When in Paris

(18) Eighteen

Chapter 18

After her meltdown, Cathreese felt a little embarrassed and was glad that Nathan was playing it off like it hadn’t happened. Once they had stepped down from Mont Saint-Michel everything had gone back to normal. Nathan had cracked a joke about something stupid and Cathreese had laughed, not because it was funny but just because she could. They were now standing in the basement of the Château de Falaise, staring at the recreation of a castle dungeon and thousand-years-of-Falaise,Normandy exhibit.

“Could you imagine being locked in a dungeon for all of eternity?” Nathan asked as he studied the display. “I think I would have preferred a beheading you know? Quick and easy.”

“Not me,” Cathreese whispered, hearing the slice of an axe in her mind.

“Why? At least with a beheading you won’t feel any pain and you won’t be trapped in a tiny room with barely any food for the rest of your life. You just get it over with.”

“In a dungeon you still have time to live.”

“I wouldn’t call hanging out with the rats living.”

“But you still have your mind. They can’t take that away. And with your imagination you can live forever without leaving the cell.”

Nathan made a whirling motion with his finger, “Most people go crazy. You wouldn’t have your mind after all.”

Cathreese and Nathan climbed the stairs, going to check out the model train set up in the upper room. “I’m used to living in my mind,” she said as they watched the train make its way around the track. “I did it for so long that it wouldn’t seem any different.”

“What do you mean?” Nathan squatted down next to the train, holding out his hand as if he wanted to reach out and touch it; as if the train could take him anywhere he had ever wanted to go.

“With Caiden and stuff. I started to get bored around him a lot in the last year and I reverted to my imagination. All the places I wanted to travel, the foods I wanted to eat, the boys I wanted to kiss.” She made sure not to meet Nathan’s eyes when she said this, even though he had stood back up and was staring at her with his head cocked slightly to the side as he took in her words. “I guess that should have been a hint that things weren’t exactly working out, but I was still devastated when he ended it.” Cathreese punched herself in the thigh, “I was so stupid. I freaked out when he said we were done, even though deep down I had wanted to hear those words for ages. And then when I saw you at the airport I blew you off because I was telling myself that I had just broken up with my one true love and I didn’t need a cute foreign boy messing with me.” She looked up and grinned at him, “Yet here I am a week later; staring at a model train in some random town on the coast of France with the most amazing foreign boy ever.”

Nathan scrunched his nose adorably, making the light smattering of freckles on his skin blend together as one. “I’m not foreign. You are.”

Cathreese couldn’t stop herself; she reached out and poked his nose. “You’re foreign to me.”

He caught her hand with his and wound their fingers together, holding up their clasped hands in the space between their faces. He turned them over, studying the way their fingers fit so perfectly together and smiling at the chipped blue polish on Cathreese’s fingernails. “Do all foreign girls have tiny hands?” he smirked cutely at her.