Page 36 of In the Net
“Yeah, right,” I say, pushing up from my chair to find the TV remote. “You said it yourself, you might collapse if you get out of bed. If you fall and hit your head and go into a coma or something, do you have any idea how inconvenient that would be for me?”
“There’s that selflessness I’ve been hearing so much about.”
Ignoring her jab, I turn on the TV to find that it has one of the streaming services I’m subscribed to with a lot of classic movies available.
“How about a classic?” I ask. “Au Bout de Souffle.” A 1960 French film that helped create the New Wave cinema movement.
“Yeah, it’s been years since I’ve watched it,” Harper says, actually sounding enthused.
We watch the movie together, and all throughout, I’m feeling something similar to that sense of eeriness I experienced a little while ago when we shared a laugh. The eeriest thing of all is, it’s not exactly a bad feeling.
After the movie is over, Harper lets out a yawn that’s so exhausted it makes me tired just hearing it. When I turn to her, the sight of her fluttery eyes and tired face and her wispy hair spread out on her pillow does something to my chest that I try to ignore.
“Sebastian?” she asks, her voice weak and dreamy, like she’s already half asleep.
“Yeah?”
“What did you tell Clement exactly? That made him want nothing to do with me after our plane landed?”
Now there’s a new feeling stabbing in my chest that’s a lot easier to put a name to: guilt.
I told myself that I threw a wrench in that because Harper didn’t need to spend her trip in Paris being hounded by some skeevy French guy who’s way too old for her anyway.
Yeah, that’s what I told myself.
I shake my head. Remorse expands through me. Even if I was right about that Clement guy being a smooth-talking creep with only one thing on his mind, maybe it wasn’t my place to break them up.
I guess there’s probably no maybe about it.
I could try to play it off. Act like I didn’t tell him anything, that the guy’s sudden change of attitude after sitting next to me for the whole flight was a pure coincidence. But the way she’slooking at me right now, with the hurt of rejection swimming in her tired, green eyes, I wouldn’t be able to sell the lie.
“It was stupid. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”
Her eyelids get heavier by the second. “Just … whatever you did tell him … that made him suddenly lose all interest in me … was it true?”
The self-doubt in her tone cuts past my chest, straight to my heart.
“Harper,” I breathe out her name with a sigh, “there’s nothing true I could say about you that would make any guy lose interest like that.”
Truer words than I’d allow myself to say if this moment didn’t feel so unreal, so far removed from our normal relationship back at Brumehill.
She doesn’t respond to them, though, because the heaviness of her eyelids finally overwhelms her. Suddenly, her chest is rising and falling rhythmically under her covers, and she’s asleep.
I pull over the leg rest, kick my feet up, and slouch down in the chair I’ve been sitting in, because I know there’s no way I’ll be able to fall asleep if I go back to my own room tonight.
14
HARPER
Iwake up feeling less sick, but so tired that it feels like there are weights tied to every limb of my body. Even my eyelids are heavy. Opening them all the way is like trying to push open an old wooden window that’s set too tight in its frame.
Once they’re open and my vision adjusts, the first thing that comes into focus is Sebastian.
He’s slumped down in a chair across the room, his scruffy black hair in a state of disarray with his head tossed back against the top of the backrest.
The position makes his Adam’s apple bulge sharply and prominently in the wide column of his neck. If I actually timed how many seconds I spend with my eyes latched onto it, the number would no doubt fill me with lifelong shame.
His arms are folded tightly, hands tucked into the crease of his underarms like he was cold last night.
