A thousand French kisses

Chapter one

There was nothing good to watch on the television, typical Tuesday morning. I pressed the buttons multiple times on the remote to surf through the channels hoping I would come across something I'd like to watch, a reality show or some celebrity interview but nothing. There was nothing, nothing that sparked my interest. The sound of my mom singing 'chandelier' from the kitchen burned my ear drums and made my mood worse, my younger brother and his friends from next doors were all sprawled on the carpet covered floors coloring with crayons and water colors and messing up every where they laid their hands on with paints and wet papers and ink and of course my mom didn't complain about it because we would be moving out of the house and selling it off very soon but shouldn't cleanliness be a priority? Why did my brother and his friends think it was okay to mess up the whole place? Why was my mom preparing dinner at 4:30 pm and why was I seated on the couch and not hanging out with my friends on a summer holiday? I already knew the answer to all my questions. 

I groaned and kicked my legs in the air, I was beyond frustrated, I was angry and I didn't want to take it out on anyone. It wasn't anyone's fault that my family had to move to Paris, it certainly wasn't my cremated dad's fault or my mom who found/fell in love and married (a few months ago) a French guy she met on the Internet (just two years ago) I mean, I've heard and read that love is a force and can cause a lot of happenings but honestly, moving far away from the people you know and adore to a land where they speak a different language should not be one of them. I knew my Mom had every right to be in love or remarry, but I also knew this marriage wouldn't last long like the others hadn't (She's been remarried twice! I liked to think that after my father died there was entirely no one who could fill his position in our lives - which is the reason for her divorces) and I just think it's cruel that she has to drag me into her emotional rollercoaster. I told her that I didn't mind staying with her parents or going to a boarding school. I just really hated it that we had to move to Paris because of a marriage that would fall apart in a year or so. 

"Honey." My mom came into the living room with a plate of fried chicken(s) in her hand, she was grinning from ear to ear. It irritated me. She placed the plate in front of my brother and his friends and told them to call her if they wanted more. For me, she gave her nicest smile. She knew I was angry at her, she knew better than to try to talk me out of it. Having had enough, I stole into my room, I didn't cry, I was done crying over my life but I was tired of having my mom take the reins. For once, I wanted to be in charge and make the decisions and not have her tell me that pink was awful on my skin and that I should wear brown more or I should try a different shade of foundation or that I could do better at geometry or that Henry wasn't a good enough boyfriend for me. (like she knew better.) I was just so tired, but I wasn't going to cry, I most especially wasn't going to call my best friend Sally and tell her how angry I was. 

I did call Sally. And I left the house. 

Sally lived a few minutes of bicycle rides from my house and she was standing outside to welcome me in when I got there. With her directions, I parked my bicycle in the garage, a safe place where her brother wouldn't get a hold of it and then we went up to her room, the only place where privacy existed in our world. 

"I don't know what to do." I told her. "I'm just so confused."

"Everyone I know wants to go to Paris." Sally smiled as she spoke. "I don't know why you're upset about going."

"I'm not going for a vacation, Sally. I'm going to live there!" I told her, just incase she didn't get the whole situation. "I'll have to go to school there and to church, I'll have to try and make friends and try to enjoy their foods and you won't be there, Henry won't, none of my friends will be there and what if I can't make new friends because I can't speak French and I wouldn't be able to shop comfortably. You know all of this."

"What I know is, you're going to be fine." Sally said. Sally is my best friend, she's been since my mom divorced her last husband and we had to come to Beverly hills because, my mom says and I quote "change is good after a heartbreak." Sally is pretty, tall, blond haired with a body figure that screamed model and to top it all, she played drums. She was good at playing drums and she played the drums for our little music club. She was a mixture of cool to hang out with the guys and glamorous enough to gossip with the girls. And I was lucky enough to have her as a best friend.

I wasn't so inferior to Sally. She wasn't so much taller than I was but my hair was a boring brown and paled in comparison to hers, I had extremely pale skin because according to my mom, my dad had some Asian gene and I got my skin from him and yes, all that skin had been ruined by the sun so it was tanned and freckled and it made finding a foundation really hard. The only instrument I managed to play was the keyboard and I wasn't even good at it because mom finalised her divorce when I had just gotten to the middle of music lessons. We had to move and she never mentioned taking music lessons again.

Sally liked me. She told me a few days after we got close and she said "If you want, I can help you shop for lip tints, I know a good store down the street." and like that, we got close. Close enough for me to want to yell at her for not understanding how difficult it would be for me to move to Paris. It would be like I was getting born again, I was restarting. I was starting an entirely different life.

"A different life is not so bad." Sally shrugged. She tore open her bag of chips and a few pieces went flying into the air. I picked one, supposedly wiped the dirt away on my shirt and put it into my mouth.

"You're not going to miss me, right?" I asked. "You're just so awful. I shouldn't be here."

"The time difference is not so bad and we can always video call." Sally said in between chews. "We have the Internet to lessen the distance between us."

"That doesn't make me feel any better." I told her. "in fact, it makes me feel worse!"

I heard Sally sigh. She took out her phone and dialed a number. "Should I call Henry over?"

"No." I told her. "Don't."

"Why?" She asks. 

"I feel worse already. He promised that our relationship will remain the same, that distance wasn't so bad." I told her. I was almost in tears

"So? What is wrong with that?" She frowned. "Henry likes you a lot, you know that."

"i feel like I'm trapping him." I told her. "like I'm some insectivorous plant just waiting to suck out all his nutrients."

"i don't get you."

"Henry could get horny when I'm away and then what if he cheats on me, he's going to hate himself for it and then he'll hate himself more when he tells me and he'll probably say we should break up which is totally inevitable. I mean, I'm going to expect it but it doesn't mean I won't feel bad when it happens." I tell her.

" So? " She asked. 

" So, I think Henry and I should just break up now to save ourselves from all the future natural disasters but I can't bring it up." I groan.

" You don't like him enough then." Sally told me. " if you like him enough, you wouldn't think to break up with him."

I look at her, she didn't understand how I felt, no one would. " Never mind" I tell her. "Did your mom cook? Cause mine did and she's bent on letting me starve."

Sally smiled. "No cooked food but we could eat some noodles, after that I think you should take Henry out on a date. You might change your mind about breaking up with him or make up your mind and just call it off."

***

I ended up on Henry's chest with his face cap on my head positioned sideways so that there wouldn't be anything obstructing our short kisses. " I'll miss you when you're gone." He said. " I still can't believe it's tomorrow."

"i hate that I'll have to go." I told him.

"C'est bien." Henry said proudly. "That's French for it's fine, I'm learning French."

I wanted to tell him that almost every one who paid attention in French class knew what 'bien' was but I didn't. Instead, I moved closer to him so that I could feel his heart beat on my skin. "Henry." I sighed. "I don't know what to do. I don't want to leave."

He squeezed my shoulders. "My brother is home at the moment and since I share a room with him, I don't think we can do it at my house."

"Do what?" I asked, not daring to look at him. I knew exactly what he meant, it was why my mom never liked him, she always believed that if a guy continously asked a girl for sex, it was all he wanted in the first place but I always believed that no one got into a romantic relationship without the intention of having sex. The only problem now was I would be too devastated afterwards.

"How about we go to Sally's house." I told him. "Sally wouldn't mind waiting for a while and you've slept over at her place before right?"

"okay." He nodded. "Sure, let's go there." We separated from each other but not completely, we had been sitting outside the movie theater on a bench hidden in the shadows, laying against each other. So when we separated, we only did so to stand up, we still held hands. 

And then I wished Henry had a car, it was so awkward walking hands in hands late at night with a few people on the street with something so foreign yet not so foreign on our minds.