Page 35 of In the Net
I can’t hold back my laughter at her tone that’s sharp enough to cut glass. My hand is pressed to my belly as I toss her her sandwich. “You know I’m kidding. Eat.”
There’s still hostility in her glare as she unwraps it.
“So, your family is pressuring you to bring a date to the wedding? Really?”
“They’ve been pressuring me tofind a man,” she adds finger-quotes around those words, “for years, and they never let me forget how catastrophically I’m failing at it. Any chance they get, they pile on, and showing up alone to a wedding is the best chance they have, so you can bet they don’t miss the opportunity.”
The smile dies from my face. That’s fucked up. “Really?”
“Really,” she affirms around the first bite of her sandwich. “You know Mackenzie. Basically, they’re all like her.”
“Even your mom?”
She huffs a harsh laugh through her nose and simply answers, “Yeah.”
Fuck. That really sucks.
I have to admit, from the few memories I have of Harper’s mother from her showing up at school functions, I remember her as stuck-up.
Her other cousins we went to school with sucked, too. None were as bad as Mackenzie, but they were basically cut from the same cloth.
She had a big family. I remember some of her male cousins, too, and one of her brothers. They were all the worst kind ofjocks. Just barely good enough to make the team, and then using the status that conferred to act like bullies.
Is that just the atmosphere she grew up in? Being surrounded by people like that and hemmed in by their expectations?
No one deserves to feel judged by their own family, especially for something as ridiculous as Harper’s describing. She’s only twenty-two, and they’re all pressuring her to hurry up andfind a man? Acting like there’s something wrong with her because she’s not dating someone at any given time? What year are we in?
I mean, sure, she’s judgedmeway more than once herself, but maybe that’s because I …
I should drop this topic. Harper’s sick, and this isn’t the thing to talk about if I want to make her feel better.
“What was your favorite thing you did or saw on this trip?” I ask.
A sly curve lifts on her mouth. “Would I be rubbing it in if I said the Louvre?”
I narrow my gaze at her as if I’m annoyed, but I can’t stop my lips from twitching. “Yes.”
“In that case,” she says, her expression turning thoughtful, “Sainte-Chapelle was pretty amazing. Seeing a panorama of the whole city from the Arc de Triomphe on my first day. It’s hard to choose. Just being here, walking around, losing myself in the different neighborhoods. Everything has kind of been my favorite experience.”
“Not to mention the gourmet tomato soup.”
“Of course,” she replies sarcastically, “that goes without saying. Who doesn’t sample the local tomato soup in every city they visit?”
“Uncultured swine, that’s who.”
It’s almost eerie as Harper and I laugh together at a joke, alone in a hotel room, a quarter of the way around the world from where we grew up together.
Harper crumples up the sandwich wrapper and drops it and the empty soup carton into the trash bin next to her bed.
“I’m feeling a little better, but I’m exhausted. I feel like if I tried to get out of bed I’d collapse.” She looks wistfully out the window I climbed through hours ago. “My last couple days in Paris and I’m stuck in my room.”
“You’re not missing much. It’s only the greatest city in the history of the world, after all. And, hey, after it took twenty-two years for you to visit it for the first time, you might get the chance to visit it again in only twenty more.”
Harper turns her head to me, her wistful gaze now narrow and slicing. My lips curl again, something that’s happening far more often than it should in Harper’s presence. Maybe I’m catching her illness and it’s doing weird things to my brain.
“Well, you can at least experience the charm of Paris vicariously while you’re here. Let’s put on a classic French movie to watch.”
“No, you should go out. I’m fine now,” she says. “I don’t want to make you miss out on one of your last nights in Paris just because I’m sick.”
