Just One Day(16)

“Oh, never mind, then. By all means, order the chocolate.”
He gives me a long look. “No. To repent, I will order mine with Nutella.”
“That’s hardly repenting. Nutella is practically chocolate.”
“It’s made from nuts.”
“And chocolate! It’s disgusting.”
“You just say that because you’re American.”
“That has nothing to do with it! You seem to have a bottomless appetite for chocolate and bread, but I don’t assume it’s because you’re Dutch.”
“Why would it be?”
“Dutch Cocoa? You guys have the lock on it.”
Willem laughs. “I think you have us confused with the Belgians. And I get my sweet tooth from my mother, who’s not even Dutch. She says she craved chocolate all through her pregnancy with me and that’s why I like it so much.”
“Figures. Blame the woman.”
“Who’s blaming?”
The waitress comes over with our drinks.
“So, Céline,” I begin, knowing I should let this go but am somehow unable to. “She’s, like, the bookkeeper? At the club.”
“Yes.”
I know it’s catty, but I’m gratified that it’s such a dull job. Until Willem elaborates. “Not the bookkeeper. She books all the bands, so she knows all these musicians.” And if that’s not bad enough, he adds, “She does some of the artwork for the posters too.”
“Oh.” I deflate. “She must be very talented. Do you know her from the acting thing?”
“No.”
“Well, how did you meet?”
He plays with the wrapper from my straw.
“I get it,” I say, wondering why I’m bothering to ask what is so painfully clear. “You guys were an item.”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Oh.” Surprise. And relief.
And then Willem says, ever so casually, “We just fell in love once.”
I take a gulp of my citron pressé—and choke on it. It turns out it’s not lemonade so much as lemon juice and water. Willem hands me a cube of sugar and a napkin.
“Once?” I say when I recover.
“It was a while ago.”
“And now?”
“We are good friends. As you saw.”
I’m not sure that’s exactly what I saw.
“So you’re not in love with her anymore?” I run my fingers along the rim of my glass.
Willem looks at me. “I never said I was in love with her.”
“You just said you fell in love with her once.”
“And I did.”
I stare at him, confused.
“There is a world of difference, Lulu, between falling in love and being in love.”
I feel my face go hot, and I’m not entirely sure why. “Isn’t it just sequential—A follows B?”
“You have to fall in love to be in love, but falling in love isn’t the same as being in love.” Willem peers at me from under his lashes. “Have you ever fallen in love?”
Evan and I broke up the day after he mailed in his college tuition deposit. It wasn’t unexpected. Not really. We had already agreed we would break up when we went to college if we didn’t wind up in the same geographical area. And he was going to school in St. Louis. I was going to school in Boston. The thing I hadn’t expected was the timing. Evan decided it made more sense to “rip the bandage off” and break up not in June, when we graduated, or in August, when we’d leave for school, but in April.
But the thing is, aside from being sort of humiliated by the rumor that I’d been dumped and disappointed about missing prom, I wasn’t actually sad about losing Evan. I was surprisingly neutral about breaking up with my first boyfriend. It was like he’d never even been there. I didn’t miss him, and Melanie quickly filled up whatever gaps he’d left in the schedule.
“No,” I reply. “I’ve never been in love.”
Just then the waitress arrives with our crêpes. Mine is golden brown, wafting with the sweet tartness of lemon and sugar. I concentrate on that, cutting off a slice and popping it in my mouth. It melts on the tip of my tongue like a warm, sweet snowdrop.
“That’s not what I asked,” Willem says. “I asked if you’ve ever fallen in love.”
The playfulness is his voice is like an itch I just can’t scratch. I look at him, wondering if he always parses semantics like this.
Willem puts down his fork and knife. “This is falling in love.” With his finger, he swipes a bit of the Nutella from inside his crêpe and puts a dollop on the inside of my wrist. It is hot and oozy and starts to melt against my sticky skin, but before it has a chance to slither away, Willem licks his thumb and wipes the smear of Nutella off and pops it into his mouth. It all happens fast, like a lizard zapping a fly. “This is being in love.” And here he takes my other wrist, the one with my watch on it, and moves the watchband around until he sees what he’s looking for. Once again, he licks his thumb. Only this time, he rubs it against my birthmark, hard, as if trying to scrub it off.
“Being in love is a birthmark?” I joke as I retract my arm. But my voice has a tremble in it, and the place where his wet thumbprint is drying against my skin burns somehow.
“It’s something that never comes off, no matter how much you might want it to.”
“You’re comparing love to a . . . stain?”
He leans so far back in his seat that the front legs of his chair scrape off the floor. He looks very satisfied, with the crêpe or with himself, I’m not sure. “Exactly.”