Page 16 of Avalanche
“This is quite entertaining,” Antoine whispers to me conspiratorially as he alternates between watching them and reading something on his phone. “I’m not sure I’ve seen Liam cook before.”
I hide a smile against the rim of my coffee cup, slinking down into my chair when Liam turns to scowl at the pair of us, as if the table can hide me from his ire.
“That’s because Seth barely lets anyone else into this kitchen,” Liam points out, brandishing a batter covered spatula as if it’s a weapon. “Before I lived here, I used to cook all the time.”
“What, toast and steak?” Antoine quips absently, his eyes fixed back on his screen, a small line appearing between his brows. “That hardly counts as food.” He straightens, frown deepening as he scrolls through something on his screen. “Putain,” he mutters under his breath. “Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“What?” Liam asks, his attention back on flipping pancakes. “What are you saying?”
Antoine starts, dropping his phone face down on the table with a thwack, cheeks darkening as he looks between me and Liam.
“Nothing.” He glances down at the phone guiltily, as if expecting it to stand up and contradict him. “Just some legal stuff. From France. You know…”
Sympathy rushes through me when it dawns on me what he must be talking about. I stretch one hand out to cover his across the table. “Your grandpa?” I ask.
He nods, lips flattening.
“If there’s anything I can do…” I begin, then trail off.
What sort of help could I possibly offer him in a situation like this? He lost a family member and, from what I can gather, he doesn’t have the ability to even fly back to France for the funeral. His parents, like my own, have cut him off. He hasn’t said anything about it, but I bet he’d want to be there. Even if he wasn’t close to his grandpa, he was still family.
My mind wanders to the envelope of cash that Jackie gave me as a tip. That precious package that holds the promise of travel, the ability to fly to New Zealand. The ability to take my snowboard instructors exam, to get a certification that counts. The money won’t be enough to cover more than my flights, and maybe won’t even cover that, but it’s a start.
Or it could get Antoine home to France.
I swallow, heart racing as I consider what to do. If I had lost my own grandpa, I’d be using that money to fly home in a heartbeat. Maybe it’s stupid, but you only get once chance to say goodbye to someone. I have my whole life to take the exam.
And I’ve been working for over two weeks straight. Surely, I’ll have a decent pay check coming in.
“If you need any help with flying back home to France…” the words are tight, tangling in my chest with clipped breath and warring emotions. “I have some money. Not a lot, but a student gave me a really good tip last month. You can have it, if you need it.”
Antoine’s eyes widen with alarm and something clatters noisily in the kitchen. Antoine blinks, shock giving way to something softer. His hand turns, coming face up on the table to grasp my own.
“Lily…” the word is a sigh, faint and tremulous. “That is… you are…” He shakes his head, pressing his lips together as he searches for the words. “I can’t take your money, ma puce. Absolument non. I cannot.”
“Why not?” I ask, slightly affronted. Because now that I’ve offered it, now that I’ve imagined parting with that money, it only seems right that he would take it. “I don’t mind.”
His jaw ticks, gaze dropping to the back of his phone with irritation. “They already had the funeral. Yesterday. That was just… the email was from my lawyer. Telling me. Not my father, not my mother. My lawyer.” He blinks, long lashes damp though no tears spill over. “Giving me an ultimatum. A deadline.”
He shrugs, as if doesn’t matter, but the stiffness in his shoulders, the faint trembling of his cheek belies just how much this is affecting him.
“What fucking assholes.” Liam slides a stack of pancakes in front of Antoine, pausing to frown at Antoine in concern before stomping back to the kitchen.
“That’s terrible,” Matty agrees, holding an empty plate out for Liam to fill. “You missed the funeral?”
Antoine nods, giving my hand one last squeeze before releasing it to reach for his knife and fork. He holds them gracefully, the dented silverware poised over a stack of burnt pancakes smothered in maple syrup. “It’s fine.” The words are brittle, a stark contrast to the drawn exhaustion making circles beneath his eyes, the faint trembling of his hands.
“It’s bullshit.” Liam’s voice is louder now, a rumble like the mountain before an avalanche, full of dark warning. He slides a plate of pancakes in front of me and I offer him a smile, but his attention is fixed on Antoine.
Antoine shrugs again, staring intently at his pancakes as he cuts into them, not looking up even when Matty and Liam sit at the table on either side of him.
Anger twists behind my ribs on Antoine’s behalf, mingling with my own frustration and helplessness as I think of the string of unanswered texts burning on my phone.
How do you explain what it feels like to love people who won’t call you back? How do you explain childishly clinging to an imagined world where your parents will accept you, when every reality they offer you promises they won’t?
From an outside perspective, it must seem like the height of stupidity, the ultimate self-flagellation.
And yet here we are, him and me both, desperately wanting something that we know will never happen.
