A few days later, I return to Audrine and Silas's house to finish going through the cluttered room upstairs. When I enter the living space above the restaurant, I'm immediately greeted by the smell of cheese and butter.
"Come on in, Maisie," Audrine calls to me from the kitchen. "We're making croque-monsieur for dinner."
It seems like I got here just in time, because Silas has just finished setting the table with the very cheesy-looking sandwiches and Audrine is pouring red wine into three wine glasses alongside him.
"It looks delicious," I say as I place my purse on the living room chair and then join them at the small dining room table. "I think I've had more home cooked meals in the short time that I've been here than I have in the last year."
"We like to cook," Silas says with a smile and a small shrug. "And it's hard not to, we have a great market in town with the freshest ingredients."
"You should take her tomorrow," Audrine quickly suggests before taking her first bite of the steaming sandwich. I'm quick to follow, picking up my golden brown sandwich. I already know that it's going to be delicious before I even pick it up, and I'm proven correct. The melty cheese, the crunch of the bread, and the ham in there too all make for a really tasty bite.
"Sure, if you'd want to, Maisie," Silas agrees with his grandma. "I was planning on going tomorrow morning anyway."
"Okay," I am quick to say yes, and it's not really because I'm excited about going grocery shopping. I just really like spending time with Silas, and I'll take any chance I can get to do so. I like talking to him, I like the way that he makes me laugh, how he is patient with my French language journey. And I absolutely love looking at him. I could just look at him all day.
"Hopefully you won't be too hungover," Audrine says to him with a small laugh.
"I'll be fine, mamé," he assures her as he sits his sandwich down to take a drink of the wine.
"Is the wine going to your head?" I ask him curiously. This isn't very much wine that we're drinking, so I don't know why it'd make him hungover though.
"No," Silas laughs at my question, apparently the idea of getting wine drunk on just one glass is pretty funny to him. "I'm going out with my friends tonight, in a few hours."
"Oh, that makes more sense," I acknowledge. "I didn't know you're old enough to drink."
"I'm twenty," he tells me. "Drinking age for spirits is eighteen here."
"Spirits, like vodka and that kind of thing?" I ask him dumbly. He knows my relationship with my uptight parents, so I'm sure that it comes as no surprise to him that I know barely anything about alcohol and its terminology. I've had some sips here and there of champagne and wine at fancy dinners, but that's it.
"Yeah," he confirms. "I'll take you drinking sometime, if you want to try it. I can't invite you tonight though, it's boys only."
"That's okay, I want to finish going through the room upstairs tonight anyway. But yeah, maybe some other time," I offer with a shrug. I don't expect to actually go through with that though, because I don't know what being drunk is like and I'm not sure that I want to experience it for the first time here. I do really like Silas, but do I trust him enough to take care of me if I lose motor functions?
But then again, I never thought I'd ever get a tattoo either, so I guess I should never say never.
"You remind me so much of Charlie," Audrine tells me with a faint smile. "Such a goody two-shoes."
"My grandpa was a goody two-shoes?" I ask for clarification, because the idea is almost laughable to me. The Grandpa Charlie that I knew was always the wildest person in our family, questioning all the rules and doing things his own way.
"Oh, for sure," she confirms with a loud, high pitched laugh. "It took me an entire week to convince him to try a beer. Eventually, he gave into my peer pressure, and he got so drunk that my father had to bring him back to the house in a wheelbarrow."
"Wow," I also laugh, trying to imagine my grandpa that drunk. I'd seen him drink every once in a while, maybe get buzzed a few times, but never drunk. "I would have loved to see that. I never saw him drunk, but I never saw him as straight edge either."
"Good," she says. "Maybe I corrupted him just a little bit."
"Gross," Silas crinkles his nose and shakes his head, seemingly very uncomfortable with what Audrine just said. I didn't interpret that to mean anything sexual, but by his reaction, I think that he did.
"I didn't mean it like that," Audrine rolls her eyes at him. "Get your head out of the gutter."
After dinner, Silas goes down the hallway into what I assume is his bedroom to get ready to go out with his friends later. I know that it's none of my business what he does while he's out, or what he does at all, but I can't help but picture all of the girls hitting on him at the bar. And they can probably do it in French too.
I don't know if he's a flirt when he goes out, if he wants to bring a girl with him tonight, or if he really is just going to have a strictly boys' night. And I can't ask him without sounding jealous (I am jealous, I just don't want to sound like it).
Audrine goes up to the third floor with me to go through the last corner of the room that I have to sort through, but just as we're finishing up, she goes back downstairs to help the employees of the restaurant close up.
I have one more box of things to look through before I decide to take a bathroom break downstairs first. The bathroom is right beside Silas's room, and I notice that the door is open and the light is on. I go to the bathroom first, because I really have to go, but then I pop my head into his room.
I haven't seen his room before, and it's a lot more neat than I thought that it would be. There's a lot of neutral colors and a big dark brown bookshelf that consumes the room with stacks of books. "Hey," Silas notices me before I say anything because I spent so long analyzing his room.
"Hey," I respond to him. He's wearing a worn out leather jacket, jeans, and brown boots, his dark hair looks like it has some gel in it to style it back and away from his face. "You look nice," I find myself saying.
"Thanks," he smiles at me. "We don't go out very often, so I like to make the most of it. How's the search going upstairs?"
"Almost done," I lean against the doorway of his room. "I'll probably be done pretty soon."
"Did you find what you were looking for?" he asks.
I shrug and say, "I don't really know what I was looking for in the first place. But I'm happy with it."
"Good."
"Anyway, I hope you have a good night," I start to end the conversation so that he can get back to what he's doing to prepare for his night out. When I walked in, it looked like he was finishing up his hair, but he stopped when he noticed me.
"I wish you could come," Silas tells me, and I feel like my entire chest drops to the floor of my stomach. "I think it'd be really fun to see you drink, and to dance."
"I don't really do either of those things," I warn him. "I'm a really bad dancer."
"That's why I want to see it," he smiles at me. "But one of my friends wanted to bring a date and we told him no because this is supposed to be a guys' night. So I couldn't, in good conscious, bring a date."
"Oh, so it'd be a date?" I ask him with a teasing smile. I try to act like it's no big deal, even though I'm dying inside, and I try to tell myself that he might not have even meant it in a romantic sense.
"I mean..." he trails off, not seeming to know what to say to that. I feel proud of myself that I got him flustered, because I feel like he's done that to me a few times. "I don't know, not like that."
"Ohh, okay," I can't stop smiling. "I'm going to head back upstairs. I'll see you tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow, Maisie," Silas tells me before I walk away to go back upstairs so that he can get on with his night, but I'm still smiling as I get back upstairs. I'm glad that I didn't blush-- or at least, I can't feel a blush.
The last box that I have to go through is full of old knick knacks and picture frames. I shuffle through the dusty items until I get to the bottom, where there are some books stacked along each other. Most of them are literature books, some in English and some in French. One of them catches my eye, because it doesn't have anything on the cover. It's just a plain brown, hard-cover book.
Curious, I open it up to the first page. The first page is covered from top to bottom in handwritten script. Flipping through the rest of the pages, I can tell that it's all handwritten up to the very last page. I sit down on the floor and lean my back against the wall so that I can investigate further. I wouldn't want to pry into Audrine's life if I didn't think that this could be related to my grandpa, but from what I can tell, it's all written in English, which makes me believe that he does have something to do with it.
I don't know why my parents are making me come with them to France. Dad said that it was because he wanted to spend time as a family. I'm sure that it's because he doesn't trust me in America on my own.
Just a few sentences in, I gasp when I realize that it confirms my suspicion that this is written by my grandpa. A journal, maybe? My hands start shaking, so I rest the book on my lap to continue reading.
There's no family time here, they are always gone and in meetings. I'm just stuck at this hotel with nothing to do all day. Every day. It's only been five days and I'm already wanting to go home. They didn't tell me how long we'd be here, but I'm certain it'll be months.
I don't know why I start crying, but it feels like he's talking to me. I can hear his voice in my head as he tells me this story. I feel like my grandpa is sitting right in front of me, talking to me about his past. The first page, he spends complaining about his parents mostly, and how bored he is. Which is probably why he started writing, just for something to do.
On the second page is where things get interesting.
I went to the restaurant downstairs today just to explore what else was in the hotel. There's a girl that works there. I asked her for coffee. She said yes and then she gave it to me along with the most beautiful smile I'd ever seen. I want to know her. I can only hope that maybe, she'd want to know me too. All I know is that I can't wait for my coffee tomorrow.
I asked for her name today, and she told me that her name is Audrine. And then she asked me what room to charge the coffee to.
Audrine.
Audrine.
Audrine.
A beautiful name. A beautiful girl.
Audrine.
I read through about a fourth of the pages, reading first hand from my grandpa's point of view about his time here in France before I feel my eyelids growing heavy. But I don't want to stop reading, so I continue and I try to push through how tired I feel. I continue reading through the yawns and stretches, and I rest my eyes every few sentences.
But very quickly, resting between a few sentences quickly becomes resting my eyes between every few words, and then between every word. And eventually, my eyes just don't open again as I doze off to sleep.
I don't think I'm asleep for very long against the wall in the storage room. It feels like I'm only asleep for a few minutes when I'm being shaken awake to the stench of cognac in my face and a hand gently shaking my shoulder.
"Maisie," Silas whispers, and then I hear a loud thud. Quickly, I open my eyes to see Silas on the ground in front of me, seemingly just fallen down.
"What time is it?" I grumble in a tired voice as I sit up a little bit. My neck aches from being slouched in such an awkward angle as I slept against the wall.
"Almost three in the morning," he tells me with a slight slur to his words. "I saw your purse downstairs so I came to check on you."
"I fell asleep," I state the obvious.
"I could tell," he says with a laugh.
I grab the journal from where it had fallen onto my leg and use a piece of paper from the ground to save my spot so that I can close it and continue reading later. "Did you have a good time with your friends?"
"Yeah it was fun," Silas is still sitting across from me on the floor, looking directly into my tired eyes as he adds, "I wish you were there though."
"Why?" I ask him. Maybe if I was more awake, I would have blushed or reacted more to what he was saying, but I still feel pretty groggy and it's hard for me to even process what he's saying.
"I wanted to dance with you," he looks at me with a pouty face, then he reaches over and grabs one of my index fingers and starts moving my hand around in the air as if just our hands were dancing with each other.
"You didn't have anybody else to dance with?" I question him, trying to blink a few times to wake myself up more. Hopefully he's too drunk to realize that I basically just asked him if he was with other girls.
"I danced with my friends," he says, and then shrugs. "But they're not you. And their hair doesn't twirl like yours would. And they're not as cute as you. But don't tell them that I said that."
Feeling more awake now, I do feel the heat start to rise to my cheeks and I bring my knees up to hide the smile that's spreading across my facet. "I won't tell them," my words are muffled by my thighs.
"There are a lot of things that I would want to do with you that I wouldn't want to do with my friends," he adds. "Things that I wouldn't want to do with anybody else, actually."
"You're so drunk," I say, trying to excuse this as just something that's alcohol induced. Of course, there are so many things that I want to do with him too, but I don't want to get my hopes up about him feeling the same way if he's going to change his mind in the morning.
"Yes," he agrees with me, and nods. The hand that he had been dancing around with mine suddenly drops my finger, and he instead starts to snake his long fingers through mine until he's holding my hand. I feel like I can barely breathe. His hand is so warm, and it's so big and comforting. It feels so soft in my palm, and I never want to let him go. "But I'm telling the truth. Now it's your turn, tell me your truth."
"What if I tell you my truth, but then you take yours back when you're sober?" I share my insecurity with him.
"This was my truth when I was sober too, I'm just saying it out loud because I'm drunk," he explains to me. "I want to kiss you so bad. I want to give you a big ol' smooch."
Even though I'm kind of freaking out on the inside, I can't stop laughing. It's a mix of the butterflies, and that he's just being funny.
"I want to kiss you too, Silas," I finally admit to him. Sure, maybe he'll change his mind in the morning but I don't know, he seems pretty sure of himself. And although I consider him to be on a higher level of attractiveness than me, I do think that I'm pretty cute. We have a good time when we're together, and he seems to like spending time with me. So it's really not the craziest idea that he feels the same way about me than I do for him.
He starts to grin from ear to ear, the most beautiful smile that I've ever seen. It takes my breath away.
"But not tonight, obviously," I add, because it looks like he's expecting a kiss to happen tonight and I want to set the record straight. "You're too drunk, I would feel gross."
"What's your last name?" he asks me randomly.
"Murphy. Why?"
"When I'm sober, I'm going to kiss the piss out of you, Maisie Murphy," he tells me with a very determined look on his face.
His phrasing makes me laugh loudly. "Okay," is all that I can think of to respond with.
He's about to say something else, but suddenly stops and wraps his arm around his stomach. "I don't feel good."
Terrified that he's about to get sick, I stand up from the floor and start to help him to his feet. "Okay, let's get you to bed."
"I thought you weren't going to take advantage of me?" Silas reminds me, but still lets me pull him up from the ground. As we start walking toward the stairs, he adds, "Maisie Murphy is a pervert."
"I'm just trying to get you to sleep," I justify myself. I walk ahead of him down the stairs, ready to brace both of us if he starts to fall, and we move slowly so that he can lean on the handle going down the stairs. "Are you going to get sick?"
"No thanks."
"Okay, I'll get you to bed and then you should drink some water before you go to sleep."
I help Silas into his room where he sits on the edge of his bed and starts taking off his shoes and jacket. I go into the kitchen to get him some water.
"My hero," he mumbles from his bed as I return with the water. He has a small trash can in his room that I move to his bed side just in case he needs to throw up at night.
"Goodnight, Silas," I start to leave his room.
He takes a small drink of the water, but then he's already laying down and practically half asleep as he mumbles a goodnight back to me.
As I walk back to my hotel, I feel like I've never related to my grandpa more in my life. I always knew we were so similar, but I now even understand his journal. He kept writing Audrine's name, as if it was the only thought that he could have.
I'm trying to have a different thought, but my mind is completely blank and the only thing that I can think about is Silas.
Silas.
Silas.
Silas.
__________
Song: Affection - Amber Run