Free Icy Pretty Love by L.A Rose

afraid of them, you’re a jerk to them.”
    “So you’re going to expose me to things that make me be a jerk.” He leans back. “Why do I suspect that’s not going to help me with not being a jerk?”
    “You’re the only one who makes you a jerk. You’ll see, it’ll work. Now tell me what bothers you.”
    “People,” he says.
    “Well, yeah, I kind of assumed that. We’re not trying to fix your attitude to plants here. What kind of people? What are the things they do that bother you the most?”
    He thinks about it, his expression unreadable. “People who make assumptions about others without knowing the whole story.”
    “Oh yes, them. Good thing I’dnever do anything like that. Nuh uh.” I write it down. “I was thinking more…situational-type things.”
    “Crowds. Kids. People behaving like idiots. Loud noises. Tourists. Holidays—”
    “Holidays?” I gape. “Christmas? Nobody hates Christmas.”
    “I hate Christmas.”
    “I changed my mind. I can’t work with the Grinch. Everyone knows your heart’s three sizes too small and I am not a coronary doctor.” I point at him. “How can you hate Christmas? It’s all about love, and giving things to the people you care about, and family, and—”
    “A holiday supposedly about selflessness, maintained entirely by greed. I suppose I can appreciate the irony, if nothing else.”
    “Didn’t you ever decorate a Christmas tree with your family? Set out gingerbread cookies for Santa? Sing Christmas carols and drink eggnog?”
    “No,” he says shortly.
    I never did those things either, but the idea of it has always kept me starry-eyed and awake late into the Christmas evening. A family celebrating a special day together…nobody with that could ever be unhappy. “Moving on, then. The way I see it, the only thing to do is go somewhere there’s lots of crowds, loud noises, tourists, and people acting like idiots…I know! The Eiffel Tower! Oh, but you’ve already been there.”
    “No I haven’t.”
    My jaw flops open. “You’ve been in Paris for—how long now?”
    “A year.”
    “A year, and you still haven’t gone to the Eiffel Tower? Are you a monster?”
    “Most likely,” he says coolly.
    I stand. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
    “And we’re going where, exactly?”
    “Where else?” I call as I race out the door. “To the Eiffel Tower!”
     
    Twenty minutes later, we’re being dropped off in front of the aforementioned tower. Seeing it in person is bizarre. When you see a famous landmark enough times on the internet, you tend to forget it’s a real thing somewhere. It becomes one of those myths that everybody knows about but that don’t actually exist, like mermaids or werewolves. But there it is: an enormous structure, like a vertical spiderweb dipped in molten metal.
    “French people don’t actually go to the Eiffel Tower. They generally consider it ugly,” says Cohen, standing on the sidewalk and looking up at the huge thing like it’s an insect. An insect that happens to be about a million times taller than he is.
    I ignore him. After a while, he glances at me and blanches. “Rae, are you…crying?”
    “No,” I sniffle. “Maybe. I just never thought I’d see it, you know…” I wipe my eyes. “When you’re convinced you’ll never get the chance to travel, you tend to spend a lot of time on Google Images.”
    “I don’t see what you’re so excited about. It’s just ugly metal scaffolding.”
    I hit him. It’s sort of like hitting a brick. Jesus, between doing paperwork and being mean to everyone, when the heck does he have time to go to the gym? “Third rule of being nice—no raining on someone else’s parade when they’re having a moment.”
    “I hate parades.”
    This time I reach up and pinch his cheek. It bothers him way more than hitting him did. He jerks back, his expression the same mixture of shock and murder that I imagine a tiger would have if someone pinched its cheek. “What the hell are