French Kissmas

Chapter One

Toiletries ... check. Laundry stuff ... check, Nicole Larson muttered.

She leaned over the bed and gave the contents of her backpack a firm shove, trying to gauge whether she had any realistic hope of closing the zipper. She was pretty sure she could do it—barely. Then she shot one more glance around the small room in the Venetian pensione that she had occupied for the past two weeks. It still looked a bit messy. The sheets were crumpled down at the ends of both twin beds. The tiny wastebasket was spilling over with tissues and other trash. Nicole’s laptop and cell phone, which would be the last things she packed away in her roomy shoulder bag, were perched atop the rickety table near the door along with her passport belt and a half-full bottle of San Pellegrino.

However, all other traces of Nicole had been removed from the room. The drawers of the old-fashioned upright bureau stood open and empty. Her paperback book, breath mints, and hairbrush had disappeared from the bedside table. But wait... what was that peeking out from under the bed...?

Nicole groaned. Extra shoes... not check, she said, pushing a strand of blond hair out of her eyes and bending down to retrieve her sneakers from their hiding place. "Oh, man. How in the world am I supposed to fit these in here . . . ?"

Talking to yourself again? a playful voice asked from the doorway.

Nicole glanced up as her best friend, Patrice Fiorelli, hurried into the room carrying a bag of snacks she’d just bought. Even though Patrice had been in Venice for almost five days, it still felt strange to see her familiar pixie-ish face and dancing brown eyes there among the exotic piazzas and canals. Strange, but nice. After the three-plus months Nicole had spent traveling around Europe by herself, it was wonderful to have familiar company, even if only for a week.

Sort of, Nicole admitted. I don’t know why my stuff won’t fit back in my bags. I’ve only been in Venice for a couple of weeks—it’s not like I got that much new stuff here! She tossed the sneakers on top of her bloated backpack, then glanced at the smaller rolling suitcase that was already zipped and standing near the door, wondering if there was any space left in there. "I mean, sure, I noticed it was a little harder to get everything zipped up when I left Florence to come here, but really . . ."

Well, you’d better either shove them in there somewhere or figure out how to wear them as a necklace, Patrice said, dragging her already-packed luggage out from under the bed. "The guy at the desk said the water taxi should be here in, um, dieci minuti. I think that means ten minutes. She giggled. Or maybe it means ‘go away, American girl, no taxi for you!’ Who knows?"

Nicole grinned. She had missed Patrice’s wacky sense of humor. Picking up her sneakers again, she shot a glance at her friend’s bags. You don’t have any extra room in there, do you? she asked hopefully.

Patrice playfully blocked her suitcases with her body. No way! she said. You’ve been wearing those things for months—they stink. Anyway, you’ve got like five or six more months living out of those bags. You’re in big trouble if you’re running out of space already!

I know, I know. Nicole pulled a pair of jeans out of the backpack. She unfolded them and started rolling them into a sort of denim sausage, hoping that would save enough space to squeeze the sneakers in. I might have to go through all my stuff once we get to Paris and maybe send a few things home with you, if you don’t mind.

Sure. Patrice flopped down on her unmade bed and grinned up at Nicole. Although I doubt you’ll be in the mood for luggage sorting once you’re reunited with Monsieur Hunky Hottie in Paris.

Nicole blushed, keeping her gaze firmly trained on the jeans in her hands. Yeah, right, she muttered. I told you, Luc and I are just friends now.

"Your mouth says non non, Patrice said in a goofy French accent lifted straight from Pepé Le Pew. But your eyes, zey say, Oui! Oui! "

Very funny. Nicole rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help laughing. Patrice could always help her appreciate the goofy side of life. That was one of the reasons they got along so well. Nicole’s more thoughtful temperament helped ground Patrice’s natural giddiness a little, while Patrice was one of the few people who could coax Nicole into looking for the silver lining when she was feeling down. Anyway, I wish more of my other Paris friends were going to be around so you could meet them. I can’t believe the Smiths are living in Hong Kong now! Nicole smiled at the thought of the American family she’d lived with in Paris during her semester abroad with the S.A.S.S. study-abroad program the previous year. The Smiths had four kids under the age of seven, which had made their apartment kind of chaotic at times, to say the least. But by the end of her stay, all six of them had felt like family to Nicole. And it’s just bad timing that you won’t get to meet Marie and Renaud, she added.

That’s the older couple who lived downstairs from you, right? Patrice asked, rolling over onto her stomach and resting her chin on her hand.

Uh-huh.

Actually, the French couple—especially the wife, Marie—had been much more than downstairs neighbors to Nicole during her stay. Marie had helped her figure out some important things about herself and had been someone Nicole could always talk to even during her darkest moments in Paris. She had been terribly disappointed when she’d e-mailed Marie to tell her she would be coming back to Paris only to discover that Marie and Renaud would be visiting family in the south of France for the entire time Nicole was there.

Well, those peeps sound cool and all. Patrice sat up and grinned, swinging her legs off the edge of the bed. "But I’m just glad Luc didn’t decide to jaunt off to Hong Kong or anywhere else this Christmas. I’m totally looking forward to meeting your mysterious French amour at long last. I just hope I don’t swoon and embarrass you when I lay eyes on his French gorgeousness."

Nicole smiled weakly. The closer the time came, the more she realized that she herself actually had mixed feelings about seeing Luc again. Part of her almost wished she wasn’t getting the chance. True, he had played a huge role in making her semester abroad a very special time in her life; probably as much as Marie or the Smiths or anyone else. But she was sure it would seem weird to see him now, an entire year later. It would probably be easier if she could keep him firmly in the past where he belonged, a nice—albeit still a bit confusing—memory ...

Don’t be stupid, she chided herself, squeezing the rolled jeans in her hands. It’s not a big deal. Luc and I are friends now—that’s all.

On the surface at least, that was true. After she’d left Paris at the end of her semester, she and Luc had kept in touch via somewhat sporadic e-mails. They were pen pals. Friends.

So then why did she still shiver a little when she remembered the way he used to look at her, or that certain special kiss one evening in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower?

Patrice checked her watch. Come on, we’d better get out there. We don’t want to miss the train. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. I can’t believe I’m actually going to Paris!

I only wish you could stay there longer, Nicole said as she finally managed to wedge everything back into her bag and zip it up. Patrice had flown over to join her in Italy as soon as her college exams were finished. She’d wanted to make the trip longer than a week—as she’d said, it was a heck of a distance to go for seven measly days—but her family had insisted on having her home again in plenty of time for Christmas.

Me, too. But hey, at least I’ll get to experience one of those cramped little train sleeping compartments you keep complaining about in your e-mails.

Nicole laughed. She had to admit that the overnight train trips, like the one from Venice to Paris, were not her favorite parts of this adventure.

Yeah; me, too, she teased playfully. I call the bottom bunk!

A moment later they were stepping out into the narrow, twisting street outside the pensione. The vaporetto, or water taxi, was already waiting for them at the edge of the nearest canal. As the operator loaded their bags onto the boat, Nicole breathed in the dank, slightly sour smell that hung over the city thanks to its network of canals, a scent that had already become familiar in just two weeks. The mementos she had bought and the photos she had taken with her new digital camera would help her remember this visit to the city forever.

She smiled with a touch of wistfulness as she thought back over the past two weeks—of pleasant times spent chatting over breakfast with the other guests at the pensione or enjoying leisurely multicourse meals at one or another of Venice’s canal-front open-air restaurants. That was one of the unexpected difficulties of the sort of travel schedule she was following. Just when she started to get to know a new place, it was time to move on. Then again, she supposed she ought to be used to that. She’d spent much of her childhood moving around thanks to her parents’ peripatetic jobs as landscape designers, and while she didn’t feel nearly as nervous about traveling to a new city or country as she once had about starting a new school, she did still have the same type of sadness whenever she had to leave each newly familiar place behind. Still, she was starting to think that feeling was just a part of being alive and involved in your surroundings.

As the vaporetto headed down the canal toward the train station, she dug into her shoulder bag for her digital camera, a bon voyage gift from her parents when she’d left for Europe some three months earlier. Nicole had already filled the memory card at least five times, downloading the photos onto her laptop and selecting the best ones to e-mail to her family, Patrice, and various other friends. One of the only things she truly regretted about her previous trip to Europe was that she hadn’t brought a camera. She had to rely mostly on her memory—along with a few pictures taken by other people—to help her remember the semester she’d spent in Paris.

Luckily, her memories were strong—sometimes a little too strong. For instance, it was all too easy to remember what a bad attitude she’d had about that semester in the beginning. She hadn’t wanted to go to France at all. She hadn’t wanted to spend the first semester of her senior year anywhere but back home in Peabody Corner, Maryland, with her boyfriend, Nate, and her three best friends.

It’s a good thing Mom and Dad were so stubborn about forcing me to expand my horizons, she thought now with a slight shudder as she fiddled with the settings on her camera. Otherwise I’d probably be at Nate’s college right this second working on my M.R.S. degree.

Eighteen months ago, that would have been all she could have dreamed of for her life. Nate Carlton had seemed the very picture of the ideal boyfriend—handsome, funny, smart enough, and always the life of the party. Nicole had been terrified that being away from him for three and a half months would change things between them. And, in fact, that was exactly what had happened. At first it had seemed like a disaster when Nate had dumped her. But Nicole realized it was the best thing that could have happened to her. Now, almost exactly a year after the end of her Paris semester, she could hardly imagine what it had been like to be that girl—the girl who pictured nothing more exciting out of her life than marriage, a family, and a nice house in the suburbs.

She gazed out at the Venetian scenery, hardly seeing the palazzi, bridges, and gondolas they were passing as she pondered the person she’d been back then. She was a whole different person now, that was for sure. That was why she’d decided to postpone college for a year to see a little more of the world. Fortunately, her parents had been thrilled by the idea and