A Wink and a Smile & the Land is Ours

Chapter 2

I had just sat down to begin my AP French homework when my mom burst in.

"Eliza, darling, could you pop down to the shops and pick up some Beaufort D'ete chesse? Julia and I can't find anything to serve as a appetizer!" She exclaimed, her voice poised and artificial.

"Sure!" I replied. "Hey mom, I got 98% on my Math finial! I had the highest in the class!" I told her, my voice full of excitement.

"Wow, that's lovely dear," she replied quickly with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. Her voice was the same sickly sweet and artificial tone as always, a tone essentially dismissed me. "Make sure you get back from the shops by five," she called as she left my room.

As I drove down the road to the shops, I tried to suppress the angry voice in the back of my head. "Eliza, you need to do better. a 98? Did you actually think your parents would be impressed by that?". The voice asked me. The majority of the time, I could pass my parents' dismissiveness off as them just being tired or overworked, but sometimes, that didn't help. Sometimes, I felt like another chore that needed to be crammed into their schedule. Needless to say, it wasn't a nice feeling. I pulled into the parking lot and slammed my car door as I walked into the grocery store.

For a moment, I couldn't remember what my mother wanted me to pick up. I gazed down the main aisle of the store in confusion. Despite being fluent in French, the local French grocery store was still a mystery to me. I picked up a package of cheese, still forgetting the exact brand my mom wanted. I put it in my basket, hoping it would suffice.

A deep voice interrupted my confusion. "Wow, Beaufort D'ete, you have good taste."

I scoffed. As if I had good taste in over priced French delicacies. "I'm just picking it up for-"

I trailed off as soon as I turned around and got good a look at the guy. He had a wavy mop of dark brown hair that seemed to say "I just got out of bed and I was probably having sex". His subtle goatee contrasted perfectly with his youthful, full eyebrows making him look somewhere in between eighteen and twenty. One of his eyebrows was raised and he had a slight smirk playing at his lips. To say my heart stuttered at the sight of him would be the understatement of the century. Shit, this guy was beautiful.

"A friend." I quickly corrected myself. A highly attractive man was talking to me and it would probably be best not to mention that I was doing chores for my mom. One side of his mouth quirked upwards and it was evident he was fully aware of my gawking. He slowing turned back to the wine shelf and picked up a bottle, squinting slightly as he read the bottle.

Oh no, I thought. I just met god's finest creation and he thinks I'm a freak.

"Are you just new in town?" I said quickly, trying to redeem myself. " It's a small town, so you get to know almost much everyone. I don't think I've seen you around before, though." It was a shock to everyone when my voice came out confident.

He turned back to me. "No, I just have some family here. It's a beautiful town though." He said the last part of the sentence staring at me, his eyes boring into mine. His words almost had a double meaning and that's when I realized it. Shit, this guy is flirting with me.

"It is nice," I said through a half smile. "The more you get to know it, the better it gets."

"I don't know, it looks pretty good from my position." He said in a low voice.

My eyebrows shot up. "So, did you really come here to see family or was it just to pick up random girls at the grocery store?" I asked him seriously.

His hearty laugh was so sudden it shocked me.

"Am I really that transparent?" he asked me. "As if my flirting game wasn't already on thin ice, I just found out my best line is shit!" he exclaimed to himself.