It was days later, and Celine still couldn’t move around without wanting to heave herself onto the nearest divan and resume her brooding. Jacques had refused to meet with her, even after the compulsive amount of telephone calls, which had compelled the operator to stop connecting her to the Ménards entirely. He never answered and Celine was drawing a blank coming up with ways to see him. She had gone to the mansion, stayed there all day waiting for him; she had haunted his car and his driver, positive she would catch him there; she had even gone to the stables as a last resort, but had only found Marshmallow being brushed by the staff. Jacques was officially avoiding her, and it was making the situation more perplexing.
Her designs waited in the corner, packed and ready for tomorrow. Celine kept glancing at them every now and then as though they would cough up another option at any moment. The proposal had been replanned for the same time as the final round, and even if that wasn’t the case, she didn’t think she could say yes to Jacques. That sacrifice he had mentioned—it didn’t seem fair to have laboured so hard only to throw it away. All those weeks spent sewing until her fingers were numb and her back resembled Quasimodo’s hunch…
Sighing—the sound blaring in the vacancy of the attic—she reached across the table and drew a stack of papers to herself. They were actually Bastien’s, she realised once she went over the first few—lists of supplies she was running low on that he noted down and acquired for her.
Furiously, Celine pushed them into the container. As she did, a silly drawing fluttered free from the stack, landing airily on the table. Two stick people stood out in black ink: a boy, heavily bedazzled with stars and hearts all over his head, and a girl, with her arms crossed and two angry lines on her forehead in what Celine could only assume to be eyebrows. A tiny scrawl rested above their heads reading:The Vampire and Lover Boy.
A bitter smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. Six days and nights of replaying every interaction, every single remark they had exchanged, and Celine still couldn’t figure out what she’d done to make him spoil their…whatever it was that had cultivated between them.
She hadn’t seen or heard anything from Bastien since her birthday. Not a call, not a secret meeting, not even another apology cake. Not that she thought of him much during her waking hours. It was at night, when Celine had nothing else to distract herself with that he consumed her thoughts and she strained to hear for a pebble on her window. She had almost called Anaïs last night, in a whirl of anger and heartache, to takeher to Juliana’s apartment so she could curse at him. But Celine had stopped herself before she could rotate the dial all the way to the last number, and she had shuffled back up the stairs to scream into a pillow instead.
“Stupid boy,” she muttered at the drawing. Crumpling it up between her fingers, Celine tossed it over her shoulder. It echoed as it rolled across the room. The attic was too silent, too empty. Her mind immediately conjured up images of Bastien complaining of her being a philistine and an under-appreciator of fine art. His absence was ridiculously palpable. She looked over at the divan, where he usually sprawled to read,The Age of Innocencebeing waved around as he raved on and on about Archer and Ellen, cheering for them to get together. Celine could almost see the glee in his eyes when she had agreed with him. And then she actually saw him.
Even in the silence of the building she mustn't have heard him climb up the stairs. But he was standing by the door, eyebrows knit together as he picked up the drawing, unfurling it.
“I thought you liked this when I first made it.”
No hat, no jacket, not even a vest. Bastien looked as though he had tumbled out of bed. Perhaps he had, Celine thought with a curl of her lips in contempt. But she changed her mind at a second inspection when she noted that his hair was slightly wet, his shirt, too, had a few drops of rain sprinkled across the shoulders, though she doubted he had been walking in the rain. Still, he looked miserable.
“Why are you here?”
For a moment she thought she hadn’t said the words aloud, until Bastien’s face contorted into a wince.
“I wanted to see you.”
Celine stared at him to determine whether he was being serious or not. Nothing for a whole week, and now this.
“You should have come to Maison Baudelaire then,” she said plainly. “You could have seen plenty of me there. Instead of quitting without even telling me.”
“You were angry with me.” His voice was even, but when Celine studied his face she found anguish everywhere: in the hollows of his eyes, in the grim set of his mouth, even in the way strands of his hair stuck out, as though he had raked his fingers through it a hundred times before coming up here. “I thought it was better if I kept away.”
“Then you can keep away tonight too. I have nothing to say to you.” Even the curses she had planned for him had abandoned her. She dropped the last of the spools she was gathering and walked up to the door to close it. Bastien stuck his shoe through the threshold.
“No, but I have things to say toyou.”
Celine glared at him.
“I will not leave, Celine. So either invite me in or—”
“Or what? What do you have to say to me? Were the things you said up on that rooftop not enough?”
Something flickered in Bastien’s eyes at the mention of that night, but it was too quick for Celine to catch it. Tentatively, he nudged the door to open wider. “If you could just listen—”
“Listen so you can what”—Celine pushed back—“show up here again next week to say you cannot love me anymore?”
“Please—”
“No!” Celine exclaimed. “You could’ve had me. I was yours—I was all yours and you could have had me. But you didn’t want me!” She drew in a shaky breath, reeling in the anger and the hurt. “Now stop playing and leave.”
“I am not playing,” he insisted.
“Then you and I have very different definitions ofplay.” Resolving to physically get him out of there, Celine shoved against his chest.
Bastien wasn’t budging. His height made it harder to get him out the door. Seeing him was difficult enough to swallow, being close to him—to that warmth that emanated from him at all times, to the familiar scent on his clothes—wrung out all the strength she had in her. Determinedly, Celine gave his chest one final shove and quickly locked the door.
“Celine—”
“You can’t just decide to see me when it is most convenient for you,” she shot back. “Forget it this time.”
