Page 113 of Lovesick Mannequins
“How could I be, Cel?” She must have noticed the anguish on Celine’s face because her eyes softened to that colour of melted caramel that was so familiar to Celine. Jacques would look at her that way too. “I know what it’s like to be with someone you don’t love,” Anaïs said. “I mean,” she pointed at herself.
Celine recalled all the men Anaïs had pretended to like just to throw off any rumours of her escapades with girls in dark dance halls. She mustered a smile. “I think this case might be a little different.”
Anaïs shook her head decisively. “All hearts are the same. You cannot force them to feel something they don’t, just as you cannot force them to change.”
Something in Celine’s chest hurt when she looked at her friend again. She loved Anaïs, more than anyone else in her life, but it wasn’t always easy telling her things. Anaïs’s world was very different from Celine’s; she had never been able to grasp that exactly.
Still…
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Celine said, her voice soft and regretful. “You deserved to know—about this and other things.”
“Such as you kissing Bas?”
Celine had hoped she would forget about that. “I didn’tplanon kissing him. It just…happened.”
“I understand Bas has his ways,” Anaïs said, looking slightly perturbed. “But a kiss doesn’t just happen. Things lead up to it.” She pointed a finger. “And you were kissing him back.”
“Because he kissed me first,” Celine replied petulantly. “It was the polite thing to do.”
“Oh, please,” Anaïs scoffed, but there was a slight smirk on her lips. When she joined Celine on the bed, her neck craned back eerily as though she had just realised something. “What I saw out there didn’t seem like a first kiss.”
Celine scratched at an invisible spot on the covers. She cleared her throat. “Well…”
“Well?”
“…it wasn’t.”
Grabbing a pillow, Anaïs slammed her face into it and released another, muffled scream.
“Stop that.” Celine scrambled towards her friend, hauling her backwards onto the bed. “My mother will hear.”
Anaïs peered up at her. “You havekissedhim before?”
“Just once before, now be quiet.”
“Mon Dieu!” Shooting to her feet again, Anaïs started pacing the room anew. “Just once, she says.”
“That is the opposite of being quiet,” Celine pointed out wearily.
“This is too good to be quiet, Cel.” Walking to the window, she slid open a pane. The sky had darkened to a near black, peppered here and there with stars and the blurred yellow lights of the residencies across the street. The air that rushed in smelled of jasmine and cooling concrete, fluttering through Anaïs’s hair. She took out a cigarette from the bodice of her dress, lighting it swiftly. “What do you mean you two have kissed before? Was it at the masquerade? I can’t remember a thing about it, I just know your costumes matched.”
Celine refrained from mentioning she hadn’t even been there. With how things were going, the best she could hope for was that Anaïs kept her screeches and gossip inside Celine’s room. “It wasn’t at the masquerade. It was after. I just wanted to retaliate for something he had said. It meant nothing. It still means nothing. It just…happened.”
Anaïs stared at her for a good minute, then exhaled a stream of smoke outside. “It doesn’t seem like nothing. You are being too defensive about it.”
“I am not.”
“Sure, because you are known for being nonchalant.”
Celine looked away. She didn’t want to admit it. It was fine if she kept it to herself—she could push it somewhere deep and hidden, and pretend it wasn’t there until she forgot about it.
But one look at Anaïs’s inquiring gaze and her resolve crumbled into specks.
“It was nothingat first,” Celine clarified.
“I knew it!” Anaïs muttered under her breath. But when she looked at Celine, she winced. “Sorry, old habit. Go on.”
“That’s all.” Celine shook her head. “I don’t know what I feel anymore. Bas…he… It’s a long story.”
