Free Paris Crush by Melody James Page A

window. Blue dawn light is competing with the sulphur yellow of the street lights. ‘I don’t know,’ I answer. ‘What
do
you get when you
toss a hand grenade into a kitchen in France?’
    ‘Linoleum blown-apart.’
    The journey to Dover takes three hours. In Rupert-time, that’s about six and a half days. By the time we see a white cliff, I’ve heard every French joke
that’s ever been invented.
    I’m close to sticking my fingers in my ears and la-la-ing the rest of the way to Paris. Then Rupert spots the Eurotunnel terminus. ‘It’s a good job the digging teams met in the
middle, or we’d have two tunnels.’
    I wonder how many tunnel jokes he knows.
    He starts to demonstrate. ‘Passengers are informed that due to recent budget cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.’
    ‘Rupert.’ I turn and face him, teeth clenched.
    He blinks back at me, clueless. ‘What?’
    ‘Can you shut up for just five minutes?’
    He blinks again. ‘What?’
    ‘You’ve been talking non-stop since we left,’ I snap. ‘You’re like a tap I can’t turn off. I’m drowning!’
    He looks like I just hit him in the face with a frying pan.
    ‘You’re a nice guy, Rupert,’ I babble guiltily. ‘But you don’t have to talk all the time to prove it.’
    He flaps his mouth, wordless as a beached guppy.
    ‘Why do you have to talk so much?’ I ask.
    ‘That’s what she said I should do.’ His brown eyes are hazelnuts, round and blank.
    ‘Who?’ Has someone bribed him to bore me to death? Perhaps it was Chelsea’s parting gift.
    He looks embarrassed. ‘Just . . . just someone.’ A blush is creeping up from his collar. ‘She said girls like to be wooed with words.’ He looks at the headrest in front
of him and acts as if he’s not fluorescing like a pink jellyfish.
    ‘Wooed with words?’ I echo limply. There’s a light blazing at the edge of my thoughts, like a forest fire approaching. ‘What birth sign are you, Rupert?’
    ‘Gemini.’
    The same as David.
    Woo her with words.
    I run Jessica’s email to ‘David’ through my head.
Don’t let shyness stop you. If she works on a webzine, she must long to be a writer. So woo her with words. How could
she resist when the stars are on your side?
    I close my eyes and let the rumble of the coach drown my thoughts.
    I’ve love-bombed myself.
    David didn’t write the email. Rupert did! And Barbara wasn’t the apple he was hoping to pick.
I’m
his
pomme d’or
!

Sitting in a coach, in a train, in a tunnel, under the sea is surprisingly boring. I guess it’s how luggage feels in a Boeing 747. Except luggage wouldn’t care if
it had mortally wounded the suitcase next to it. Rupert is keeping his mouth tightly shut. He doesn’t say a word, or even look at me, the whole time we’re submarining our way towards
France.
    I fight the urge to break the awkward silence between us, scared I’ll unleash another torrent of jokes. But guilt is knotting my stomach until I can’t stand it any more.
    ‘I’m sorry I snapped at you,’ I murmur, without looking at him.
    Savannah bobs over the seat in front of us. ‘Who’s snapping?’ Her hair drapes over the headrest. ‘I thought you’d both died you went so quiet.’ Her eyes
twinkle. ‘Either that or you were busy . . .’ she glances mischievously along the aisle to where LJ Kennedy and Bethany are trying to suck the faces off each other, ‘. . . getting
to know each other.’
    Fortunately, Rupert doesn’t follow her gaze. He’s too busy being pleased. It’s like watching a popped balloon reinflate. ‘I guess I can be a bit too talkative,’ he
confesses. ‘I just wanted to make the journey interesting.’ He sits up with a jolt. ‘I know,’ he says cheerily. ‘Why don’t we have a sing-song?’
    A groan sounds from further down the aisle. I crane my neck and see Ryan bury his head deeper into the seat in front. ‘When do we get out of this box?’
    Sally’s smoothing his hair