Beautiful Americans Read online

  “We haven’t even hung out yet,” Alex says. “I’ve been wanting to get to know you since we met at the airport. I just love your hair.” She reaches over and tousles my messy, longish dark hair. It’s a new thing I’m doing lately—shaggy chic.

  “Thanks! I’ll pick you up,” I offer, laughing. “You’ve been in such high demand that I didn’t know you had time for us riffraff.” I consider asking Alex to join me this afternoon, but I sense that Alex wants to make our time together into an occasion. Rightly so. It’s not every day that a girl like Alex asks you out on a date.

  “I’d always have time for you, dear,” Alex says sweetly. “See you at eight tonight. Don’t be late.”

  I click my heels together as I walk down the Avenue Kléber, following my map carefully so I won’t get lost. The fact that Alex is so set on hanging out with me is proof that my quest for love might not be as much of an upward battle as I thought. Even if Alex herself isn’t exactly . . . my type.

  The fabulous Alex lives in the same arrondissement as me, the 15th, I discover that evening when I go to pick her up. I find her host family’s building easily, and in the hazy twilight Alex is leaning over the second floor balcony in a bright pink silk Kimono. She’s furiously pounding a text message into her Blackberry with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other. A dark, angry expression clouds her pretty face.

  “Yoo-hoo!” I call softly up to her. When Alex sees it’s me, her face lights up.

  She spreads her palm. “Five minutes,” she mouths down to me, stubbing out her cigarette and tossing it over the ledge. After a moment, Alex bounds out the front door, wearing a black tube dress and red high heels. Her hair is held back by a wide black headband, and she’s carrying her camel-colored tote bag with the thick braided handle.

  “Comment ça va?” I ask, kissing her gaily on each heavily rouged cheek.

  “Ça va,” Alex sighs. She lights up another cigarette. “I need a drink so badly,” she tells me, pulling me down the street. “I’m getting hassled by my mom about the most ridiculous things—her texts have me all tense this evening. She’s giving me such a hard time about doing well in school this year—and the school year has barely even started.” Alex is wide open tonight—full of energy and spunk.

  We grab a table at the first place we see with outdoor seating in the rollicking area near the famous Odéon Theatre on the Left Bank. Alex stares moonily at the cute waiter until he comes over to take our order. I feel the urge to fan Alex’s cigarette smoke out of my eyes, but I’m afraid of offending her. I’m just wearing a simple army-green long-sleeved T-shirt and slouchy tapered Wesc jeans, but I starched and ironed each so carefully that I’d hate for all the smoke in this café to soak into them so early into the night.

  Of course, in Paris, trying to keep the putrid stench of cigarette smoke out of your clothes and your hair would have been like trying to tell Johnny Cash to stop singing sad old songs all the time, or telling my preacher back in Memphis that I’d rather he quieted down when he was praising the Lord every Sunday morning. In this case, as in many others, you just have to let go and let God. And be sure to wash your clothes with a whole lot of strong detergent when you get home.

  “Anyway, let’s chat about toi,” Alex says, flinging her Blackberry on the table. “Not moi. Or my vache of a mom, merci beaucoup, or my deadbeat ex-whatever, Jeremy, back in Brooklyn, or my good-for-nothing dad I haven’t seen since I was a baby, nor any of the other reasons why I’m thrilled to be an ocean away from everyone I know. Let’s just skip my sob story and get onto the good stuff about you.” She smiles flirtatiously.

  Alex is dramatic. I knew that from the moment we met in the baggage carousel and she swooningly had me carry her suitcases out to Mme Cuchon’s van. I am also getting two other feelings from Alex: Number one, that she likes me as more than a friend, and number two, that some of her brazenness is a show to make her look confident. Don’t get me wrong—I love Alex’s shenanigans so far. But her crush has to be put out of its misery. Before it gets embarrassing.

  “Do you think that waiter is cute?” I say slyly, hoping she’ll catch on.

  “Yeah, I guess,” she says thoughtfully. “Though très petit. Too short for me.”

  “I think he’s cute,” I say evenly. “He has beautiful skin. What if I give him my number?” I ask with way more confidence than I actually have. As if I ever would! As if he would even want it.

  Alex looks at me for a long moment, figuring out what I am saying. “Sure,” she says. “Yeah. Do it.”

  Alex has a look on her face like she has been duped. It’s sweet. She starts to laugh. Just then, things fall into place: Alex realizes that she’s got an instant best friend here, a Will to her Grace, a solid rock for her shaky neuroses, and I am happy to note that Alex is smoother than most of the other girls who’ve ever had crushes on me.

  She reaches into that behemoth leather bag and pulls out her hot pink lip-gloss for the tenth time since I picked her up. Watch Alex sometime and you’ll see it’s just a constant series of cigarette, lip-gloss, cigarette, lip-gloss. That and her obsession with gum.

  “Dude, you don’t even have a number here yet,” she says, “but I’d bet my Blackberry he’d screw you if you went up and asked. Who wouldn’t?”

  I stick my tongue out at her. She bears her perfectly even teeth at me wolfishly. Our brief, one-sided romance has officially devolved into the snarky friendship I’d been hoping for.

  “Well, then, my dear, darling Zack,” Alex goes on, “tell me more about your wild youth. I’m counting on you for a year of debauchery, and I need to know your credentials.”

  “Shhh!” I hiss at her. “Deep down, I’m, well, you know,” I say. “But let’s keep that to ourselves for the time being. Only a few other people on the entire planet know besides you and me.”

  “You’re kidding,” Alex says disbelievingly. “You’re not out of the closet?”

  “Sort of,” I tell her. “I came out to my best friend, Pierson, last year.”

  Alex snorts. “Haha, ‘coming out’? Is that what the gays are calling it these days? You and your ‘best friend,’ huh?” She raises her eyebrows suggestively.

  “It’s not like that!” I protest with a retch. “Pierson and I have known each other since the dawn of time. We both like guys, but we could never be together. It would be like going out with my brother. It’s too disgusting to think about.”

  “You didn’t even come out to your family?”

  “That’s how come I applied to the Lycée. I can’t be myself in Memphis,” I explain. “You can’t hardly flick your wrist without hitting some redneck just ready to exorcise all the gay demons right out of your soul in the little suburb where I live. I come into church on Sunday with this hairstyle, and I can just see my preacher itching to bang his Bible right over my head. I’m ready for Paris to just burn itself all over me.”

  “And this is where I come in,” Alex galvanizes. “Zack, we were destined to meet, I just know we were. You’re obviously never going to get anywhere in Paris without me to help you; I can see that already. Hold on just one second. . . .”

  Alex scans the bar inside through the open windows. “Aha! Excellent.”

  “What?”

  “Zack, darling,” Alex says, stubbing out her cigarette and lacing her velvety, thin manicured fingers into mine. “You and I are going to make a pact. You want a boyfriend; I want a boyfriend. That’s precisely why both of us came to Paris, and that’s precisely what we are going to find here.”

  I can’t help but beam giddily at her. In my wildest hopes before coming to Paris, I never dreamed I’d become friends with someone like Alex so quickly. She gets it. She gets me. I reach out and pinch her cheek to make sure she’s real. She is. Every glamorous inch of her.

  Alex squeezes my hand and removes it from her face. “So right now,” she commands, “I want you to finish your drink and follow me over to that table full of total poufs inside.”

  I lo
ok over. She’s right. In the corner are three young guys—none of them older than probably nineteen or twenty—each of them emanating a very, um, inviting quality.

  “What?” I cry out in alarm, trying to keep my voice down unsuccessfully. “Alex, no!”

  “Yes,” Alex insists. “It’s now or never.”

  “But what about you?” I say nervously. “None of them could become your boyfriend. What’s in it for you?”

  “Oh,” Alex waves her hand. “Don’t you worry about that. I’m already lining something up at the Lycée, and besides—I don’t want a French guy anyways. My mom married a French guy, and look what happened to her.”

  Of course Alex bails as soon as the setup is in place! Why am I not surprised? After a half hour of the French guys cooing over how cute she is, how much they love her bag and her shoes, she gathers her things, ties a large vintage Hermès scarf around her neck, and air kisses the guys goodbye.

  “Zack—call me tomorrow, and I will fill you in on how we’re spending next weekend. I love you more than anything.” Alex leans over, balancing precariously on her red stiletto heels to kiss me on the cheek.

  “You can’t leave me with them!” I protest quietly into her ear, but she’s off, teetering down the Rue Saint Sulpice, already chattering away onto her Blackberry and waving for a cab. I rub at the lip-gloss, sticky on my face, fuming.

  “Alors, Zack, que penses-tu de Paris?” one of the guys, a redhead with ruddy skin whose name I think is Martin, asks me. He looks deep into my eyes as he says it, his voice husky.

  “Oh, I love Paris,” I stammer. “I just love it!”

  “You should let me show you around sometime,” Martin says, reaching down and putting his hand on my knee. “Tonight we are going dancing at this really great club if you want to come with us.” His two friends nod in agreement.

  “Oh, maybe,” I say. Is it just me or did they dim the lights in here?

  I look away from Martin for a moment. I should go to the club with them. I should go out dancing every night. I should meet guys. I should trust Alex. This is how to get a boyfriend! But somehow—this feels all wrong. It sounds strange to say it in my head, but I realize I’ve never hung out with openly gay guys before. It’s oddly terrifying, I have to confess.

  With a sheepish smile, I turn back to Martin to decline his invitation. It’s just too soon. Besides, it’s getting late, plus . . . I don’t even know these guys. Maybe if Alex were here, but not like this. . . .

  Suddenly, Martin is leaning in toward me like he is going to kiss me. My first kiss with a guy! In just one second, I’m going to be kissing a guy. In public. This is. Absolutely. Unreal.

  Martin’s two friends have moved away from our table a bit to give us some privacy, and it’s obvious that they think he and I are a done deal. How did this all happen so fast?

  “Oh, God!” I sputter, feeling a hot, red blush spread from my hairline to the absolute tips of my toes. “I’ve got to go—curfew—sorry—thanks for the drinks!” I leap out of my seat and hear the crash of our wine glasses as I blindly knock them over. I don’t even stop to help clean up the mess. I just bolt for the door.

  5. ALEX

  Love and Lies in Le Marais

  “This joker thinks he knows his way around the Paris metro, but he’s demented,” Drew practically shouts as he and George approach our table, each holding a tacky tallboy of convenience-store beer. “We were all the way to the Porte de Clignancourt before homeboy realized we were going in the completely wrong direction.”

  A group of us is sitting at the most adorable outdoor garden café, located in the trendy neighborhood of Le Marais on a Saturday night. The café is draped in white Christmas lights and hushed except for a little retro record player warbling Edith Piaf. The patrons, locals dripping with style and class, give us an immediate look of disgust as the boys drag up chairs to join us.

  I take a deep breath. Since Zack is clearly out of the question, George is the one I’ve selected to be my boyfriend this year. Half horrified, half cracking up, I grab the mostly empty cans from the boys and hide them under the table before the waiter turns around and sees.

  “Shut up, you idiot! The girls are going to think I don’t have any game if you keep that up,” George retorts, also way too loud, giving Drew a friendly shove. “Don’t listen to him. He’s the one that got stuck in the metro turnstile. The dude in the little hut at the station had to come help him out of it. It was priceless.”

  George and Drew are possibly the most eligible guys in our program, both of them clean-cut sons of New England privilege. They know each other from before the Lycée, since they’ve gone to boarding school together for the last four years. Though Drew is certainly plenty hot, tall and a little scraggly with shaggy blond hair, George is my favorite of the two. George is preppier and a little stockier than his friend, with a sweeter face and a certain je ne sais quoi. He reminds me of an old-school charmer, like one of the rich kids in an old John Hughes movie. A prepster with a heart of gold. Or something.

  “I’m so sorry we’re late,” George says more quietly, looking right at me with piercing, intent eyes. “I hope we didn’t keep you waiting.”

  He’s perfectly captivated by me, his manners honed carefully by his ritzy upbringing. I feel my mom’s nod of approval all the way from New York. “That’s okay,” I tell him, unable to look away.

  I noticed him on the first day of school, checking me out as I put on my lip-gloss in French class. It took him a full three weeks before finally asking me what I was doing this weekend.

  “So, Al,” George says, reclining comfortably, still looking just at me. “Now that you took our beers from us, how should we go about getting more?”

  I really like that he called me Al. Having a nickname for me so soon is surely a good sign. “Um,” I say, barely able to think, nonetheless respond like an intelligent person. “Order one from the waiter?”

  I usually have an arsenal of flirtatious one-liners to keep me going through the adrenaline high of being with a new crush for the first time, but tonight I’m falling flat. I must like George more than I realized.

  Olivia raises her eyebrows at my quavering, nervous response and motions at the waiter to bring everyone a fresh drink.

  I’d helped Olivia accessorize the striped baby doll dress I’d loaned her with my red stiletto pumps (I’m already sick of wearing them, anyway) and my wide black belt cinched around her small waist. She looks fantastic, though not quite as good as I do tonight in one of my mom’s patterned Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dresses with its plunging neckline. Olivia might have a boyfriend at home, but not for long if I have anything to do with it. Dating is no fun when you can’t include your friends.

  “What do you care what I wear tonight?” Olivia asked me, disgruntled, when I insisted she changed out of her j eans and Ugg boots and into something of mine. “Besides, it’s starting to get chilly out. I’ll freeze if I wear this.”

  “Wear this over it, then,” I told her, handing her a black pashmina wrap. “Olivia, it’s hardly freezing out. It’s not even October. Just wait till January. You’ll be begging to get on the first flight back to San Diego.”

  “Still,” Olivia said, fiddling with the belt. “I like to be casual.”

  “I’ve noticed,” I told her. “You and every other American in our program. How do you guys expect to find boyfriends over here if you’re always dressing like you’ve just rolled out of bed?”

  “Alex,” Olivia told me for what seemed like the millionth time. “I have a boyfriend. Vince, remember? We’ve been going out for two years. I’m not about to go out with someone else.”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, I thought. The whole story is tiresome by now. Olivia has known studly basketball star Vince her whole life—their parents are friends or something. They ran around in dirty Huggies together. If you ask me, that’s all the more reason she should date someone new!

  I made a vomiting noise. “You’re in Paris, for Pete�
��s sake! The city of love. Life is too short for long distance relationships . . . and anyway, who else am I going to double date with?” Olivia knew I meant I’d picked out Drew for her, but she wasn’t taking me seriously.

  I wondered, though, when I saw her fluff her highlighted hair (mercifully, she’s wearing it down rather than in a boring old ponytail like normal) as the boys approached.

  PJ, of all people, is sitting to Olivia’s left. I was so annoyed when she came over to get ready with us earlier—of course Olivia felt like she had to invite her since PJ is still living with her. Olivia is far too kindhearted to leave anyone out, even a space cadet like PJ. Since she arrived at the café tonight, PJ has just sat there looking lovely and petulant, drinking nothing but sparkling water and in general making everything as awkward as possible. She can’t seem to stop fidgeting, or saying things out of turn.

  Like when she prompts me for the right words to order my drink. Doesn’t PJ think I know how to say “Je voudrais un verre de vin”? It just takes me a second to think of it. I have other things on my mind. Like George, sitting not even a foot away from me, his smile as beguiling as a heartthrob on the cover of Luxe.

  The waiter brings over our drinks. White wine for me, beer for George and Drew, a gin and tonic for Zack, and two very demure glasses of Perrier for Olivia and PJ. Olivia, as a dancer, has an excuse for not drinking. PJ, on the other hand, seems to abstain just to be a buzz-kill.

  I sneak a look over at George, sipping on his Heineken (which is conveniently pronounced the same way in every language and thus easy to order in French without looking like a fool) and wonder if he thinks PJ is hotter than me. When he meets my eyes with an amatory smile, I have the answer to my question—there is no one in this program better suited to George than myself. Not even the six-foot willowy blonde hippie. I breathe a long sigh of happy relief.