It's Not Love, It's Just Paris by Patricia Engel Read Free Book Online Page A

hardly ever seen Dominique and Loic speak to each other, but here they were holding hands, leaning into each other, Dominique’s eyes doubling in circumference as she watched Loic point to something across the river. Giada described theirs as a long history of attraction, but Loic always halted before it went very far, so it was more like a long history of rejection, with Dominique offering up love like a paid vacation and Loic saying he’d rather stay home.
    I edged about the crowd alone, spying my housemates throughout. Some of them saw me as I drifted through the tributaries of laughter and conversation but none waved me over to join them. Tarentina found her place by the bar among a group of maleadmirers, wandering from one end of the boat to the other for a change of view with the boys following faithfully like goslings. Giada hiked up her skirt and joined the dancing girls on the top deck. Naomi, without Rachid, who was training that night for an upcoming boxing match, defaulted to a cluster of American preppies from her school, and Camila hooked up with her crew of South American socials who didn’t speak to anyone who hadn’t grown up with bodyguards and been driven to school in a bulletproof chauffeured car.
    Saira and Stef found refuge in a quiet corner of the boat, talking into each other’s eyes. They intrigued me the most. According to the BBC, Saira’s father was about to be charged with war crimes, so you can imagine the guy knew a thing or two about intimidation, but that hadn’t deterred Stef from being with Saira. She was tall, elegant, and fine boned with wide-set eyes and dark skin. He was a short, thick, red-haired, and peach-flushed native of Bruges with a port-wine stain like a handprint around his neck. I liked watching them together, witnessing the daily bread of their love, evenings spent watching stupid shows like
Starmania
or
Nulle Part Ailleurs
and cooking for each other in our dingy kitchen; that oasis state of certainty that the person you love loves you in return.
    Maribel found me alone by the railing. I thought she’d come to keep me company, but it was just to tell me she was going with Florian to his bedroom on the deck below, even though his partner, Eliza, was on the deck across from us, twirling her arms along to the guitars of the Rasputin-looking leather-vested musicians.
    “Keep it a secret,” she smiled. “I’m only telling you in case I get murdered.” A weird thing to say considering the deep crowd and murky water around us made the party on the barge an easy place to kill someone and get away with it.
    I was one of the first off the boat when the police later arrived to break up the party, waiting for the others by the pile of wilting flowers and limp teddy bears at the foot of the golden torch.
    A long-limbed guy dressed like a ninja graffitied the stone wall behind the torch with a fat black marker.
    “Are you lost?” I heard someone say.
    I thought it was the ninja, but when I turned I noticed the voice had come from someone standing on the other side of the flame. In the shadows I couldn’t make out a face.
    “I’m waiting for friends,” I said with an eye on the tide of partygoers rising from the dock to the street. Loic and Dominique were among them, and behind them, Tarentina, who turned out to be old friends with the vandal, running straight into his arms squealing, “My darling Sharif Zaoui! Defacing Paris as usual!”
    They chatted as the rest of us gathered. After checking in with Loic, some of the girls peeled off with late-night plans of their own, but the five of us left started on the long walk home with Loic. It was after two, the métro was closed, the Noctambus that stopped by the big nightclubs didn’t pass this way, long lines had already formed by all the nearby taxi stands, and Saira had given her personal driver the night off on the one night we could have used his services.
    We were halfway across Pont Alexandre when I realized Sharif