The Bridge by Jill Cox

Author:Jill Cox [Cox, Jill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780998220017
Publisher: Tower 19 Press
Published: 2016-12-12T20:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-EIGHT

December 13th. Happy twenty-one years to me.

Early in life, I’d learned to keep my birthday expectations low. Between holiday parties and school vacations, December was one big time crunch. Why should this year be any different?

And then there was the city-wide shutdown that started the day after Thanksgiving. Transportation employees had gone on strike to protest another year without a cost-of-living raise, and one by one, the rest of the municipal services had followed suit.

All of them except school. (And, mercifully, waste collection.)

For the rest of Paris, today was nothing more than Day Sixteen of a new revolution. Or so I believed until Anne burst through my door while I was video-chatting with Drew.

“Joyeux anniversaire!” She unhinged the volet shutters, then stepped in front of the monitor. “See ya, Drew!” She waved to the screen. “The sky’s celebrating, so your girl has to go!”

Though it was still dark at seven a.m., I followed Anne to the window, pushing wide the outside shutters. Quarter-sized snowflakes spiraled lazily through the air, landing softly in the courtyard below. “This is like that painting from art history,” Anne whispered, wide-eyed, ignoring the flakes landing in her hair. “The one with the rooftops. Who was that by again?”

“Caillebotte,” I smiled, thinking back to what Pete had said our first day here. By December, you’ll have your very own Rooftops Under Snow out here. Yep. Right on time.

We zoomed through our normal morning rituals, then clambered downstairs, where Marie-France was preparing my favorite breakfast: scrambled eggs, bacon (the Irish kind), and toast. All I Want for Christmas Is You streamed through the whole apartment, and the three of us danced around the kitchen like a bunch of elfin lunatics while we set the table. Marie-France boogied so vigorously that she split her pencil skirt right up the back.

The French educational calendar was divided into trimesters, so while this wasn’t finals week, it certainly felt like it. Monsieur Ludovic had warned us today’s history test would cover both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and for a week Pete had been hassling us all to come early this morning for a last-minute review.

So when Anne and I walked into the Grande Salle, I wasn’t surprised to see so many people. Pete Russell was a tyrant. Snow and the lack of public transport were insufficient reasons to provoke his wrath. Except some of these people weren’t in our history class.

Just then, everyone began to sing “Happy Birthday” to me in French. Never, not once in my whole life, had so many people gathered to celebrate me. And before I knew it, I was ugly crying in the best way possible.

Harper handed me a daintily wrapped bouquet of multi-colored tulips, and Kelly handed me two dozen red roses.

“Drew slipped me fifty euros the night of Dan’s party,” she bubbled. “Major swoon avec sigh, my friend. No guy I know plans that far ahead.”

“Yeah, we know, hashtag Movie Love,” Harper smirked. “Come on, Meredith. Time to get the birthday girl caffeinated. You’ve got a big day ahead.

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