Free French Lessons by Ellen Sussman Page A

sight. He was gone. Still she stood there, feeling his mouth on hers. Wait for me .
    “Are you coming?” Nico calls from the corner.
    She shakes her head. She watches him walk back toward her.
    “Don’t be mad,” he says sweetly. “I had to do it.”
    “He’s gone,” Josie says.
    “Your lover?”
    “I can’t show him my new haircut.”
    Nico waits quietly for the rest.
    “I can’t say goodbye.”
    Nico puts his hand on her arm. “You are saying goodbye.”
    Josie shakes her head and her hair tousles, then settles again. “You know what he taught me? He taught me to feel more. He taught me to give myself over to feelings. And now that’s all I have. I’m swamped by them. I can’t breathe because I feel so damn much.”
    Nico takes her arm and leads her down the street. They walk for a long time. Finally they come to the end of a small street and ahead of them is an open stretch of lawn.
    “I know where we are,” Josie says.
    She looks down the stretch of grass and there sits the Eiffel Tower. It’s grand, majestic. It doesn’t matter how many times Josie has seen it, each time it takes her breath away.
    “Let’s go,” Nico says, and Josie knows exactly what he has in mind.
    Brady knocked on Josie’s office door even though it was open.
    “Hey, you,” Josie said.
    She stretched out a hand, offering him a seat across from her. She was reading a contemporary French novel that she had thought she might teach next semester. She wanted something new, something the kids would relate to. She already knew that the story was too adult for her kids, too racy and full of sex scenes that they would undoubtedly love, and that would get her into a ton of trouble, but she kept reading.
    “Am I disturbing you?” Brady asked.
    “No, not at all.” She put the book on her desk, cover down, as if she had been doing something illicit. “What’s up?”
    “I was wondering …” Brady looked around the room, at the photos on her wall—photos she had taken of the creek behind her cottage—at the stack of books on the floor, and out the window where the rest of the students were piling into cars and heading home.
    In the silence she watched him. He had Simon’s startling green eyes, Simon’s thick, wavy hair, Simon’s height. In the small room she realized that he smelled like Simon and she pushed the thought away. Of course, she thought. They use the same soap.
    “My dad wants me to do the regular college thing. You know, liberal arts. Like everyone else in the world. That’s what I always thought I’d do. I mean, I never really thought about it, but now, I’m like a junior and I have to think about these things.”
    It all came out in a breathless rush, as if he couldn’t stop himself.
    “What do you want, Brady?” Josie asked.
    “Well, that’s it. That’s what I was wondering. I mean, this is completely crazy, but I really loved doing the play. It’s like I was someone else up there and I get it. I really get how actors inhabit other people, like they give themselves up and they live in someone else’s body for a while. And this is the wild part, the part that I never would have figured out except it happened to me. When the play is over and you go back to being you again, you’re like a different you. You’re changed. It’s like you’re not the guy you played onstage, but you take a little bit of him back with you.”
    He took a deep breath.
    “You think I’m nuts, right?”
    “No. I think you’re very smart.”
    “Really? Cool. I’ve been thinking about this and I didn’t really know if I could explain it or anything. And then if I could, like, who would I tell.”
    “Me.”
    “Yeah. You get it, huh? That’s really cool.”
    His smile was huge and he sat on the edge of his seat, his legs jangly, his fingers tapping on his knees.
    “And the school thing?” Josie asked, though she already knew everything he was about to say.
    “I could go to acting school. I could apply to UCLA