"And he just walked away?" Hanna asked, studying me with her perfectly lined, light blue eyes. I nodded, not really wanting to relive my moment with Parker. She backed away, sitting properly in her seat. "Wow. Did he have a shirt on?"

My eyes widened at her. "What?!" I spat.

She shrugged. "Just wondering," she stated, innocently, "Most guys don't wear shirts when they're at home. I know for a fact that Jackson doesn't, most of the time."

I shook my head at her, half-infuriated, but half-amused. Only Hanna could come up with something so fickle and ridiculous out of such a situation.

"Bonjour, class," Ms. Sorrento said, clear happiness in her words. She finally got to hear us belt out in French today.

"Bonjour," the class echoed back to her. I slumped in my seat, pulling out my script, not looking forward to any interaction with Parker, whether they were in public or in another language.

"OK," Ms. Sorrento said, clapping her hands together, "Let's have everyone who is in the first scene come on to the stage, please." She had made all of us traipse into the auditorium to perform the silly little play. I groaned and got up, not wanting to be anywhere near the person who'd been making my life hell for the past four years.

Hanna put out her hands and stopped me. "Alex, look," she said, giving me a shake, "I know you don't like Parker, but you need to stop living in fear of him. He's writing your story. Don't left him take control of your life. Fight back."

If the coffee I had this morning hadn't woken me up, Hanna's speech did. It was one of the most intelligent things I'd heard her say. Stunned, I walked up on stage, where Parker was already brooding, Chanel, or whoever clinging on to his arm. I rolled my eyes and walked to the middle of the stage, waiting for further instructions.

Ms. Sorrento looked up at us, hopefully. "Start," she said, waving her hands at us. So we did, talking in the best French accents we could muster up, but halfway through the period, Parker and I were the only ones she hadn't corrected, or cringed while listening to. I ran through my lines, avoiding Parker's eye entirely, thankful that almost all twenty of us were on stage at once.

Bit by bit, however, people starting stepping offstage and by the end, Parker and I were the only ones left. He looked up at me, but I was looking past him. His green eyes narrowed. "Ce qui se passe?" he said in his perfect accent and the silly girls in the room swooned audibly all over again, just like they had been doing all period long. It meant 'What is happening?'

"Pourqoui tu ne me dites pas?" I questioned, taking a step towards him, telling him, 'Why don't you tell me?'

"Vous dire ce que, Sasha?" he asked. Tell you what, Sasha?

"Dites-moi ce qui se passe. Pourquoi êtes-vous me traitez si mal?" I spat, amazed how the words matched what I actually wanted to yell at him every time I saw him. It meant 'Tell me what's going on. Why are you treating me so badly?'

He took a step towards me, as the script prescribed. And then another, and another. "Je vous traite mal?" he asked, mock concern in his eyes.

"Oui," I said in a small voice, nodding.

"Oh, Sasha, je ne ai jamais fait pour. Je suis tellement désolé," he said, pain plaguing his expression. He was a wonderful actor. If all else failed, he could be one of the best. What he said, made me want to laugh: Am I treating you badly? I am so, so sorry.

Instead I continued. "Vous êtes vraiment?" I asked. You truly are?

"Vraiment, mon chérie," he said. I knew he was waiting to go rinse his mouth after all the compassion his character had to show me. Truly, my darling.

I looked down at my script horrified at the words that followed. A sweeping glance across the room told me that everyone was watching and Ms. Sorrento, I think, had tears in her eyes and she was watching us with such pleasure. I gulped, not wanting to let her down. My words, Then tell me you love me couldn't have been more out of place. " Puis, Jean Luc, dis-moi que tu me aimes," I managed to choke out, dreading the three wonderful words that were about to come out of Parker's mouth, but I didn't hear them, since at that moment, the bell sounded, shrilly. Ms. Sorrento seemed heart-broken, but she turned to usher everyone out.

Parker's humourless chuckle made me turn to him. "Not a chance," he said, flatly, before walking off stage.

I swallowed and flew from the auditorium, glad it was lunch and ducked into the nearest ladies' room I could find and locked myself in a stall, dropping to the floor, my head in my hands. Pushing my head back, I brought out the chain I wore everyday, yet wondered why I bothered to have it around my neck.

It said the most beautiful thing in the world:

Je t'aime.

Six Years Ag​o

Sitting in the tree between our two houses was the most relaxing thing Parker and I could ever do together. It was probably the only relaxing thing we did, but sometimes, even that wasn't true.

I was reading and so was Parker. His leg was swinging dangerously off the highest branch in the tree we could sit on, across from mine, which was a few inches lower.

"Alex?" he asked, suddenly.

"Mm?"

"What's your favourite phrase?" he asked, folding his book out on his lap as he leaned over to look at me. I looked back up at him.

"Huh?"

"What's your favourite line?" he asked, "Like short string of words that make sense?"

I made a face at him and then looked down at my book, which was about a summer away in France. I sighed. "Je t'aime," I answered to him, simply.

He seemed thoughtful, for a while and then nodded. "Why? What's yours?" I asked.

He replied, without a moment's hesitation, "Tomorrow never comes." And after an afterthought he sheepishly added, "And Hakuna Matata."

*

A few weeks later, after spring break, he crawled in through my window and held out a box to me. "What's this?" I asked, taking it.

He shrugged. "A present for you from Paris."

I opened it. A delicate silver chain sat in white tissue paper and the pendant read one thing:

Je t'aime.

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