Isla and the Happily Ever After(13)
Author: Stephanie Perkins

Josh seems to have a lump in his throat. “Since he was a freshman?”

“Does everyone think we’re a couple?” Our classmates joke about it, but I never thought that they were serious.

“I don’t know.” Josh shakes his head vigorously, but he says, “Probably?”

“Ohmygod.” I’m finding it difficult to breathe.

He lets out a strange laugh. It’s near hysterical, but it stops as abruptly as it starts. “So are you dating anyone? Someone else?”

“No. No one since last year.”

“Cool.” His fingers tap rapidly against the stack of Tintins.

I fight to keep my voice steady. “And you? Are you seeing anyone?”

“Nope. No one since last year.”

I want to weep with joy. He liked me, but he thought he couldn’t like me. It’s difficult to wrap my mind around this idea. I suspected his attraction, but the full truth of the situation is unbelievable. How is it possible that my crush – my three-year-long crush – has a crush on me? This doesn’t happen in real life.

Josh is equally thrown. He’s grasping for something to say when his eyes catch on the Sfar. “There’s more downstairs, right? Should we go down there?”

“No.” I hug the book with both arms. “This is exactly what I wanted.”

Chapter seven

I’m still clutching the book – now through a blue Album bag – as we wander towards the Seine. We have another hour before I’m supposed to meet Kurt for sushi in the Marais. Night time has officially arrived, and the streets are abuzz. I feel as if I’m floating. Glancing, smiling, blushing. Both of us. My voice has abandoned me. Josh’s left hand grasps his right elbow, an anchor to keep him in one place.

How does one proceed in a situation like this? If only the discovery of mutual admiration could lead promptly into making out. If only I could say, “Listen. I like you, and you like me, so let’s go find a secluded park and touch each other.”

We steer around a group of tourists pawing through bins of miniature Notre-Dames. Josh swallows. “Just so we’re clear,” he says, “I wasn’t, like, trying to steal you away from Kurt when I asked if you wanted to go to the store with me. I was trying to, you know…be your friend. I don’t want you to think I’m a creep.”

I smile up at him. “I don’t think you’re a creep.”

But Josh looks at an ornate iron balcony, a carved stone archway, an enormous poster for the Winter Olympics in Chambéry. Anything but me. “It’s just that last weekend I realized that even if you were, um, taken, I still wanted to hang out with you.”

He wanted me as more than a friend first. My chest tightens happily. “Last weekend?”

“Yom Kippur?” Josh glances at me to see if I’m following his train of thought. I’m not, and I’m grateful when he launches into it without me having to ask. He seems relieved for the new topic. “Okay, so the period of time between Rosh Hashanah – which was the day before we came back to school—”

“That’s the Jewish New Year?”

He nods. “Yeah. So the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is for reflection. You’re supposed to think about mistakes, ask forgiveness, make resolutions. That sort of thing. And then Yom Kippur is, essentially, the deadline.”

We split apart to pass a gentleman walking a basset hound, and when we reunite, the distance between us halves. “So. Wait. You contemplated your life and…resolved to become my friend? Even though you’re no longer a practising Jew?”

Josh gives me a wicked smile. “Is that a requirement for your friendship?”

I give him a look.

He laughs, but he follows it with a wistful shrug. “I don’t know. There’s something…poetic about this time of year. And it’s not like I’ve figured out everything spiritually or whatever, but I do think it’s still okay to make resolutions. On my own terms.”

“Sure it’s okay. My family is Catholic, both sides, but they never go to Mass. I don’t even know if my parents believe in God. But we still put up a Christmas tree, and it still gives us a sense of peace. Traditions can be nice.”

“Do you believe in God?” he asks.

For some reason, his directness doesn’t surprise me. The real Notre-Dame is ahead of us, gigantic and humbling, and its reflection shimmers in the dark river below. I stare at it for a while before answering. “I don’t know what I believe. I guess that makes me a Christmas Tree Agnostic.”

He smiles. “I like it.”

“And you’re a Yom Kippur Atheist.”

“I am.”

I’ve never had a conversation like this before, where something so sensitive was discussed with such ease. We cross a bridge towards the cathedral. It’s on the Île de la Cité, the larger of the two islands that comprise the centre of Paris.

“I have a question,” Josh says. “But I’m not sure how to ask it.”

I wish that I could give him a playful nudge. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

There’s an excruciating pause as he searches for the right phrasing. “Kurt has…autism?”

Internally, I cringe. But I spare him as he spared my own ignorance. “Yeah. What the DSM used to call Asperger’s, and what they now call high-functioning autism. It’s the same thing. But it’s not a problem, it’s not like it’s something that needs to be cured. His brain works a little differently from ours. That’s all.”

Josh gestures towards a bench in the cathedral’s small park, and I reply by moving towards it. We sit down about two feet apart.

“So how does his brain work?”

“Well.” I take a deep breath. “He’s super-rational and literal. So sarcasm, metaphor? Not his strengths.”

Josh nods. “What else?”

“It’s difficult for him to read faces. He’s worked on it a lot, so he’s way better than he used to be. But he still has to remember to make eye contact and smile. I mean, obviously he smiles, but he only does it when he means it. Unlike the rest of us.” I’m rambling, because I’m struck again by the fact that I’m sitting on a bench – a bench not even on school property – beside Joshua Wasserstein.

“So he’s honest.”

“Even when you don’t want him to be.” I laugh, but it immediately turns into worry. I don’t want Josh to get the wrong idea. “He doesn’t mean to be rude, though. Whenever he finds out that he’s accidentally hurt someone’s feelings, he’s devastated.”