Chapter 7 | Nos etes sous la pluie

The fast-food place next to the university always made the same noise.

Trays sliding. Orders shouted too loudly. Hot oil in the air. And groups of students talking as if they were trying to finish the day before it caught up with them.

We were sitting at the back, near the window.

Aïcha across from me. Nawal beside her. Youssef, Reda and me on the other side.

I had taken a simple menu. As usual. No bad surprises. I’m sure it’s good.

Youssef was talking about some professor, I don’t even remember which one, with absurd energy.

“No but I swear, he said ‘it’s very intuitive’ while showing a table with fifteen columns.”

“That’s violent,” Nawal said.

“That’s a declaration of war, yes,” Aïcha added, taking a fry.

She was laughing easily today.

Really easily.

She had tied her hair up quickly, and a few strands were falling around her face. It gave her that look both put together and not very concerned, which is a talent I will probably never possess.

When I try to look relaxed, I mostly look abandoned.

Nawal was looking at her phone.

“Hey, Our Summers in the Rain comes out tonight.”

Aïcha looked up suddenly.

“Oh yes!”

“What is that again?” Youssef asked.

Nawal gave a small smile.

“A romance.”

Youssef put his hand over his heart.

“Misery of miseries.”

“Thank you for that nuanced intervention,” Aïcha said. “It’s not just any romance!”

Reda shrugged.

“Apparently, it’s about a girl who comes back to the same town every summer and always runs into the same sad guy.”

“So exactly the kind of movie I like,” Aïcha said, with no shame at all.

I think it made me smile.

Because she had this very simple way of owning her tastes. No defensive irony, no trying to make it cool. She liked the things she liked.

It’s cute.

“Nawal, come see it with me!” she said.

Nawal grimaced.

“I can’t tonight. I promised my cousin I’d stop by.”

“Betrayal.”

“I know.”

Aïcha took a sip of soda.

Then she turned toward me.

Very naturally.

“Eliott. Come with me.”

I looked up.

“Huh?”

“The movie. Tonight or tomorrow? Which do you prefer?”

Youssef immediately made a ridiculous noise with his mouth, the kind of socially unbearable little “oooh” that makes you want to disappear into a fizzy drink.

“Let people breathe,” Nawal said, already amused.

Aïcha hadn’t moved.

She was simply looking at me, her chin resting on her hand.

“So? When?” she asked.

I think my brain took two seconds to accept the situation.

“Yes,” I said.

Too fast.

Then I added, because my body never knows how to leave an answer alone:

“I mean… yes, if you want.”

She smiled all at once.

A real big smile.

“Yes, I want.”

Youssef raised a finger.

“I would like to specify that I am witnessing something embarrassing.”

“No one invited you,” Aïcha answered.

“That’s almost a date,” Reda said.

“Oh please,” Aïcha replied.

I immediately focused on my fries with the seriousness of a man facing a state mission.

Aïcha just looked satisfied.

“Eliott, he’s my reliable guy.”

This time, everyone laughed.

Even me, a little.

Nawal looked at her.

“You’re happy, you.”

“Yes. Very.”

She wasn’t even trying to hide it.

Then she added, looking at me one second longer:

“I’m perfectly fine with it being just the two of us.”

I lowered my eyes to my tray.

My heart, meanwhile, was doing whatever it wanted.

Youssef crossed his arms.

“Fine. Very well. We respect that. Actually, it’s not that we don’t like that kind of movie, it’s just that we’ve decided to grant you this peaceful moment.”

“Obviously, liar. But anyway, we’re going to see a movie, and that’s very good. Plus, I’m a fan of the novel and it’s incredible.”

The worst part is that the more she talked like that, the harder it became to breathe normally.

Because she didn’t look like she was half-joking.

She just looked happy.

And that was much more destabilizing than a joke.

The rest of the meal passed in pleasant noise.

Youssef started talking too loudly again.

Nawal told a story about an unbearable neighbor.

Aïcha sometimes threw me a quick look, as if checking that I was still there.

I was there.

Very there.

A little too there, even.

When we left the fast-food place, it was still light out. The late-afternoon light made everything softer than it really was. The famous golden hour. Even the sticky sidewalk and paper bags rolling in the wind looked beautiful.

The group split at the street corner.

“We’ll keep each other posted,” Nawal said.

“Yes,” Aïcha answered.

Then she turned toward me while walking backward for a few seconds.

“I’ll text you tonight.”

“Okay.”

“And answer.”

“I always answer.”

“That’s true. Good. See you later then.”

She raised her hand before leaving with Nawal.

“Bye bye, Eliott.”

I stayed there for one second like a guy who had maybe just accepted something important without fully understanding the terms of the contract.

Then I went home.

An outing, when you’re not used to it, takes up far too much space in your head.

Especially when it starts to look, from a distance, like a date.

I had no official proof that it was one.

No one had used that word.

And yet, it had been floating somewhere around me since the fast-food place like a very cute threat.

I spent part of the evening pretending to be normal.

Then I tidied my studio a little.

Then I untidied what I had just tidied.

Then I took a shower too early.

Then I checked the time six times in ten minutes, which is a very unproductive activity but apparently natural for me.

My phone vibrated.

Aïcha.

“Aïcha: Hey. You okay? Want a summary of the movie?”

“Eliott: Hi, yes, I’d like that”

“Aïcha: The girl comes back every summer to a seaside resort, and her soulmate is always there except they always miss each other. And it rains every time”

“Eliott: How does she know he’s her soulmate if they always miss each other?”

“Aïcha: Because she feels it! He’s her soulmate, you’ll see, you’ll like it”

I smiled alone in my kitchen, which is always a little embarrassing when you think about it.

She sent another message almost right away.

“Aïcha: What are you doing after the movie, actually?”

I reread the sentence.

Once.

Twice.

As if the words were suddenly going to change meaning.

“Eliott: I still don’t know, why?”

“Aïcha: You don’t have anything planned?”

I looked at my empty apartment.

My clean sink.

My half-eaten biscuit on the counter.

The deep silence of my social life.

“Eliott: No”

“Aïcha: Perfect then, the movie ends early and we’ll still have the whole afternoon, we’ll improvise!”

Improvise?

I didn’t like that word much either.

But coming from her, it sounded less like a danger than a promise.

We kept talking a little.

Simple things. A professor who talked too fast. A sweater she had seen in a shop window. A middle school memory about a failed cinema outing because she had “accidentally” spilled her drink on a girl she already kind of hated.

She told her life in small pieces.

Without staging it.

As if it were natural to give me a part of it.

At one point, she wrote:

“Aïcha: Okay, I’m going to sleep, you sleep well too, otherwise you’ll look like an overwatered cactus”

“Eliott: That’s already my general aesthetic. Also, since when do you sleep this early?”

“Aïcha: Stop, that’s not your general aesthetic. And I’m sleeping early to be in shape. See you tomorrow Eliott, sleep well”

“Eliott: See you tomorrow”

I put the phone on my bedside table.

Then I picked it up again five seconds later to reread the conversation.

I went to bed with that very clear feeling of waiting for something. Not only the movie, something else, blurrier, riskier.

I fell asleep thinking that one day, I would really have to learn how to handle simple situations without giving them the size of a natural disaster.

That day was clearly not coming right away.

The next day, I was ready far too early.

Obviously.

I had changed tops three times before choosing one that at least gave me the impression I hadn’t been dressed by sadness itself.

The cinema was in the mall, twenty minutes away by tram.

I arrived twelve minutes early. Which left me exactly enough time to wonder:

Am I too tense?

Should I have taken a different jacket?

And if going to the cinema together officially entered the category of things where you’re supposed to know how to behave?

Aïcha arrived almost on time. With that tiny almost which, with her, looked less like lateness and more like a way of making an entrance.

Light jeans. Off-white sweater. Shiny earrings I had never seen before. And that way of walking as if space had always accepted her presence.

When she saw me, her face lit up.

“You’re here!”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Impressive.”

“I have a reputation to maintain.”

“The guy who arrives before the doors?”

“Among other things.”

She stopped in front of me with a smile.

“You’re dressed well, I like it.”

My brain immediately disconnected for half a second.

“Ah.”

She laughed.

“I swear! It’s a compliment.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!”

Small silence.

Not awkward, just… new.

Then she looked at the display.

“Okay. We have time to get food.”

“Okay.”

I followed her while trying not to be too out of sync. Which isn’t always easy when someone has just told you you’re dressed well in a tone that could almost count as an event.

She seemed so excited it was hard to keep up.

At the counter, she ordered without any hesitation.

“One large salted popcorn, that pack of candy, a Coke, and…”

She turned toward me.

“What do you want?”

“Uh… same, well no, not same, well…”

“So same, but sweet popcorn please,” she concluded very calmly.

“Yes.”

“Perfect.”

I tried to take out my card.

“Leave it.”

“No, I can pay.”

“I don’t doubt it, but I invited you, so I’m buying you food.”

I let her.

She paid for both of us with disarming ease, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Then she handed me my drink.

“Gift.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s a cultural investment.”

“I see you’re diversifying your portfolio.”

“Exactly.”

I think it made her laugh more than the joke deserved.

“You can take some of my popcorn if you prefer salty, but that way you have the choice.”

The room was already half full. We sat in the middle, not too high, not too low. A seat strategically impossible to choose when you want to be both discreet and close to someone.

The movie started.

And it was exactly as advertised.

A seaside town. Looks held too long. Absurd separations. Far too symbolic rain.

Aïcha loved it.

I knew because she reacted to everything. Not loudly. Just enough for her to exist in the movie too.

Sometimes, she breathed out through her nose when a line was too ridiculous.

Sometimes, she leaned slightly toward me to whisper:

“He’s stupid here.”

or

“If she leaves now, I’m leaving the room.”

I whispered too.

Well… mostly I tried to answer normally while she was much too close for someone who was supposed to be following a movie.

Her perfume came in little touches, her sleeve sometimes brushed mine, and each time I had the stupid impression that my body was noting the information somewhere.

At one point, without really thinking, we reached for popcorn at the same time.

Our fingers touched in the bucket.

Nothing spectacular.

Just enough to make me miss the next thirty seconds of the movie.

I pulled my hand back too quickly.

So did she.

Then, a few minutes later, she put the candy pack back between us, closer to me than before, without commenting on anything.

As if she were leaving me a second chance.

I didn’t take it.

There was also a moment when she laughed, softly, at a scene that was a little too dramatic, then turned her head toward me as if to check if I found it ridiculous. I shrugged.

She smiled.

Not at the movie.

At me, I think.

And that helped me concentrate on the movie much less.

Toward the end, there was a scene in the rain where the two characters finally kissed after two hours of circling around their own misery.

Aïcha whispered:

“Oh my God… look, it’s so beautiful.”

I turned my head slightly toward her.

The screen reflected a little light on her face.

Her eyes stayed fixed ahead, but she was smiling, with tears in her eyes.

Not really sad.

Just touched, the way she knows how to be when something pleases her without her trying to protect herself.

And for one second too long, I had the impression that she was even more beautiful like that.

Closer too.

As if the movie had gently reduced the distance between us without asking our opinion.

I wondered what it would be like to kiss her under invented rain.

Then I watched the movie with great application.

When the lights came back on, Aïcha sighed with satisfaction.

“That was very good.”

“That was very rainy.”

“So very good.”

She still had that slightly floating smile of people who haven’t fully returned to earth.

As she stood up, her arm brushed mine, and this time she didn’t move away right away.

Just one second.

Maybe two.

Nothing enough to accuse anyone of anything.

But enough for my heart to start doing whatever it wanted again in the almost- finished darkness of the room.

We left into the cinema corridor with that cottony floating feeling you get after a screening ends. The one where people speak more softly, as if the movie hasn’t fully let go of their shoulders yet.

And maybe we hadn’t either.

“Right.”

“Right?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Didn’t you already eat at noon?”

“And?”

“That’s a solid argument.”

“Thank you.”

She slipped her hands into her coat pockets.

“Should we go shopping?”

I looked at her.

“Shopping?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I feel like it.”

Then she added, with that slightly crooked smile I was starting to know:

“And I need an opinion.”

That was false.

Well, maybe not completely.

But Aïcha didn’t need me to know if a piece of clothing suited her.

She mostly looked like she had decided the day wasn’t over.

And, apparently, neither was I.

“Okay,” I said.

“Perfect.”

The mall was full of people. Families, couples, groups of teenagers, people walking too fast with bags too big. The kind of place where everyone looks like they know what to do with their Saturday, which remains a fascinating mystery to me.

Aïcha walked ahead toward certain windows, then came back to me.

“Look at that one.”

“Which one?”

“The blue sweater.”

“It’s nice.”

“Nice is a terrible opinion.”

“It’s… very nice?”

“Ah, now we’re progressing.”

She said that while smiling, as if making me talk a little more had become an activity of its own.

And maybe it had.

In another shop, she disappeared behind a fitting-room curtain before asking me:

“Come on, peek in, you can tell me if it’s too much.”

“Uh… are you sure?”

“Well yes.”

“Too what?”

“Too girl who’s trying.”

I stayed silent for a quarter of a second.

“I’m not sure I know how to recognize that.”

“That’s honest.”

Then she poked her head through the opening of the curtain.

“Tell me. What kind of clothes do you like?”

“I don’t really know…”

“Go on, suggest something. What do you think I should try?”

I looked around me with the absurd seriousness of a man being entrusted with a mission for which he had clearly not been trained.

Then I pointed to a black sweatshirt with a strawberry print.

“That… maybe. It’s simple, but… cute.”

She looked at me one second too long.

“Cute?”

“I mean… yes.”

“Okay.”

She disappeared behind the curtain with a small smile I didn’t completely know how to interpret.

When she came out of the fitting room wearing the sweatshirt, she spread her arms slightly.

“So? You like it?”

I looked up.

Then I had trouble answering right away.

Because she was really beautiful.

Not in the abstract way you say that quickly.

Not to be polite.

Really beautiful.

And there are moments when the truth looks far too much like something you don’t dare say.

The sweatshirt was simple. A little loose. The kind of clothing that should have just made her look cute.

On her, it did worse.

Or better.

It made her look softer, closer, almost intimate. As if she had let me see a version of herself that was less mastered, less public.

“It suits you,” I finally said.

She observed me for one second in the mirror.

“Just suits me?”

“Very well.”

This time, she turned completely toward me.

“Very well how?”

My brain immediately submitted its resignation.

“Very well… on you.”

She smiled.

Not widely.

But enough to make me understand she knew very well what she was doing.

“There,” she said softly.

Then she looked at herself in the mirror.

“I’m hesitating.”

“Why?”

“Because if I buy it, I’ll have to find occasions to wear it. I rarely wear things this casual.”

“You can invent occasions.”

“That’s very bad financial advice.”

“I do what I can.”

She laughed.

Then she came just close enough to show me a detail on the sleeve of the sweatshirt, as if we needed to be at that distance to talk about cotton.

“And this?”

Her voice was lower.

Her shoulder almost against my arm.

I looked at the seam, because I had to look at something socially acceptable.

“That’s good too,” I said.

“Good again?”

“I lack vocabulary.”

“I don’t think so.”

Time passed like that.

Simply.

One shop after another.

Stupid comments.

Opinions given with too much seriousness on sweaters, shirts, a dress that was “pretty but not for every day,” according to her.

But the more it went on, the more I had the strange impression that she wasn’t only looking for an opinion.

She was also looking for a reason to stay there with me.

To stretch the afternoon.

To pull gently on the thread as long as it held.

And the problem was that I was too.

At one point, she grabbed my wrist to pull me toward a window.

Just to show me something.

A brief gesture. Natural.

But my body recorded it as capital information.

I think what troubled me most with Aïcha wasn’t only the closeness.

It was the ease of that closeness.

As if she wasn’t afraid to let me enter her space.

As if, for a few hours, I was someone simple enough to be chosen.

We had just come out of a clothing store when her hand left my arm all at once.

The movement was light.

But clear.

I felt it immediately.

I turned toward her.

Her gaze had frozen a little farther down the aisle.

And her face had changed.

Not hugely.

Just enough to understand that a problem had entered the scene.

“Aïcha?”

She gave a small start, almost nothing.

“Hm?”

Then she was already looking elsewhere, too quickly.

“Nothing.”

That was when I saw him.

A man was walking toward us with the calm assurance of people who never consider themselves out of place, wherever they are.

Tall, dark jacket, very neat beard, phone in hand. The kind of guy you imagine speaking loudly in a living room and getting people to listen just because he’s there.

When he recognized Aïcha, his face relaxed into a smile.

“Well, look at you, big girl.”

Aïcha straightened a little.

“Sofiane…”

Her voice had changed too.

Not colder.

But more controlled.

He came closer and quickly kissed her forehead.

Then he threw me a look.

Just one.

Quick.

Assessing.

“Hello.”

He turned back to Aïcha.

“What are you doing here?”

“Nothing, we were just hanging around.”

The we seemed tiny to me.

Sofiane looked around us.

“With who?”

Aïcha answered too quickly.

“Nawal and the others were here, but we split up.”

I think something contracted inside me at that moment.

Not violently.

Just a small discreet thing.

Like when someone closes a door in a room and you understand you maybe weren’t supposed to be there.

Sofiane nodded, not completely convinced.

Then his gaze returned to me.

“And him, he’s a classmate from school?”

Aïcha had a micro-hesitation.

Barely a second.

“This is Eliott. We’re in class together.”

I think, out of context, it was a perfectly ordinary sentence.

But there, in that exact moment, it sounded a little like:

“Don’t worry, this is nothing.”

I held out my hand.

“Hello.”

He shook it.

Not hard. Not too long.

“Sofiane,” he said.

Then he looked at me more directly.

“You’re in accounting too?”

“In CCA, yes.”

“Ah. That’s a good program, full of prospects. So you’re accompanying her shopping?”

Aïcha answered before me.

“We were just passing through.”

“Yes, I saw.”

His smile came back.

Smooth.

A little too much.

“That’s kind.”

I didn’t know if that was for me or against me.

Probably both.

He continued, looking at Aïcha:

“So now you need a shopping advisor?”

Aïcha gave a small laugh.

Not very natural.

“Stop it.”

“No, I’m asking.”

He tilted his head toward me.

“It’s not really your thing, is it? Poor guy, having to hang around here.”

I didn’t know what to answer immediately.

Not because the question was difficult.

Because it was asked in that very precise way where every answer already looks a little false.

“It’s fine,” I said.

Very powerful.

Very charismatic.

Or not really.

Sofiane nodded as if I had confirmed something interesting.

“Good.”

Then he turned toward Aïcha.

“Anyway, don’t hang around anyhow. Especially alone. It’s getting late and we don’t want Dad to worry.”

Alone.

While I was literally sixty centimeters away from him.

Aïcha immediately replied:

“But I’m not alone, the others were here.”

“Mmh.”

He looked at her one second longer.

“Yes.”

That yes meant: I don’t completely believe you, but we’ll talk about it later.

I understood it.

I think she did too.

He put his phone back in his pocket.

“When are you going home?”

“Not too late.”

“Okay, I’ll tell the parents when I get back.”

“Yes.”

Then, as if he suddenly remembered I still existed in the frame, he gave me one last polite smile.

“Good luck with the shopping, Eliott.”

He said it the way others would say good luck with surgery or an absurd punishment.

And then he walked away.

Not hurried.

Like someone who knows he has left exactly the right weight behind him.

The silence stayed between us for a few seconds.

The mall, meanwhile, kept living all around. People passed by, music too loud drifted down from another floor, someone laughed near the escalator.

And in the middle of all that, something had changed.

Aïcha breathed out through her nose.

“Sorry…”

I looked at her.

“Why?”

“My brother, he’s… heavy.”

That was a weak word for someone who had just turned an entire afternoon into slippery ground, but I understood the intention.

“It’s okay,” I said.

Stupid reflex.

Always the same.

She lowered her eyes for one second.

“He’s annoying about that.”

“About what?”

She lifted one shoulder.

“Going out, guys, what people think. Everything.”

I didn’t really know what to say.

Because one part of me understood the sentence.

And the other part stayed stuck on the fact that she had just told her brother we were with Nawal and others, as if being just with me wasn’t a version of reality that could be shown.

Aïcha continued almost right away, a little too fast:

“Anyway. Forget it. He thinks he’s my second father.”

“Okay.”

She observed me.

“Are you mad at me?”

The question surprised me.

Not because it was unfair.

Because it came too soon.

I hadn’t finished understanding what I felt exactly. Embarrassment, yes. A small coldness in my stomach too.

Something that looked like shame, but not clear enough to deserve a real name.

“No,” I said.

Then I added, because I think she deserved a little honesty too:

“I mean… I don’t think so.”

She gave a small smile.

“He’s weird, that’s all. Thank you for being honest.”

That wasn’t really true.

Or not entirely.

What was weird wasn’t him. It was the effect he had had on her. That way she had justified herself before he had even asked the right questions. Shrunk the outing, quickly put me in the classmate box.

But I said nothing.

Because I already had the impression I was taking up too much space in the scene.

And with me, that kind of feeling almost always ends up becoming:

“Maybe you’re the problem again.”

Aïcha checked the time on her phone.

“I have to go soon.”

“Okay.”

“Are you taking the tram?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

We started walking again.

A little less close.

Not visibly, just enough for me to feel it.

We still crossed two shops without really seeing them. She commented on an ugly sweater in a window, I answered something, she laughed.

The sound was the same as earlier, in theory.

But lighter, as if part of her had stayed stuck somewhere else.

Outside, the air was cooler.

We walked to the tram stop without talking much. Not in a hostile silence, a silence of the end of the day, maybe. Or of something neither of us really wanted to open.

When the tram arrived, she turned toward me.

And there, almost miraculously, her smile came back.

Not exactly like before.

But enough to disarm me anyway.

“Thank you for today, Eliott.”

“Thank you.”

“The movie was so good!”

“Mostly very rainy.”

She laughed.

“And you were a very good shopping companion.”

“I did my best.”

“And it was very good.”

Small silence.

Then she stepped forward and hugged me briefly.

Just one second.

Two, maybe.

The exact amount of time needed to erase far too many things without really repairing them.

When she stepped back, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“We’ll talk tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Cool.”

Then she got on the tram with that same little wave she sometimes gave me at university.

The door closed.

I watched her leave behind the glass until the tram turned farther down.

And for a few seconds, everything looked almost normal.

Almost.

I stayed alone at the stop with my hands in my pockets and that very vague impression that I had maybe missed something without knowing what.

Or that I had understood something I preferred not to name right away.

But she had suggested the movie.

She had wanted it to last.

She had bought me a drink, dragged me into shops, hugged me before leaving.

So maybe I was imagining things again.

Maybe her brother was just like that.

Maybe the problem came from somewhere else.

Maybe there wasn’t one.

I lowered my eyes.

Then I took out my phone.

And despite that small coldness still somewhere under my ribs, I could see a smile.

Like an idiot, probably.

But an idiot who had still just spent a good day with Aïcha.