CHAPTER SEVEN: COMPETITION
"I say it once, you say it twice
You know I like a little competition from time to time
You think I'm wrong, I know I'm right
You know this ain't no kind of competition
I like a man with ambition
Oh when are you gonna know
It's time to let go
Cause I think I'm 'bout to lose my mind"
- - -
Eden didn't say much as her and Isaac got off the train. He asked about Stiles, which made her blood boil. Eden wouldn't openly admit it but he was a nice factor on why she even escaped to France for a while. Isaac tried to keep up with conversation, maybe she should have answered but she was simply annoyed by the name.
The pair landed at Hotel ibis Toulouse Centre, a hotel not too far away from the city's centre. The room was a little less extravagant than the last hotel they stayed, after all Isaac had to comp this hotel stay. The stay damn near drained his pocket but he was sure he had something left in his savings that he never touched. "Canal de Brienne."
"Excuse me?"
Isaac looked down at his hands. "I was thinking we'd see the Canal de Brienne. It's really nice. I've only seen it in pictures on Google on the way here."
Eden nodded. "Okay. Canal de Brienne it is. Maybe we can get food on the way back."
"We can stop at a restaurant" Isaac added. Eden's dark eyes met his bright ones. The taller boy only slumped a bit. "Come on! Live a little! Enjoy this life and this trip!" He wasn't exactly sure why, but he felt like he was fighting a losing battle against Eden ever since earlier in the day.
"I am enjoying it! Despite the whole Bordeaux fiasco, I am enjoying the trip."
Isaac scoffed. "Bullshit. I say we go out tonight. We go and we see things and we go get dinner and I say we should be teenagers who are parading around in France thinking their fucking adults."
Eden had no other words to speak. "Fine."
"Good." Isaac nodded once before shoving his hands into his pockets. "Get dressed, we're going out. Put on a nice dress or something, I'm sure you have one."
The Latina squinted. "And if I don't...?"
"Then you'd be the first girl I've met that didn't do dresses or skirts. However..." he paused, letting his blue eyes scan over the girl who hadn't spoken too many words to him lately. "I'm sure a girl like you has a dress."
- - -
Dressed in a navy blue dress that stopped mid-thigh with lace across the chest and down the sleeves, black heels and her hair in loose waves compared to the usual straight she kept her in, Isaac felt his mouth dry every time his blue orbs landed on her frame. The curiosity that ran through his brain when it came to her, was her tanned skin as smooth as it looked? Were her lips as soft as they seemed when they weren't spewing sarcastic things at him?
Eden felt her throat constrict as Isaac watched her under an intense gaze. Isaac hated getting entirely dressed up, which Eden suggested he should do if she was supposed to get dressed up herself. They compromised with Isaac, a button up shirt, his black jacket and tie with jeans so he didn't feel entirely too stuffy. Yet to Eden, he looked perfect. Short mass of curls perfectly tousled, shirt clinging to defined arms, jeans a perfect fit to show he still had a bit of bad boy in him.
This was going to be a bad idea. Two teens with opened hearts full of wounds in a romantic place and dressed up.
- - -
"How fucked is it if I came to a French restaurant and ordered pasta as if we were in Italy?" Isaac asked, eyebrows furrowed as he struggled to read over the menu. Eden sighed and continued to read. "Eden?"
Her brown eyes met his of blue. "Yes, Isaac?"
"You haven't spoken more than twenty words at a time to me. What the fuck did I do?" Isaac asked in a low voice. "Is it because I'm a—"
"It has nothing to do with that, Isaac." Eden interjected. "It would be kind of hypocritical of me to have a problem with you being supernatural when I'm part of a pack, wouldn't it?"
Isaac shrugged before slouching a bit. "Shut up."
Eden smirked and chuckled a bit. "Having a bit of a trouble reading the menu?"
"What kind of language is this written in, hieroglyphics?"
"French, you ass."
Isaac sneered. "Captain Obvious, I was going for irony."
"You suck at it."
"Right, because being around Stiles makes you suddenly the queen of sarcasm and irony?" Isaac spat before watching Eden close her eyes, inhale and grip at the menu a little tighter. He could hear her heartbeat rise, not in any kind of excitement, but in anger. Why was she so worked up?
Before Isaac could ask any questions, the waiter arrived at the table. His nose was turned up into the air, assuming the worst from the two young people sitting there, yet when his eyes landed upon Eden and the sliver of skin he could see through lace and the short length of her skirt, he became interested. Isaac could literally smell the sleaze oozing from this guy, listening to his heart rate speed up. Instinctively, his hand reached across the table to grab Eden's. The Latina's dark eyes met his, mouth slightly opened before his eyes slid toward the waiter and then met hers again with a slight raise of his eyebrow. Eden thankfully caught on and held onto his hand. Her thumb swiped across the top of his hand, the pad of her thumb feeling the welcoming smoothness of Isaac's warm skin.
Isaac smiled genuinely and mentally cursed the feeling he felt in his stomach. Eden was doing the same thing.
Slowly, Eden pulled her hand away from Isaac's and closed the menu. "Can I have the Coq Au Vin, s'il vous plaît?"
"Do you know what you just ordered?" the Beta wondered. Eden's eyes just met his. "I'll have the ris de veau, s'il vous plaît."
This time, it was Eden who raised an eyebrow. "Do you know what you just ordered?"
"Mademoiselle, please..." the waiter spoke, his French accent thick. "let him have what he ordered." There was a small understanding between the waiter and Eden for a moment in time before he walked away.
Eden placed her hand that she pulled away from Isaac back onto the table, her eyes studying everything around her. The sky had taken on a beautiful amber color as the sun started to set in Toulouse. Music faintly heard through the street and inside the restaurant, only to be drowned out by patrons laughing and talking. "I never thought I'd see something so beautiful."
Isaac on the other hand, had his eyes trained on Eden. "See, that's what happens when you take time to see things? You see beautiful shit."
"Okay, Ferris Bueller."
Isaac squinted. "Who?"
"You've never heard of the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off?"
The Beta scoffed. "If I did, I wouldn't be so confused."
"Wow, how the fuck..." the brunette started before shaking her head. "It's a cult classic. It's a movie about a boy named Ferris Bueller and how he takes advantage of a sick day when he's not sick at all. In the movie he says, 'life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.' It's a really good movie."
"It's a good movie and a good quote yet, you don't live by it."
Eden narrowed her eyes. "You can't even comment because you've never seen the movie."
"I'm kind of living it right now, I can definitely comment." Isaac added.
"You're going to make me lose my god damn mind, I'm going to choke you with a napkin."
Again, the waiter cut Isaac's speech off as he watched as the plates were placed in front of them. Eden's plate of roasted chicken, vegetables, noodles in a sauce that he could smell herbs and wine in made him upset he didn't order what she had. Here in front of him on a plate with white jasmine rice, sat what looked like dried chicken. "How come your plate looks happier than mine?"
"Happy plates for happy people."
"I hate you" Isaac muttered before taking a piece of his food. The meat wasn't bad, yet every now and then he'd look up at Eden, happily eating away at her food. "This isn't so bad actually. Still, how did you know what to order?"
The brunette shrugged her shoulders. "It's a can't go wrong dish in French cuisine. That and duck confit, but I didn't see that on the menu. Unless it was there and I just missed it."
"Why couldn't you order for me?" Isaac asked.
"Because you seemingly had your heart set on ris de veau. Which I'm sure you still don't know what it is."
Isaac stopped chewing. "It's chicken, isn't it?"
Eden chuckled. "Ris de veau is sweetbread..." she started with a smile. Isaac just stared blankly. "it's calf pancreas. you're eating a baby cows pancreas."
Now the music was drowned out by Eden's laughter and Isaac's choking.
- - -
Eden and Isaac shared the rest of her Coq Au Vin and a slice of cake together, she felt bad and thought this was the least she could do since she let Isaac eat a pancreas. The waiter had bought out the check and Isaac smiled.
"Do you need me to handle the check?" Eden asked with a small curious look on her face.
The taller Beta shook his head before looking around. "Nope. We're going to have fun."
"I don't know about you but I totally just had fun watching you choke on pancreas."
"Still mad about that."
"You'll live" Eden added with a smile. "What do you mean by fun?"
Isaac's eyes traveled low to Eden's feet. "Are those the same heels from the night we met?" Eden looked down and nodded. "Good. When I say we're good to go, we leave."
"Isaac, what do you mean?" the young huntress asked.
The Beta just smiled. "We're dining and dashing."
"Isaac!"
"Eden!"
"What if we get caught?!" Eden wondered.
Isaac shook his head. "We run. We just run until we can't keep going, we hop in a cab, we go to Canal de Brienne like I wanted to go to in the first place."
"I can't fucking believe you..." Eden mumbled. Her heart rate skyrocketed. Isaac's eyes landed on the female. "What?"
"Calm down, I can hear your heart. If it goes any faster, it might explode and die."
Eden scoffed. "That sounds better than getting caught dining and fucking dashing."
Isaac smirked as his eyes watched the waiter they had move closer to the back. "On my count of three, we run."
"I'm not liking this, Isaac."
Eyes of blue met eyes of brown and pierced straight through them. "Live a little. One."
"This is bullshit."
"Two."
"We're gonna die."
"Three!" Isaac grabbed Eden's hand and pulled her from her seat as they both ran as quickly as they could, even Eden with her heels. All they could hear was the faint yelling in French from the waiter and the music dying down the further they got out of dodge.
- - -
"I cannot believe we just ran from an angry waiter! I just dined and dashed, what the fuck?!" Eden laughed, Isaac flanking by her side. The duo walked down the Canal de Brienne, keeping the end of the promise they made to visit the place.
Isaac, on the other hand shuddered. "I can't believe you let me eat pancreas. That's fucking gross. You're mean..." Eden simply laughed and the taller boy couldn't help but laugh as well. They walked at a slow pace, taking in the sights being that they would be leaving Toulouse in another day or so, at least that's what Isaac thought. "We should stay here longer. We've got nothing else to do."
"Speak for yourself, I've got libraries to hit. I never got any specific history books out of Bordeaux because someone went and wolfed out a bit in the place."
"Not my fault."
"You're the only wolf!" Eden laughed. The canal was pretty deserted for the time of the night they were still out. Their conversation was slightly hushed, between them. With a small shiver, Isaac removed his jacket and placed it around Eden's shoulders. His smell wafted through the fabric, one of soap and light cologne that she couldn't place but just assumed it was a French kind. "Thanks."
The Beta simply nodded. He began to count his steps; one, two, three, four, five, at seven he wondered if this was the right time to even speak what he had been wanting to say for a bit of time. By ten, he no longer cared and just spoke without thinking. "Your heartbeat accelerates and you get really irritable when I say the name, but I feel like if we're traveling together, I should know why you hate it so much but...what's the deal with you and Stiles?"
There was her heart again. "I started at Beacon Hills High midway through the year. I lost a lot at that point and I was just interested in being retired. Not having anything to do with the supernatural world or anything like that. I was closed off, didn't want to feel anything..." she started. Her eyes were focused on the tops of her shoes. "Stiles came in and I wanted to kill him. He was sarcastic and he swore he knew everything. He questioned everything and he just assumed I wasn't special or worthy of knowing anything. Then I put a lacrosse stick to his throat and he learned I'm pretty much a threat."
"I learned it too, remember wooden plank near my face in Bordeaux..." Isaac muttered. "So, is that why you hate him?"
"I don't hate Stiles. In fact, he found a way under my skin. I started to tolerate him and like him and God that was my mistake. I realized he was funny and charming, he was safety and he didn't judge. We had a bit of things in common, that lingering guilt about things. So we clung to each other and when things fell through for him and his werecoyote of a girlfriend, we started to become a thing. We were already really close and there was something there but Malia—Malia was always what stopped us. When they ended, we took that as a sign to try."
Isaac simply nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets. "So you two decided to try."
"And as quickly as it started, it ended. So, I resented him. I let him in, he treated me as if I was nothing."
"He's an idiot if he did that to you..." The two found themselves at a small bridge standing in the middle of the stone bridge, overlooking water illuminated by stars and the moon. "You know, you shouldn't let him get the best of you." Eden's dark eyes met his. He swore they got brighter at night. "I say we make a deal, right here. Right now..." The taller boy bent down to grab two pebble stone like rocks and held them in his hand. "Right here, we take these rocks. We say what we plan to change while on the road, and we stick with it. We let all the bad shit, soak up into these rocks and let them sink down to the bottom of the canal."
Eden held the rock in her hand. "Isn't this kinda cheesy?"
"Where the fuck do you think I got it from?"
"I'm going to throw you in the water." Sighing, Eden closed her eyes. "Okay. I plan to go more with the flow on this trip. No more living in the shadows of Beacon Hills." Dropping the rock into the water, the Latina sighed. "What about you?"
Isaac shrugged. "I don't know. I plan to make this trip more fun--oh wait, I did." That statement earned him a hit to the arm and an eye roll. Isaac just laughed before grabbing Eden's hand once more. "I plan to...be better than you."
"Isaac!"
"Eden!"
The Latina rolled her eyes. "Isaac! You suggested this, be serious."
"Fine. I plan to..." he started, eyes focused on the little rock in the palm of his hand. His hearing focused on the sound of a heartbeat. Her heartbeat. It was soothing, something he learned was always a steady pace. Two beats, pause, two beats, pause. "I plan to open up a little more. Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."