Page 5 of French Kiss

2

Blue Eyes

July– Later That Night

San Francisco

The new guydidn’t stray far from stereotype. I could tell by the way he high-fived a group of guys and ogled the cocktail waitress that his ideal night would include multiple toasts with his bros and a hookup if all went according to plan. Looking beyond my baggy hoodie to divine my true spirit didn’t enter the picture.

He did eventually talk to me, but only because he was trying to buy a round of drinks from the bartender, and I was in his way. Standing with my back to the bar, I was lost in conversation with Karim, who was telling me about how his parents immigrated from Senegal and raised their three Muslim kids in a neighborhood that was predominantly Jewish.

“They figured we'd be less persecuted in a sea of persecuted people. Safety in numbers.”

“Logic in that,” I said. My upbringing felt so vanilla compared with his. His family had moved to Paris, then Canada, and had finally ended up in Washington, DC when he was sixteen.

“They’re logical but still crazy,” he said in his lilting accent.

“Excuse me, can I get in?” someone with a deep voice said, pushing an elbow next to my ear and coming dangerously close to taking me out.

I looked to see who was asking me to move, annoyed by pushy guys who rose a head taller than me and didn’t really need to do much to get a female bartender’s attention.

The pale-blue eyes hit me first. Clear and bright, they seemed to see something other people couldn’t, even though my earliest biology classes had taught me that eye color had nothing to do with seeing. They actually sparkled. I couldn’t look away.

Then I understood what people meant when they described someone as having a chiseled face. His cheekbones and jawline looked like they had been worked from marble by an Italian master. His strong shoulders and biceps looked even more magnificent when they flexed as he reached for his drink. He was just as jaw-droppingly gorgeous up close as when he’d walked through the door. As he smiled at the bartender, his lips curled up in a bad boy smirk that made it clear he knew the effect he had on women. The daydreamer in me quickly fantasized what it might feel like to have those lips crash onto mine and I felt a breath catch in my throat.

Slow your roll, sister.

He wasn’t next to me at the bar because my incredible charisma had drawn him in. He was just thirsty.

“Why say excuse me if you’re just gonna shove your way in?” I muttered. Karim heard me and laughed, but I was sure I’d said it too quietly for Blue Eyes to pick it up.

“How’s that?” he said, looking me over from head to toe as though deciding which item of clothing to strip off first. He grinned like that alone was enough to forgive all sins. Exactly the type of guy I’d fallen for in college before sanity prevailed.

“Nothing. Go ahead,” I said.

I moved out of the way and decided he was a little too good-looking, the kind of guy who was so impressed with his own face that he’d make assumptions about how people would behave around him. He’d figure most women would give him whatever he wanted just because he smiled or said marginally cute things.

Karim and I took our drinks and joined Heidi and a couple others at a table. I snuck a look back at the guy, who was checking out a platinum blonde with legs for days and biting his lower lip. I’d pegged him correctly.

I had a sinking feeling of dread that he was at the bar that night because he was part of our residency class, which unfortunately would mean he was good-looking and intelligent, a lethal combination when it came to satisfying a person’s ego. I’d be wise to steer clear of him. Making that decision at the outset was my way of bracing myself for things that might happen and assessing all potential outcomes.

Yes, I was a control freak.

I liked to make choices that led to predictable results. That was my happy place—knowing from the first step where the path would take me. That was why I’d chosen medicine. If I took the right classes and got the right grades, there was a better than reasonable chance I’d end up with a job in my field.

I had never been a cliff diver, jumping into an ocean from a great height with no idea what lurked under the surface of the water.

The truth was, I’d always loved creative writing, but that kind of career path scared the hell out of me. I couldn’t see the logical steps between liking writing and being moderately good at it and achieving a career with any kind of security. I knew it made me a bit of a coward, but I’d decided early on in college that if I could be almost equally happy following a premed route, with a more certain endpoint, it was the better choice. Medicine seemed to have a better guarantee of a future than taking writing classes and hoping I was talented and driven enough to create a job where there was nothing obvious.

I liked to stack the odds. I liked to prepare.

I liked to know. Someone like Blue Eyes was the antithesis of all that—unless I was preparing myself for heartbreak.

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