the situation awkward would be multiplied by about a million.
As I left the hotel, I scrapped that idea and attempted to come up with another.
Scenario Three: The Confessional Approach
I would go up to him, wherever we happened to be at the time, and ask him if I could talk to him alone. Once I had him on his own, I would confess my feelings in a full, articulate manner. This would hopefully garner a positive response from him and wind up with us becoming a couple. However, I wasn't sure if I was even capable of being articulate about my feelings around Kurt. I would probably take one look at his beautiful hazel eyes and become completely incoherent, babbling like an idiot.
Dropping a coin into the hat of a street musician as I climbed down the stairs into the metro, I decided to keep that option on the table, but only as a last resort.
Scenario Four: The Letter Approach
I would simply put the confession from scenario three in writing form and shove it under his door. Even if I got tongue-tied when trying to speak, I could always write a draft or two of a letter until I had it right. Also, if Kurt decided to reject me, I wouldn't have to be there to get shut down. This seemed like a fairly good idea to me, but I knew that it was the cowardly way out. I also had a sneaking suspicion that, if I did decide to write a love letter, I would avoid Kurt at all costs afterward, thereby never learning of his reaction to my confession.
I sighed as I stepped through the sliding doors of the newly-arrived subway car and slumped down in the nearest seat. None of my ideas seemed to suit my purpose.
After taking the funicular up to the top of Montmartre (I was way too lazy to climb up all those stairs), I headed straight for the plaza in front of the famous Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Weaving my way around tourists taking pictures with their families in front of the enormous building of white stone, I approached the railing of the overhang, below which the hill sloped off toward the streets below.
From that spot, the view out over Paris was absolutely stunning. Of course, being unfamiliar with the layout of the city, I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at, but it was breathtaking nonetheless. The late afternoon sun glinted off of the houses and shops, making them sparkle like gems. In the distance, the bigger buildings of what I assumed to be Paris's business district stood tall over everything around them. At the very base of the hill, a little carousel revolved slowly, sending its pleasant, tinkling tunes up toward the Basilica. I snapped a few pictures, though it was all but impossible to capture the scene before me with mere photographs.
I only stopped ogling the view when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to find a man wearing an "I Heart NY" t-shirt giving me a very large and very fake smile.
"Can…you…tell…me…how…to…get…to…the…Eif-fel…Tow-er?" he asked, speaking incredibly slowly and pointedly annunciating each syllable as though he were speaking to an inmate in an insane asylum.
Amazed that the stereotypes about American tourists were actually true, I simply stared at him incredulously.
"Do…you…speak…Eng-lish?" he continued. "Me," he pointed to himself, "go," he moved his fingers in a manner that suggested walking legs, "Eiffel Tower," he widened his stance and clasped his heads over his head in an attempt to imitate the famous piece of architecture. "Where?" he finished, bringing his hand to his brow and pretending to search for something.
Annoyed at the man for the bad reputation he was giving to the people of my adopted country, I had no qualms about embarrassing him. "As a matter of fact, I do speak English, as do the majority of young Europeans. If you want to be perceived as slow in the head, by all means, keep acting and speaking in the manner you are. Regretfully, I can't give you directions to the Eiffel Tower, as I live in Massachusetts, not Paris. Sorry." Giving him my sweetest smile as he gaped at me, I sauntered off in the direction of Montmartre's marketplace, where numerous artists were sure to be gathered. They were the primary reason I was there, after all.
Shortly thereafter, I reached a large, cobbled square, rimmed with trees. The place was bustling with activity, full of people milling about and artists with their easels, paintings, and drawings, all in the acts of buying or selling and sometimes simply looking. I decided to do some window-less window shopping and began making the rounds, pausing to admire pieces I particularly liked.
I stopped fully in my tracks, however, when I came across a painting so exquisite that I momentarily forgot to breathe. I wasn't quite sure what exactly it was that made it so wonderful. I'd seen it's subject matter - a small café in the heart of the city - once or twice before in passing, but I'd never considered it to be anything special. In the painting, however, it was vibrant and inviting, seeming almost to glow with the merriment of its imaginary occupants. The trees around it were green and leafy, the flowers in its sidewalk planters in full bloom. A small boy with an even smaller dog paused to gaze into one of the large glass windows at the patrons as though he were curious about the minute details of their lives. The quality of the painting was also quite stunning; it was so lifelike, yet obviously not copied from a photograph. Each brushstroke was defined but contributed to the work as a whole. The colors were perfectly blended. It was impossible to accurately describe the emotions I felt as I looked at that painting. I was simply blown away that something I had dismissed casually the few times I'd seen it could be so beautiful.
"Do you like eet, mademoiselle?"
Startled, I jumped and turned around, finding myself staring up into the deep brown eyes of a man of about sixty. He smiled at me broadly, casually readjusting his cap atop his wild gray hair.
"Did you paint this?" I asked.
"Oui," he answered proudly.
I turned my gaze back to the painting. "It's beautiful."
His smile widened. "Merci boucoup. I am very fond of zat one."
"What is the name of that café?"
"Eet is ze Café de Flore," he replied in his heavy French accent. "I go zere often."
"I've passed it a few times," I admitted. "But I never thought it could be this beautiful."
The artist chuckled warmly. "Ah, yes. I was ze same way. I walked by eet every day, but I did not ever really look at eet. Zen one time, I stopped. I do not know why, but I stopped and stared. I had to paint eet. After zat day, I am always zere, having a coffee in ze morning. I am so happy zat I took a second look."
"So am I," I whispered, not thinking about the café at all. I looked back up at the artist. "How much is this painting?"
He smiled warmly. "Eet is twenty euros, but because you like eet so much, for you eet is only fifteen."
I considered that a fantastic bargain. "I'd like to buy it, please."
"As you wish, mademoiselle," he obliged, gently slipping his painting into a small bag and accepting the ten and five euro notes I handed him.
I delicately took the bag from him. "Merci boucoup, thank you so much!"
As I left the market, I couldn't help but smile. I had just found the perfect birthday gift for my Café de Flore - the boy whose beauty I'd only seen when I stopped to take a closer look.
"Wow…it's a lot bigger than I thought it would be…and it sort of looks like a penis."
Trust Bryce to say something like that about one of the most famous pieces of architecture in all of France.
Jane smacked him on the arm. She probably wanted to give him a good cuff, but he did have a rather significant height advantage. "The Eiffel Tower is not a penis, Bryce!" she chided. "Can't you get your mind out of the gutter for five seconds?"
"I bet that all this phallic symbolism you're finding in everything means that you're actually gay somehow," I teased.
Bryce pretended to be mad. "Thanks for outing me, Lotte!"
I grinned. "You're welcome!"
"How long have we been waiting in this line?" Brigid inquired.
"Twenty minutes," grumbled Elliot.
Matt rolled his eyes at his friend's grouchiness and wrapped his arm around Eden's waist. "I'm sure it'll be worth the wait, though."
"But we can't even go all the way up to the top!" Elliot whined. "Only to the first landing thing."
"There'll still be a great view," Eden pointed out.
Matt dropped a tender kiss on top of her head.
I couldn't help the corners of my lips from inching upwards. The two of them were the most adorable couple I'd ever seen. Just looking at them gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
Elliot poked his head around the people in front of us in line. "How did Adam and Kurt get up so damn far, anyway? And what the hell are they carrying?"
At the sound of Kurt's name, I perked up. "Wait, what? What about Kurt?"
"Wow, you've got it bad, Lotte," Jane whispered in my right ear, giving me a nudge.
Elliot didn't hear that comment, for which I was immensely thankful. "He and Adam are way the hell up in line. They've got some sort of big black box with them, too."
"Where?" I eagerly peered toward the front of the line, jumping to see over people's heads.
"Oh, never mind. They just got into the elevator." Elliot gave me an apologetic look.
I sighed. It was August tenth, Kurt's nineteenth birthday, and the sun was beginning to sink low on the horizon. I still hadn't managed to tell him how I felt. It was frustrating, but I took solace in the fact that our little group of friends was throwing the birthday boy a surprise party once we got back to the hotel. I figured that I could tell him then, perhaps working the confession in with the explanation of his present and why it meant so much to me.
The line for the elevators inched forward a bit. We were going at a snail's pace, and it was really starting to bug me. Waiting in line was one of the few things in the world I absolutely abhorred. It wasn't as though I had no patience. I simply felt as though my time was being wasted, and while I had no problem wasting my own time, I couldn't stand it when other people did it for me. It was a bizarre pet peeve, perhaps, but a pet peeve nonetheless.
Bored out of my mind, I silently pleaded for something interesting to distract me. I certainly didn't expect that to actually happen, though, so when a loud crackling noise suddenly emanated from the first landing of the Eiffel Tower, I was incredibly surprised.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Is this thing on?"
Oh, Scheiße. I knew that voice. I also had a nasty feeling that the mysterious black box that Elliot had mentioned had, in fact, been an amplifier, though I had no idea where Kurt could have gotten his hands on one of those.
"LOTTE KATHRIN LEISCH!" he bellowed for all he was worth, presumably to get my attention, as he quieted down a bit thereafter. "I know you're probably embarrassed as hell right now, and hey, I am too, but please, please don't run away. I need to tell you something that I've been keeping bottled up for eleven years. I just can't stand keeping it a secret any longer."
My stomach started doing its acrobatics routine and my heart began to pound so violently that I vaguely wondered if bystanders could see it beating out of my chest like the hearts of characters in old-fashioned cartoons. I had a feeling that I knew what Kurt was going to say, and I fervently prayed that I was right. I waited anxiously for him to continue.
Finally, he cleared his throat loudly. "Alright. The truth is, Lotte…I love you."
A/N:
Sorry, folks. You'll just have to wait until next time to see the rest of the confession! Why yes, this is a rather evil little cliffhanger, isn't it? Don't worry, though - I expect the next (and last) chapter to be finished much more promptly than this one. Speaking of which, I'm terribly sorry about the wait. As I mentioned in my last author's note, I had an absurd number of term papers in addition to graduation and prom and all that other lovely senior stuff. Now I'm officially a graduate! Woohoo! College, here I come! I'm also sorry if this chapter seems a bit short and/of filler-ish to you. Well, in all honesty, it is more or less a filler chapter, and the shortness it primarily due to the fact that I wanted to post it before Thursday, since I'm having surgery (which I'm terrified about, by the way - please pray for me!). Don't worry about me too much, though; it's nothing life-threatening. I'll definitely be alive to finish this story. :-)Just to let you all know, the "French" I used in the first part of the chapter is just a bunch of random words that I generated from an online translator. They don't actually make any sense. I know for a fact that one of them means "bagpipes." I officially apologize to all the French language enthusiasts out there.
On another note, the next round of the Some Kind of Wonderful (SKoW) romance awards has officially begun! The link to the website's in my profile, and I highly encourage you all to check it out and nominate stories you like for the awards you think they deserve.
If you recognize anything, I don't own it.
Alright, I know I haven't been the best about answering reviews lately because of business and all that, but now that it's summer, I'll really try to get on that. I need to empty out my inbox anyway, so I'll finally get to reply to all the wonderful reviews you've been sending (thank you!). I'll also do anonymous reviews next chapter, since it's past midnight right now, and I really don't have the energy.
Alright, I'd better stop rambling before I fall asleep on top of my keyboard. :-)
Lots of love,
woodstock1969