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.