Page 18 of Christmas in Paris
When she spoke, it was in a whisper, but it was pretty gratifying to know that he had been right about that. He had been told he was a bit clueless sometimes, but he had picked up on this, at least. Maybe he was getting more perceptive as he got older.
“How do you know?” he wondered. He hadn’t noticed any of the boys on the trip being especially attentive to her, so he was genuinely curious.
“He talks to me a lot. He seems to care what I have to say.” She looked at him from under her hair, which she had allowed to swing down into her face as though to hide her flaming cheeks. “Do you think I should make a move?”
That was a tough question. Ray didn’t know enough about the situation to say. So he tried to be cautious, something in him suddenly telling him to watch his words, even if he wasn’t entirely sure why.
“It probably wouldn’t hurt to …” he started, meaning to give her advice about how she should maybe talk to the guy, find out if he was seeing anyone else, feel the situation out. But he was cut off by her sudden movement.
The only reason she got as close as she did was that Ray would never have, in a million years, expected her to lunge at him. She had him by the shoulders before his brain could catch up, and her desperate face was inches from his before he knew what she was going to do.
“Whoa, Mandy, hold up,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady, but his heart was hammering away in his chest. A student. She was a student, and so completely off-limits, and the fact that he hadn’t kissed her and hadn’t wanted to kiss her didn’t change the fact that he knew he could get in trouble if he didn’t stop this right now.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I thought …” Mandy tried to get to her feet, and Ray could see the humiliation on her face as she went. This poor girl. She was clearly so desperate for affection that the slightest sign of attention had her thinking he was interested.
“Mandy, it’s okay. Nothing happened,” Ray told her to reassure himself as much as her. “Tell you what, let’s just pretend none of this happened, okay? You’re fine. I’m not upset with you.”
But all of his attempts to calm her down didn’t seem to do anything but make it worse. Her skin was mottled red with humiliation, where she didn’t hide it with her hair, and there were hints of tears in her eyes. It sucked to be rejected, Ray knew that very well, but he was at a loss as to how to help her.
He hadn’t wanted to be, but he was the source of her pain. So what could he do to help it now? He shook his head as she blundered away from him, hunched over and clearly right on the edge of tears.
Poor girl. Before she got to the stairs, which led up to the rooms, he managed to call out, “It’s okay, really. If you want to talk about this later …”
But then she was gone. The only thing that comforted him, made him feel in any way better about a shitty situation, was that at least she had been fumbling her phone out of her pocket as she went.
She had someone to talk to that wasn’t him, and his first reaction to that was relief. Only after was there the slightest hint of misgiving, quickly repressed. He didn’t know of any reason that she had to get him in trouble. He hadn’t done anything, other than perhaps deal with her broken heart in a hopelessly confused way.
He had made it pretty clear, he thought, that it was never going to happen. And she wasn’t dishonest, so there was no reason to worry about it.
Otherwise, his thoughts were all for her, and he sat there in the lobby, looking out at the courtyard, for a little while longer. Now that it had already happened, he could see all of the things that he should have said, the soothing statements. It only made him feel a little better when he realized that she likely wouldn’t have stuck around for any of them, either.
The best thing for her would be time. She would meet someone else, someone way cooler than him, someone with more in common, more her age. And that person would blow this crush out of the water.
The best thing he could do, he figured, was leave it. He couldn’t help but remember a time that he had made an idiot out of himself, and the girl in question had just ignored that it had ever happened, let him move on. That was the kindest thing he could do. Be around if she wanted to talk, but accept that she probably wouldn’t.
He sat there for so long, thinking and so lost in his thoughts, that not only did Simon come down to check on him, but Ray didn’t even hear him coming. It wasn’t until he felt a hand fall on his shoulder that he looked away from the inky blackness outside.
“I saw what happened,” Simon told him, and Ray winced. There could be no doubt about what Simon meant. What else could it be? He sighed softly and looked at Simon, searching his face, trying to see if there was judgment there.
“You don’t think that I …” he started to say when he saw that Simon’s face was very solemn and serious, but Simon shook his head.
“No. I saw you push her away.” Simon sighed, and it was late enough at night that he apparently felt safe leaning down and dropping a quick kiss on the top of Ray’s head. There was, Ray was almost positive, a flicker of movement from across the way, from one of the bedrooms, but when he looked closely he saw nothing. It was probably his guilty imagination.
“But that won’t stop it from being a big deal if she says anything.” Simon paused, then offered his hand to help Ray up. “If it comes down to it, if you get accused of anything, I’ll tell them what I saw.”
It was a courageous offer. Taking sides could be a dangerous thing to do in a situation like this, and Ray appreciated it. More than that, he was touched that Simon believed in him, trusted him. A lot of people might have jumped to conclusions, but Simon was, luckily for Ray, too logical for that.
“I don’t think it will happen. Mandy isn’t a bad kid. She’s just confused. She won’t lie,” Ray said, pretty sure of himself. “It’s late. We have another big day tomorrow. We should go to bed.”
As he and Simon slowly walked to their shared room, Ray had to hope that his cheerful words to Simon were right. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but some people might not see it that way. And the worst part of that was that it might reflect badly on Simon, who had asked him to come.
It would be pretty hard to forgive himself if the events of tonight got Simon fired. But the chances of that were slim to none, he figured, so he tried his best to forget about it.
Chapter Fourteen
Simon
It had to be said that, at first, anyway, Simon hadn’t been entirely sure what was going on.
