Page 36 of Everything About You

It’s late Sunday morning and Celeste is sleeping in, so Noel and I go for a stroll along the Champs-élysées. It’s a touristy

spot, I know, but I haven’t really explored it much—apart from mad dashes out of the Maison Dauphine boutique or cursory glances

from the back of a car during an errand—and Noel has never been to Paris, so it seems like a somewhat natural time to see

what it’s all about.

Anyway, it’s not like I’m not a tourist. I guess I’ve gotten to know the arrondissements where I’m staying and working more than most tourists, but for

a lot of the neighborhoods, I don’t know my droite from my gauche .

As it turns out, the Champs-élysées is sort of like Times Square, but Parisian. Less flashy and chaotic in general, but still

very crowded and commercialized. The classic Parisian architecture, along with all of the trees and the view of the Arc de

Triomphe, differentiates it pretty distinctly from Times Square.

Noel is wearing a familiar vintage cream Clyde Circus T-shirt with camouflage carpenter pants and white Adidas Sambas, and I’m in a retro-inspired Grand Slam T-shirt from Abercrombie with jeans and Nikes.

Based on our graphic tees alone, we look like a very athletic pair of siblings.

Not the most athletic pair of siblings I know, obviously, but still.

We wander around for a bit, marveling at the grandeur of some of the windows—displays of luxury goods in intricate, if not

over-the-top, sets. The artistry is incredible. One window looks like an under-the-sea landscape with pearl jewelry floating

among glittering fishes. There’s such an art to window design, which I know since Maison Dauphine has an entire team dedicated

to visual merchandising.

“I want to run something by you,” Noel says, the words spilling out quickly.

“Sure.”

He clears his throat. “I want to take Celeste to Champagne.”

I raise my chin. “You want to what ?”

“I have some money saved and I know she wants to go, so I thought while you’re working this week, I could take her.” His mouth

forms a tight line. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? You want to take Celeste on a trip? To Champagne?”

Noel, ever the emotive one in the family, nods once.

“You and Celeste? On a... are you actually asking what I think you’re asking?”

He gives one more bob of his head.

I consider this. I wonder why I’m so surprised, since they have always gotten along really well.

There were times when I thought she might be eyeing him more than normal at the pool or in his soccer uniform.

I certainly noticed Noel would laugh a bit more with her than anyone else, but none of this struck me as anything worth paying any mind to.

There was once, now that I think about it, when they took care of me after my wisdom tooth surgery. They were both so giggly,

but I thought it was just a mixture of delirium from my pain medications and their shared amusement about my chipmunk cheeks

and nonsensical musings about Break Point on Netflix. They did seem to have a bit of a banter going, if I’m remembering correctly.

“Does she like you?”

Noel furrows his brow. “What?”

“I mean... I don’t know what I mean. I’m a little shocked. Are you guys together?”

“No,” he says, voice squeaking a bit. “I wouldn’t do that. Not without making sure it was okay with you first. But I do think

she likes me. I think... I think she wanted to kiss me when we went out in Bastille that night.”

I blink. “Whoa.”

“Look, if it’s too weird—”

“No.” It’s a gut reaction, not one I really think much about, but one that comes instinctively. “Just try not to screw it

up. You’re both going to be in my life either way, so if you could just...”

“Right, the goal is to not screw it up.” Noel says. “So. You’re actually cool with it?”

“I’m cool with it.”

“Not just saying you’re cool with it but actually stewing over it?”

I shake my head. “I really am cool with it.”

“Okay,” he says. “Nice.”

“Nice,” I agree. “Champagne will be fun. Bring me back something?”

“I imagine we’ll bring you back some champagne.”

“Right.”

There’s silence between us as we keep walking, but I’m actually sort of excited about this. They wouldn’t be the worst couple,

the more I think about it. Noel seems to be off in his own thoughts as well, but I swear I see his lip twitching into a smile

every few steps before he catches himself.

We decide to stop at Ladurée. The bakery and tearoom has a massive storefront with a big mint-green outdoor dining extension

enclosed by glass. Everything inside feels ornate and decidedly French—more marble, more columns, lots of gold and chandeliers.

The cases are filled with brightly colored tartlets and eclairs, and Noel orders us a large box of sixteen macarons, which

seems a bit excessive. They are packed into a little green box, assorted flavors with a small card atop the tissue paper that

tells us which colors are which.

I order a pistachio latte—it seems lattes do exist in Paris, just in the more touristy areas—and Noel gets caramel, and then

we continue down the sidewalk away from the arc and the more crowded areas.

My mind is preoccupied, of course, as it always is. I’m bouncing around from Maison Dauphine New York to Maison Dauphine Paris,

to Rhodes.

“All right, which are you having first?” Noel asks. He’s taken the lid off and set the box inside it, stuffed the little card

along the side, and now he’s holding the macarons out for me to choose.

“I’ll do a chocolate one.”

So I do. The bite is perfect—the shell is airy with the slightest crunch, and then it turns a bit chewy in the middle with

the ganache. The chocolate is rich and elegant, not sickeningly sweet, but not too sharp or bitter.

“Well?”

“So good, as usual.”

Noel nods. “We’re in Paris, after all.” He pops an entire one into his mouth and bobs his head from side to side. “Yeah, that’s

good. It tastes just like the ones at Sucré back home.”

“I’m sure they’d take that as quite the compliment,” I say.

We walk for a while, making a dent in the macarons and our lattes, until we pass a roundabout and find ourselves wandering

through a little park. I take a lemon macaron from the box, nursing small bites.

“You’re being unusually quiet. What’s wrong with you?” Noel huffs.

“A lot of things.” I say it without meaning to. But it’s Noel, so there isn’t really anything I can’t say, and maybe that’s

all the comfort I need right now. “Things are really complicated.”

He’s got macaron crumbs in his stubble, which he must catch me staring at, because he wipes them away before knocking back

more of his latte. “What’s complicated?”

“Everything,” I admit. “At least everything feels complicated.”

“Assuming this isn’t just some bout of existential dread... is this about Rhodes?”

“Sort of,” I say. “Yeah, I guess.”

Noel looks off. “What did he do?”

“Nothing. This is pretty much all me.” There is one thing I wonder if he’d understand: “I did something I never do. And it still makes me feel terrible even thinking about it now. Because I knew it was wrong, and I know it is wrong now, but I felt like I had to do whatever I could to get ahead in the moment, and I sabotaged Rhodes the second I got the chance.”

“How so?”

And the floodgates open. I tell Noel everything. From the first moment I met Rhodes on that sidewalk, through each of our

events and all the little random details in between—the errands and the emails and the meetings and the tiny ways he had a

leg up and the sliding competitive scale I operated on that was so small it was almost invisible, because I never truly even got close to competing with him before the Louvre.

Once I’ve spilled my guts, Noel shoots his empty coffee cup into a trash can a few yards away.

I think he must be exceptionally disappointed, because he hasn’t stopped me a single time to clarify or ask for more details.

I’ve painted the picture, it seems, and judging by the way his brows are pinched and his mouth is turned into a frown, I have

let him down.

When he finally opens his mouth to speak, he shuts his eyes for a moment, and I swear he does his little growl thing. “So

is Rhodes a prick or not?”

“What? That’s what you have to ask after all of that? I mean, I’m the one who—”

“Milo, you are competing with Rhodes Hamilton,” he says. “This isn’t like ‘Be on your best moral behavior’ at a little Citrus

Harbor tennis match. No offense. I’m trying to figure out Rhodes’s part in all this.”

I shake my head.

“What you did with the boxes was wrong, yeah, but it was remedied, and in fact he set you up.” Noel grabs a purple macaron

and chomps down on it. As he chews, he glances away. “Sounds like he was a dick.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe in that instance. But not really outside of that. And to be fair, I was a dick to him.”

“I’m failing to see what the actual issue is here now,” he says. “If you’re both being pricks but you still like each other,

then maybe you just have a weird dynamic. I’m sure there are weirder ones out there.”

“Well, there’s more.”

I tell him about the consequences of the Instagram Story at the Louvre, and going to the resort shoot, and that it’s basically

mine but Rhodes has no idea, and then I launch into the whole thing about the New York apprenticeship.

“Plus, there’s the fact that he just happens to be better than me at tennis and annihilated us the way he did. When he was supposed to be making it up to us!”

Noel takes a breath. “I think that part is a bit of a stretch.”

“He practically offered to throw the match. Like I needed the charity.”

“All right.” Noel forces a smile. “Let’s rewind to this whole New York thing. I can’t believe this is the first I’m hearing

of this. Milo, that’s huge. Do you have any idea? I mean, this sounds like a legitimate opportunity.”

“But the resort show,” I say. “It’s like I finally really have Yvette in my corner. And I think something could come from

that.”

He offers me another macaron, but I decline.