TO BE FRANK

CHAPTER ELEVEN, three's company

     Juliette flashes him yet another look, one with more bite and tension.

     "Twenty percent?"

     "Fifty," she challenged.

     "Thirty," he mimicked her tone.

     "How about sixty?"

     He 'tsks,' "Don't think that is how negotiating works, Bellemare."

     They were much closer now. Somehow, in the midst of their conversation and stare down did their bodies progressively lean against the table. Their elbows threatened to touch.

     Juliette's eyes flicker down, heart thumping against her ribcage. She shrugs then, pulling away as if the proximity was scorching her skin into blisters. Perhaps if she turned away just enough, Joseph wouldn't be able to catch how her cheeks reddened and burned.

     She hummed in a teasing provocation once she opened up her textbook, "you've lost yourself a deal, Descamps." Juliette stared down hard at the small-pointed text, ignoring his gaze that so beckoned to make her pulse race for some odd reason. Anxious as always, she presumes.

     Silence fell upon them as they flipped through pages and pages of their textbook for the next ten minutes. Marcelin's assignment did not have the clearest of directions let alone a proper prompt to follow. Aside from creating an exposé from whatever French literary figure of their choosing, any other form of objective was simply thrown out the window or have fallen into the hands of his own students discretion. A mess surely waiting to happen.

     Juliette supposes some would quite like the freedom of process, but for someone as Type A as her, this was a complete nightmare. A conundrum for a rule-follower and an anxious individual, it did not take long for Joseph to notice her fervent page turning with her slender, and delicate bandage-clad fingers. They shook on occasion if he found himself staring hard enough.

     "Are you alright?" He asked once his gaze flickered to the deep lines forming between her furrowed brows.

     "Huh?" She responded as if he pulled her out of some kind of trance.

     "You look a bit... lost."

     Juliette shakes her head, eyes falling back to her textbook. "I just have no idea where to start," she confesses. "Marcelin didn't quite give us the most detailed directions..."

     "I think you're overthinking it, Bellemare," Joseph hums.

     She chuckles, words hushed like a whisper. "When am I not?"

     He shook his head at her comment and ignored the way his stomach pitted. He sighed and leaned back against his seat as he braided his arms over one another, "we just need to think of a topic, that's all. Once we do, the hard part is basically done. You have anybody in mind?"

     "There's a lot to choose from—Camus, Céline, Prost, Hugo..." Juliette began listing out literary figures off the top of her head.

     "Voltaire, perhaps?" Joseph suggests with a smug smile written all over his face.

     "The most obvious choice? Yeah, right. Too basic," the girl says, "what about Baudelaire?"