Once in there, she washed and conditioned her hair, watching an entire day’s worth of airport grime spiral into the drain. What she really wanted to do was stay there for hours and hours on end, letting the hot water untie all of the knots in her back, relaxing her body and clearing her mind. She would have even settled for shaving her legs and armpits, but unfortunately, she had no razor.

The dorm room door opened. Beth, sitting on Jon’s bed and chatting with his roommate, looked up.

“Beth, did you use my razor?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be showering so we can go?” she retorted.

“I’m done showering; I just need to shave. Did you use my razor?”

“Why shave? You look fine the way you are,” she replied.

“Stop changing the subject! Did you use my razor?”

She ducked her head guiltily. “Maybe…”

Jon looked supremely grossed out. “Ew!” His roommate, Jeff, sniggered. “That’s disgusting!”

“Why?”

“I shave my face with that! And you used it on your stinky armpits and your legs and probably your…” his face turned red, “your…you know, womanly parts, and…”

Beth smirked and raised an eyebrow. “That’s nowhere your face hasn’t been before,” she said coolly. She loved the fact that the only thing Jon got embarrassed about was what to call her “womanly parts.”

Jon’s mouth hung open for a few seconds. Jeff burst into raucous peals of laughter, rolling off the bed to land onto the floor with a thump. He continued to laugh, still lying there.

“This is different,” Jon said, finally recovering. “It’s not like I rub my face…”

“I beg to differ,” Beth said, inspecting her nails nonchalantly. What she was implying wasn’t exactly true, but it was worth it to see the two guys’ reactions. Jon turned, if possible, even redder. Jeff, who’d nearly recovered, was lost again in fits of laughter.

“It just gives you endless amusement to watch me squirm, doesn’t it?” Jon asked as Jeff finally calmed down.

“Yep,” said Beth shamelessly. “Now, are you going to shave or not?”

“Just keep it,” said Jon, tossing the razor to her. As he exited the room, she heard him yell, “Jeff, I’m borrowing yours!”

Well, she’d just ask Lauren if she could use hers tomorrow. And I won’t, she added to herself, use it to shave my womanly parts. She squirted shower gel onto her washcloth.

She’d taken as much time as she could in the shower, spinning out the Jon-free moments where she could relax and just let the hot water massage her shoulders. Unfortunately, she’d have to come out of there sometime. Stepping out of the shower and reaching for the towel, she shivered slightly; the air in the bathroom felt cool against her warm skin. She quickly dried her hair off enough that it wouldn’t drip all over the floor and wrapped the towel around herself. As she looked around the bathroom, realization struck her—her clothes were not in there. She’d have to walk through the entire second floor to get to Lauren’s room, where she assumed her clothes were waiting for her.

Shit. Goddammit. Merde.

Already, again with the cursing in French! She fought to retain the calm that the shower had brought her. For the love of God, girl, you can’t keep falling apart at every juncture! What is wrong with you?!

Jon! Jon is what’s wrong with me, you dumbass! Do you seriously think that anybody else could make me fall apart like this?! Je suis bien…

Tais-toi!

Mercifully, the first voice obeyed.

Good thing, too. We can’t have you talking to yourself like a crazy person.

The predicament was ridiculously cliché; the solution ridiculously obvious. She would just have to scamper across the hallway very quickly and quietly so as not to attract the attention of the other inhabitants of the house. Specifically, the male inhabitant of the house. She wrapped the towel a little more tightly, making sure that it was secure, and then steeled herself to open the door. What was the worst that could happen?

The air was delightfully steamy as she stepped out of the bathroom. The steam was thanks to her—the shower she’d taken had been perhaps a little too long, and the temperature a bit too hot. She gripped the towel loosely around herself; she and Jon were the only ones in the house, and she didn’t really care if he saw her naked. It wasn’t as if it would be a new sight for him. She’d just begun walking down the hall towards his room when the door opened. She caught a fleeting glimpse of Jon before his mouth was on hers. He backed her up to press against the wall, his hands pulling her even closer to him.

Beth broke the kiss, but Jon continued to kiss her jaw, her neck, her shoulders.

“What are you doing?” she inquired breathlessly.

“Please, Beth. I know you’re smart. Try not to ask stupid questions.” His voice was low and husky, but it still didn’t mask the facetiousness that was almost always there.

“And why, pray tell, might you be doing it?” His lips had moved to her collarbone, his hands to her hips. He pressed her harder against the wall, welding their bodies together. It was getting harder to form coherent thoughts.

“Should I even dignify that inane query with a response?” he asked. “Or should I merely point out that you are dripping wet, warm, and wearing only a towel, and that we haven’t seen each other in weeks, unless you count the flight out here?”

She grinned. “I guess I did fail to consider that part.” With that, she brought her hands up to his shirt and began unbuttoning it. The towel fell to the floor, forgotten.

Memories. Memories were the worst that could happen.

Goddammit.

Stop! Stop it! Stop talking, stop falling apart, stop it all! Jesus! You are better than this! Just do it. Open the damn door.

She decided it was time to put the voices away for now; they were getting distracting. She had to have all of her wits about her. Unfortunately, they were scattered at the moment. She started reeling them back, one by one, back from the desolate land of memory and through the fanciful realm of imagination. And back they came, cloaking her with sanity and clear-headedness.

She opened the door.

But only slightly.

You wimp. Grow a pair.

She inwardly grinned at the irony, then pushed the door open wide. Thank God the second floor was carpeted; she made barely a sound as she leapt down the hall, pivoted, and crashed through the door into Lauren’s room.

Lauren wasn’t there.

Whew. A sigh of relief. She didn’t want Lauren to see her running across the hallway like the four horsemen of the apocalypse were on her tail.

She glanced down at the bed. One of Lauren’s sports bras (black); a pair of string bikini underwear (hot pink and hopefully clean); a men’s undershirt, more commonly known as a wifebeater (white); a pair of sweatpants (navy blue); and a pair of thick wool ski socks (tan) were neatly folded on Lauren's maroon bedspread. All in all, her standard outfit for when she borrowed clothes from the Mackenzie family. She knew to whom most of the clothing belonged.

“Um, so…none of our stuff will fit you,” Lauren mused.

“Why, Lauren, whatever do you mean?” asked Beth, completely straightfaced.

“Well, I’m six feet two inches tall…Tina’s six three…Jon’s five eleven…and you, well…You’re five four.”

Beth looked sidelong at her. “Lauren, I was making a joke. Please. It’s pretty obvious that none of your clothes are going to fit me.”

Lauren laughed. “God, my brother’s rubbing off on you. What happened to the sweet little Elisabetta who would never dream of using sarcasm?”

“I got rid of her in the fourth grade, along with my imaginary friends.” That wasn’t strictly true. She’d gotten rid of her imaginary friends in the third grade.

“Okay, well…it looks like Jon’s clothes are the best bet, in terms of what will fit you. Let’s go raid his room.”

“Are you sure that’s okay?”

“Um…I steal Jon’s clothes all the time, and he doesn’t get that mad. Plus, you’re his best friend. There’s no way that he’ll get mad at you for wearing some of his clothes,” said Lauren as she pushed the door open. “It looks like sweatpants are our best bet; you can always roll the waistband if they’re too long. And…I can let you borrow a sports bra or something; we’re almost the same size.”

“Thanks.”

Every item of clothing was familiar to her. Even the tank top.

“Ha!” she nearly shouted with laughter. “Look! You’re so white, your skin almost blends in with that wifebeater!”

“Well, not all of us can be half Italian with skin that tans perfectly,” muttered Jon, a blush rising in his pale cheeks. It made his eyes look even bluer. Beth paused in her laughter to stare for a moment. Then she resumed—his skin really was alarmingly white.

Quickly she dropped the towel, almost catching sight of herself in the full length mirror next to Lauren’s bed. She averted her eyes and quickly pulled on the clothes, then looked around for a brush and some hair bands. She finally found them on Lauren’s dresser. Deciding not to bother doing anything special with her hair, she swiftly brushed it out (swiftly being a relative term; it was pretty difficult to brush your hair swiftly when your hair was down to the middle of your back) and separated it into halves. Separating one of the halves into three parts, she began to braid.

“I can’t believe you don’t know how to do this,” she said as she carefully parted her hair down the middle. “It’s like, fundamental.”

“Fundamental to you, maybe,” retorted Jon, “But not for me. And anyway, I still can’t believe that you don’t understand football. How did you get to be a fifteen-year-old American girl and not know something like that?”

“Well, I know the basics,” she said, “Just not the whole first and ten or fourth and goal business. Here,” she added, flipping one half of her hair over her shoulder and motioning for him to take it. “This is super easy. Ready?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Okay, so first you separate the hair into three equal sections, like this,” she said, demonstrating on the right half of her head. “Now you do it.” His sections weren’t exactly equal, but they would do. “Now you take the right section, and cross it over the middle section. Now the right section is in the middle, and the middle section is on the right.”

“Okay…” was all he said. She stole a look at him in the mirror; he was deep in concentration. She could see the tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth.

“Next, you take the left section, and cross it over. Now it’s in the middle. Got it?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Now you take the right section, which used to be in the middle, and cross it over the middle section. Now it’s in the middle, and what used to be the middle, which before that was the left, is now on the right. What was the right is now on the far left, and what used to be the left is now in the middle. Okay?”

“Uh…Beth?”

“Yes, my young grasshopper?”

“I think I tied your hair in a knot…”

Done braiding her hair into two braids, she secured the ends with the hair bands that she’d found, took a deep breath, and then looked at herself in Lauren’s mirror.

She looked better already.

In fact, she looked better than she had in weeks.

Claude pinched her cheeks. “Ça va, cherie? Tu as l’air vraiment inquiète. What is worrying you ?”

“Nothing, why?” She put her book down as Claude sat beside her on the couch in their apartment.

“You look pale, and sick. Is there anything wrong?”

“Nothing more than usual, I guess. I’m nervous about leaving; I only have a month until I go. I’m going to miss everybody here.”

“But of course you will miss me! How could you not?”

She smiled. “I don’t know.”

“But that is not what is bothering you. Truly, Elisabetta, I have not seen you like this since you first arrived here. You are pale and quiet, and your eyes droop downwards. What is going on?”

“Believe me Claude, when I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.”

Note to self: email Claude tonight. She’d finally figured out what had been bothering her, and that was separation from the people that she loved most. When she’d first arrived in France, it had been because she’d just broken up with Jonathan. Then, when she was leaving, it was the thought of leaving Claude behind.

Did that mean that being around Jon was good for her?

No, surely not.

She’d just had a very relaxing shower, that’s all.

Slipping on the thick socks over her now-cold feet, Beth padded across the hallway and down the stairs (still studiously avoiding looking in the direction of Jon’s bedroom, of course).

Arriving downstairs, she could smell pancakes and frying bacon—not the most traditional Christmas Eve dinner, but it was, however, her favorite meal. Chocolate chip pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon, extra crispy. Add some Orange Spice tea, and it was the perfect comfort food for a cold winter evening.

Even if it was your ex-boyfriend (she hated that word) making the meal.

Which, as she found out, it was.

She entered the kitchen, expecting to see Lauren flipping the pancakes. After all, Lauren knew her comfort food almost as well as Jon did. However, it was not Lauren. It was Jonathan. Jon’s tall form, standing there barefoot in dark jeans and a charcoal gray T-shirt, frying up a pan of bacon like no time had passed at all.

She ambled into the room, grabbing an apple out of the fruit bowl. Shaking her wet hair back out of her face, she asked, “So, how are my pancakes coming along, Chef Mackenzie?”

He looked up and stared at her for a moment.

“What?” she asked self-consciously. Sure, she was wearing his clothes, but it wasn’t anything new. They’d been caught in the rain, and she’d had to borrow his. It had been known to happen before.

Before.

Before The Kiss.

He was still staring at her.

“What?” she said again, this time more insistently. She was beginning to feel awkward. Had he seen some physical deformity of hers that had previously gone unnoticed? Was he regretting his request to give dating each other a try? What if—

In three long strides, he crossed the small kitchen, took her face between his hands, and kissed her hard on the mouth.

Okay, so he wasn’t regretting any decision.

“I couldn’t tell you this before,” he whispered, his voice low. The bottom dropped out of her stomach, something that was occurring with alarming frequency nowadays. “I couldn’t tell you before, but seeing you with wet hair, in my clothes…” his lips brushed against hers again, lightly. “…is the biggest turn-on in the world.”

They kissed again. Rain pounded on the windows as the smell of burnt pancake batter filled the kitchen.

There was to be no ambling in this kitchen scene. No kissing, either.

But there was staring.

Coming from both sides.

She wondered if he was remembering the same things that she was.

Well, great. In the last ten minutes since you’ve left the shower, you’ve already managed to ruin the plan. Nice going. Really. Looks like we’re going to have to resort to Plan B.

What’s Plan B?
I was hoping that you knew.