When Beatle Met Lennon // h.s

Chapter Thirteen - French Feminists

Thirteen – French Feminists

The whole way to the café I think about Harry.

I think about how I had all of him and now I’m going to have none of him unless I can somehow make him understand what happened last night. But how? I already left two messages on his cell phone this morning and even called the One Direction house once. It went like this:

Kat (shaking in her flip-flops): Is Harry there?

Zayn: Wow, Kitty, shocker . . . brave girl.

Kat (looks down to see scarlet letter emblazoned on her T-shirt): Is he around?                                        

Zayn: Nope, left early.

Zayn and Kat: Awkward Silence

Zayn: He’s taking it pretty hard. I’ve never seen him so upset about a girl before, about anything, actually. . .

Kat (close to tears): Will you tell him I called?

Zayn: Will do.

Zayn and Kat: Awkward Silence

Zayn (tentative): Kitty, if you like him, well, don’t give up.

Dial tone.

And that’s the problem, I madly like him. I make an SOS call to Amy to come down to the café during my shift.

***

“Why the SOS?” Amy says to me. The summer day has followed her in. Her hair is still wet from swimming. When I called earlier she and Mikayla had decided to go down to the beach together, seeing as they knew I’d be working today. I can smell the sea on her as she hugs me over the counter.

“Are you wearing toe rings?” I ask to postpone my confession a little longer.

“Of course.” She lifts her kaleidoscopic pantalooned leg into the air to show me.

“Impressive.”

She hops onto the stool across the counter from where I’m working, throws down her book bag. Lately she’s been reading up on French feminists. She takes out a book, it’s by Hélène Cixous.

“Kitty, these French feminists are so much cooler than those stupid existentialists. I’m so into this concept of jouissance [enjoyment], it means transcendent rapture, which I’m sure you and Harry know all about –” She plays the air with invisible drum sticks.

“Knew.” I take a deep breath. Her face is stuck somewhere between disbelief and shock. “What do you mean, knew?”

“I mean, knew.”

“But yesterday. . .” She’s shaking her head, trying to catch up to the news. “You were practically on cloud nine, wouldn’t stop gushing about him, making Mikayla and I sick on account of the indisputable, irrefutable and unmistakeable true love that was seeping out of every pore of your body.”

“I kissed Lachie last night,” I say quietly, looking down at the cash register.  “And Harry saw us.”

“You’ve got to be kidding?

I shake my head.

“But why, Kat? Why would you do that?” Her voice is surprisingly without judgement. She really wants to know. “You don’t love Lachie.”

I chuckle and shake my head again. “No.”

“And you’re absolutely, dementedly in love with Harry.”