"It does feel pretty good to call on one of those favors," Luc mused as he stuck his tiny spoon into his frozen yogurt.

I scoffed. "Yeah, because you're not paying." I sent him a pointed look. "You know now isn't the greatest time for me, Luc."

I'd been studying on and off for the finals over the past week and a half, and now, with another one and a half weeks to go, I really needed to sit down and actually try to absorb information at some point in time. Luc really wasn't helping by insisting on having frozen yogurt with me (and using one of the "favors" I'd offered him a long, long time ago in exchange for his French services). He probably had plenty of work to do himself.

Luc leaned over the little space between us and pecked my cheek. I felt that very spot flush with heat—ugh, was I blushing again? By the way Luc's eyes were appraising my countenance, I supposed I was. "You'll be fine, A. I can hang with you if you need any—"

"Don't even offer," I said, watching him as he helped himself to more of his frozen yogurt. "I know you have plenty of courses to study for, and I refuse to be the reason you fail your finals."

I did have to admit that it would be just a little amusing if Luc didn't get all A's. But that was a cruel thing of me to wish—I was trying to get better at not wishing failure upon others.

Luc met my eyes, his twinkling. I highly suspected that most of it was because of the yogurt, not because of the selfless thing I'd done. "All right, then, Audrey, you didn't have to reject me so quickly—"

"You are so hopeless." I swirled my yogurt around one final time and gingerly picked up a spoonful to put in my mouth. I really should have started eating a little earlier—my frozen yogurt was melting now.

Luc's lips quirked up at the corners. "You don't have to be afraid to ask for help, Audrey. Calculus is pretty hard, and there's no wrong in admitting that. I'm here whenever you need me, all right?"

Yeah, so maybe there was a reason I kept him around here. He could be a jackass half the time, but the other half? He was a damn perfect gentleman (who could be my boyfriend, but we hadn't confirmed anything with each other yet due to both of our prior commitments to academics and sports, in his case).

"Thanks, Luc," I returned his smile. Then I reached into my backpack and pulled out Madame Bovary. "Well, since we've only got so far to go before it's all over, we might as well squish some of this in."

Setting down his frozen yogurt, Luc let out a groan. "I thought I was going to actually have fun with you today."

"I'm always fun," I deadpanned. "You actually don't enjoy Madame Bovary?"

Luc shrugged. "I mean, I don't think it's literary gibberish, like you do, but it's not exactly the leisure novel I had in mind."

"The fact that you have leisure novels astounds me." I shook my head. "Anyway, we should really get on with it."

Grudgingly taking the book from me, Luc rolled his eyes and bit his lip as he flipped to my owl bookmark (which was looking a little worse for tear now since I'd stuffed Bovary pretty everywhere I could stuff it). "You may not believe me, but it does get kind of boring when you read every time you meet up with this girl who feels the constant urge to interrupt you all the time."

I was very proud of myself for not interrupting him just then, just to prove my point.

Luc flatly met my eyes again. "Fine, I get it."

"I have a way of proving myself," I said pointedly, leaning on my hand as I watched him. "Now, go, go."

I think Luc was pretty exasperated, but he held it in, biting his cheek, and started to read. "C'était le jeudi. Elle se lavait..."

At least I understood all of that so far. The use of the imperfect quite delighted me, which Luc could tell from my smirk. Ah, this was the life.

↔

I held my calculus textbook up to my chest as Luc and I strolled out of the frozen yogurt shop. At one point, Luc had gone to get seconds (for which, of course, I had to pay), so he was holding his little container and spoon as he casually swallowed a spoonful of the stuff. Ugh, he really was just finding excuses to use as much of my money as he could because he knew that he'd be paying for everything once we actually started going out properly.

Well, I wasn't too sure if we'd actually start doing things officially.

"So when's Lila coming back to your house again?" I asked him, glancing sideways up at him. His golden eyes, content and dancing in the afternoon light, met mine as he lifted another spoonful into his mouth.

He swallowed. "Around six, I think. She had a final meeting with yearbook or whatever."

"I don't know how she got into two literary projects at the same time," I grumbled, "especially when she's neglecting one of them in lieu for the other—"

"I don't really think yearbook is a literary project," Luc said, cutting me off, "but yeah, she shouldn't have joined both. My sister has terrible time management skills; I don't know how she got through junior year."

Rude. But honestly, I couldn't really care right now. This was the typical Luc Mercier, and I did have to deal with him for the rest of high school. "And she left me with all the work, which, frankly, is inconsiderate and selfish."

Now that I thought about it, that was pretty harsh.

Luc seemed to think so too, whistling lowly out of the corner of his mouth. "Rough going, Audrey."

"Yeah, that was pretty mean of me," I said, even though I still had a little smirk on. "If you tell her, she'll probably slap me."

Luc shook his head, laughing openly as he unlocked his car. We walked on opposite sides and hopped in, glancing at each other once we were secure. "You know you'll miss all of this in college, A."

"I will," I said lowly. After all, I did say a lot to Luc about how excited I was to get out of high school and to get to college. "But they say that it's easy to leave behind high school friends. It's really in college where you find your life-long companions."

As he buckled himself in and pulled out of his parking space, Luc glanced at me. "Then we'll make that not happen."

"Are you gonna call me every day?" I teased him. "You wouldn't want your cool college friends to know that you're hooked on someone back home."

"But you aren't going to stay here," Luc pointed out as he pulled to a stop in an intersection. He rested his hands easily on the driver's wheel, and the late spring breeze blew through his hair. I could see the golden highlights in his hair in the afternoon sun. God, if I really tried, I could convince myself that I was in California right now, living some sort of teenage dream with Luc Mercier. "You're going to head off to Cornell."

I laughed out loud at him, pushing his right arm lightly with my shoulder. "No, I'm not. That's a sort of peak that I'll never reach."

"You know, you won't get to Cornell if you keep telling yourself that you can't," Luc said. He met my eyes as he pressed down on the gas, weaving through the lazy traffic on the road. We were going to get on the highway any time soon. "I mean, you did manage to get accepted to Excelsior in the first place, so you can't be completely hopeless."

"Right." I glanced over to him. His hair...

"You've been forcing me to give you quite a few pep talks over these last few weeks," he said, raising an eyebrow at me. "I hope this won't continue because it's draining all the inspiration out of me."

I turned to my window, which was open (effectively letting in the wind, which blew my long, dark hair back). "What do you use your inspiration for anyway?" I shouted out the window, for we were rushing down the highway now. I liked it like this—having no music blasting from the stereo. The wind was sound enough for me anyway.

Luc didn't answer. So I turned back to him, just to catch him with his golden eyes intently staring at me, like he had a question in the back of his mind. "What? Don't tell me you have to save inspiration for your creative writing class."

The pensive look in his eyes disappeared, and he drew himself up against the wheel of his car. (I had just realized how dangerous this situation was—his eyes weren't on the road.) "I don't actually—well—I don't—use my powers of creativity in that class," he spluttered.

"Then seriously, why'd you sign up for it?"

"Didn't I tell you?" Running his hands through his hair, Luc glanced at me as he pulled into an exit. "I was late in signing up for electives, and Creative Writing 101 was the only class left."

And I did vaguely remember telling him that Creative Writing 101 was one of the most popular electives in our school, so the class must have filled up rather quickly... Luc had said something about wanting to find out more about the writing process in the response, so when Luc looked over to me now defensively, I didn't press the point.

Although it was pretty funny that he had an interest in creative writing, since this was the guy who started an argument with the teacher in English Lit about how logic was clearly superior to imagination.

We sat in a comfortable sort of silence for the rest of the car ride since we both knew that we were nearing the Mercier house anyway. I sneaked glances at him every once in a while to see his usually dark hair shine gold and his eyes dancing as they met mine sometimes. That meant he looked at me too.

I had a right to feel flattered sometimes.

Luc pulled up to the gate of his community, presented his ID, and passed through, cruising easily along the few roads he had to take before reaching his house. I was texting Lila at this point, since it was six o'clock (and I wasn't going to eat dinner with just Luc and his parents—I'd already had the awkward parent talk when Luc came over for the dinner the other day). We both hopped out of the car.

"Hey, stop texting." Luc took my phone from me and pocketed it.

"Hey!" I protested, almost reaching for his pocket, but then I realized that it was in his back pocket. I retracted my hand. Really, as tempting as it was, I had no desire to grope his ass right now—although that could certainly come later.

Luc seemed to see where my thoughts were going. "You're nasty, Audrey," he said, sending me a smirk like he was the angel in the situation.

"Lila was just going to tell me when she was coming back," I complained although I didn't say anything more on the subject, walking to the front door with Luc close enough so that our arms were barely touching.

He felt nice—even though I wasn't really feeling him.

Luc didn't get the chance to open the front door, because his twin opened it for us. "Hey, you two," Lila said, chewing on a granola bar. "I actually came back before you, so ha!" The smell of newly cooked food wafted out of the door. My mouth watered.

"Shut up," Luc muttered as he brushed past her into his living room. "I had to treat her to frozen yogurt—"

I shook my finger at his back. "For your information," I said, turning to his sister, "I paid for the frozen yogurt. And he insisted on it, so we had to go around all over the place looking for a fucking shop that sold it."

"See, I got her testimony," Lila shouted at Luc's retreating back (he was disappearing into the kitchen—no surprise, really). "You are a major pain in the ass who likes to waste time—"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," Luc called back from the kitchen. It sounded like he was opening a bag of chips. (What was he doing? We literally were going to have dinner in half an hour.)

"Watch your language, kids," their mom said as she came down the stairs with her MacBook in her arm. "Hi, Audrey!" She caught my arm and appraised me. "Oh, you look so cute!"

I coughed. "Um, your outfit is awesome too."

Lila bit back a snicker.

"Thank you, dear." Mrs. Mercier smiled. "Dinner is almost ready; I'm sure you can smell it." She looked into the kitchen. "And that pea-brained boy—Lucien! Why in the world are you eating chips if we're having dinner in a couple minutes? You don't appreciate the food I've made for you, and..."

The front door opened, startling me. Lila and I both greeted her dad, who had a knapsack that he put down next to the front door. He held his arms open. "Give me a hug, both of you."

As we both were stuck in Lila's dad's bear hug (which really felt nice and comforting, although not in the same way Luc's hugs were), I muttered to Lila (which was a pretty difficult thing to do since my face was squashed), "Yo, how long d'you think this dinner'll be?"

"Five hours," Lila mumbled back. "We're having a traditional French meal today."

And Luc said he wasn't French.

→

Guys, I'm literally posting this five minutes before I leave to put on my play...the jitters. Wish me luck (or belated luck, haha)!

Anyway, I do love you all for commenting and voting so much, whether it's on this book or any of my other books! There's no way I would have gotten here if I didn't have encouragement, and I have to credit you all with that. You're awesome!

Anyway, how do you feel about the Merciers? I'd totally love to know a family like theirs, especially if there's someone like Luc...

See you tomorrow (when there will be a second show), and thank you once again!

Anne