Page 65 of The Paris Roommates: Dean
He had the rare urge to breathe fire. Only one gift had been opened, and already it was going to hell. “Look inside and see,” he said with a forced smile. “Everyone, please!”
Madison reached in her black bag to retrieve her equally black shirt. When she started laughing, a rarity for her, some of the knots in his stomach loosened.
“STAY BACK,” she read on the front and then turned it over when Kyle pointed to the writing on the other side. “THANK YOU FOR KEEPING AWAY. Dean, I’ve been wanting this shirt my whole life and didn’t know it. I’m going to need at least a dozen more. Because laundry.”
“And here I thought some of your walls were coming down.” Kyle winced. “So, what’s in my bag? Jean Luc, I find myself also very afraid.”
Jean Luc still had not touched his bag. Neither had anyone else for that matter.
What had happened?
That vote had sucked the life out of their group, and he desperately wanted things back to normal. For that to happen, they had to open the damn presents. So he arched his brow at Kyle and said, “Bock-bock.”
“Fu—” Golden Boy broke off before sending a feral grin. “You are what you sound like, Dean. Fine. I’m opening my gift. Jean Luc, want to join me?”
“I do not wear T-shirts,” he said blandly, earning a pleading look from Thea.
The Frenchman had a point, and he didn’t seem any more impressed when he saw his T-shirt.
Sure enough, his mouth thinned when he opened the navy shirt that had BRO emblazoned across the front in white.
“I tried to find a T-shirt in pinstripes but struck out,” he told the man who eyed the shirt dubiously.
“That’s a baseball reference, Jean Luc,” Sawyer told the man. “I’m going next. Whoa, Dean! I can’t wear this. THE NEXT MONET. People would throw stones at me for this sacrilege.”
Would they? The French did take their art seriously. “It was supposed to be encouraging, Doc. To tell you what a great painter you are.”
“Right.” Sawyer tucked the green shirt out of sight under the table, likely never to be seen again. “Brooke, you’re next.”
“Fine.” She carefully unwrapped the tissue paper and pulled out the red shirt with white letters. “BOSS. Really? You couldn’t do better?”
“Apparently not,” he said in an aggrieved voice.
“That’s also too on the nose,” Sawyer told Jean Luc, “meaning too obvious. Nanine?”
She gave a sigh that seemed to echo in his ears before reaching inside her silver gift bag. “BEST WOMAN, HANDS DOWN. Thank you. I will wear it to yoga.”
Brooke winced. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Nanine. Claude and Roger may take it as an enticement.”
Nanine made that classic French soundbofwith an even more classic shrug of her shoulders. “They are imbeciles.”
“You have suitors at yoga?” Dean asked, leaning forward in excitement. “That’s so cool!”
He’d always wondered if Nanine thought of finding someone else to care about after Bernard, but it felt too personal to ask. She’d always said Bernard was the love of her life—a statement that closed down the conversation before it started.
“Did you not hear me refer to them as imbeciles?” Nanine stared him down. “They are not for me.”
“She’s got that right,” Brooke said. “It didn’t occur to me that Frenchmen would come to yoga to pick up women like guys do in the U.S. But guess what? The desperate ones do.”
“Hey!” Sawyer protested. “I went to yoga because I like it. Stretching and breathing is good for the mind and body. But I didn’t mind meeting girls. It’s a social setting, after all, with shared values.”
“I go to be left alone,” Brooke said testily, “and I hate people invading sacred spaces for their prurient interests.”
“You’ve been hanging around Sawyer too much if you’re using words like that.” Madison threw her shirt across the table to her. “You can wear my T-shirt to yoga. That should keep people away.”
Brooke held it to her chest, her usually New Yorker poker face transforming to a look of sheer joy. “That might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever done for me.”
“You can write to Santa about it and put a good word in for me this year,” Madison joked with her usual snark. “Kyle, enough stalling. Open your gift so we can order takeout.”
