Chapter 12 | Held in Your Hand

The warmth of the restaurant took hold of me again all at once.

The noise too.

The conversations. The glasses. The cutlery. The small social theater of the seminar, still in progress, as if no one had gone out onto a terrace to be told things far too precise for the end of an evening.

Lyralda took her place back in the room with that strange ease some adults have for putting their exact face back in the right place, at the right time. I felt more like I had come back with an entire lake in my chest.

Jade was still at the other end of the room.

She was laughing with the others. The sales guy, a girl from HR, two people from marketing. The kind of circle where people speak loudly to show they’re having a good time, then eventually start believing it.

When she saw us come back, her gaze stopped on me.

Then on Lyralda.

Then back on me.

Very brief.

Not enough to call it a scene.

Just enough for me to become immediately too aware of my arms, my legs, my head, everything.

She sketched a smile. Maybe hurt.

Something hard to read. As if she were already filing something away in a mental folder titled: fine, okay.

Then someone spoke to her again and she turned her head.

It was over. Well, no.

Nothing was over.

That was exactly the problem.

Mehdi saw us come back and immediately raised his glass.

“Ah! The runaway. And he even brought back a lady.”

“We were getting some air,” Lyralda said, sitting down again.

“Of course,” Mehdi answered, with that very clear tone of people who do not believe a single word of what they have just heard, but decide to respect the lie out of elegance.

I sat down too.

Very carefully. Very calmly.

As if I still knew how to sit normally at a table after wanting to kiss too many people in front of a lake.

Dinner resumed.

Or rather, it continued without me for a few minutes.

I answered when people spoke to me. I drank water. I pretended to follow an anecdote about an old client who had tried to pass off a budget mistake as “a creative adjustment.”

Mehdi commented on everything. The IT guy laughed loudly. The marketing colleagues had started leaning toward one another with that artificially relaxed closeness of people who have passed the first glass.

Jade eventually came back to the table.

Not beside me.

Across from me, slightly at an angle.

And that was worse, in a way. Because I could see her very easily.

She still spoke to me. Still teased me. But something had changed. Not coldness. Not a clear distance.

More like… a decision.

As if she were leaving me alone.

As if she had chosen not to put her finger exactly where things could start becoming ambiguous again.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to understand that in the moment.

At one point, Mehdi was telling another absurd story, and Jade said:

“Honestly, at this rate, tomorrow Eliott is going to end up as the official mascot of the seminar.”

“No thank you,” I said.

“Too late,” Mehdi replied. “You already have the profile.”

“What profile?”

“The profile of someone people want to protect a little and bother a lot.”

Jade smiled into her glass.

Lyralda, beside me, said nothing.

But I felt her gaze slide for one second too long over my hand resting near the fork.

Or maybe I imagined it.

Which, with me, always remains a serious possibility.

When dessert arrived, the room had become louder. People were circulating more freely between tables. A small group had already moved toward the improvised bar in the corner of the room.

Mister Delmas was talking with two managers near the bay windows.

Lyralda was drinking her coffee.

Jade was talking with the girl from marketing, and I could see very clearly that she was only half listening. Her gaze sometimes came back toward our table. Then left. Then came back again.

That should not have reassured me.

And yet.

The real problem came later.

Not spectacular.

Not dramatic.

Just stupid.

We were slowly getting up from the table, the groups reforming into small circles. People were speaking more freely, louder.

The kind of moment where everyone pretends the company part of the evening is over, when really it just continues differently.

I had ended up standing near a column with my glass of juice in my hand, observing, again.

And that was when an HR manager I had barely heard all trip came over to talk to me. A man in his forties, very polite, very smooth, with that smile of people who ask professional questions even outside the office.

“Hello! Or rather, good evening! You’re Eliott, Pascal’s work-study student? He told me about you.”

“Hello, sir, yes, nice to meet you.”

“Is your work-study going well? Don’t hesitate to come see me if you run into any problem, that’s my job after all.”

Then, before I had time to answer, he asked me what I wanted to do “later,” with that very adult, very serious tone, as if I was supposed to have a plan.

As if people my age all had a well-organized inner document titled “life project.”

I think that was when I started to disconnect.

Not visibly. Internally.

The seminar.

Jade.

Aïcha.

The message.

Lyralda on the terrace.

The people around.

Everything started making a little too much noise in my head again.

When the HR guy left, I wanted to get out of my own skin.

I went to the bar to get a drink.

Very bad idea.

Not because I was dead drunk two minutes later.

Not at all.

I was probably still very sober on the scale of a company seminar.

But just tired enough, shaken enough, scattered enough for my brain to start considering certain impulses plausible.

Lyralda found me near the indoor terrace.

“Running away again?” she asked.

“I’m moving around.”

“Weak nuance.”

I looked at her.

She had taken off her jacket. Her shirt was a little less strict than at the beginning of the evening. A strand of hair had escaped near her temple. She still had that calm way of standing, but I could feel a more human tiredness in her. More visible.

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

“You can always try.”

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“To… be like that.”

She frowned slightly.

“Like… that?”

I gestured vaguely at her entire being, which was not a very brilliant rhetorical strategy.

“Stable.”

She looked at me for two seconds.

Then she let out a small breath.

Not a laugh. More like an amused observation.

“I’m not stable, Eliott.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“You know me very badly.”

That was probably true.

And yet.

I think that was exactly what bothered me.

The fact that I knew her so little and still wanted to move toward her as if she represented something more solid than the rest.

We stayed for a while in the corridor leading to the rooms.

Away from the noise, but not completely isolated either.

Just that strange in-between hotels have at night: thick carpet, dim light, and calm silence.

Lyralda leaned against the wall.

“Did you drink too much?” she asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Eliott.”

“Yes?”

“You answer yes very quickly to things that suit you.”

I lowered my eyes.

“I’m fine.”

“No.”

I think that was when I truly started making nonsense happen.

Not by falling.

Not by saying scandalous things.

No.

Much more subtly.

I said:

“Can I sleep with you?”

Silence.

A real one.

Long.

The kind of silence where you can distinctly hear your own future collapsing into several very neat pieces.

Lyralda looked at me.

Not shocked.

Not outraged.

Just… very attentive.

“Sorry?” she said calmly.

I closed my eyes for one second.

“There. That was a horrible idea. Forget it.”

“Wait.”

That word froze me in place.

She straightened away from the wall.

“What exactly do you mean?”

Very good question.

I should have thought about it before.

“Nothing… I mean…”

I ran a hand through my hair.

“I don’t want to be alone,” I finally said.

The truth, when it comes out, sometimes tastes much more stupid than expected.

I hated myself for about three and a half seconds.

Lyralda did not mock me.

She just leaned toward me.

“You should maybe avoid making that kind of decision when you’ve been drinking.”

“I barely drank anything.”

“You say that like someone who could still be at 0.6.”

“That’s very precise.”

“I’m used to people lying to themselves a little at night.”

I think I gave a small nervous laugh.

“I assure you, it’s not like we can know for sure.”

“Of course we can. You just blow into a breathalyzer.”

“You’re really going to make me blow into…”

“Yes, yes.”

“You have that in your room?”

“Obviously.”

I looked at her.

“You’re terrifying.”

“I’m organized.”

And the worst part was that she didn’t even look like she was completely joking.

We ended up in her room anyway.

Because she said, very calmly:

“Come on. First we’ll check if you can stand upright.”

Which was neither a no, nor really a yes, but a very… her answer.

Her room looked like mine, with the same light tones, the same bay window, the same lake behind it.

Except she, obviously, had already managed to bring something more orderly into it. Her jacket folded over a chair. Her things put away. No orphan socks near the bed, no half-empty water bottle in a corner.

She placed a small white device on the desk.

I blinked.

“You really had a breathalyzer.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a responsible adult surrounded by irresponsible people.”

“I feel targeted.”

“That’s normal.”

She handed it to me.

“Blow.”

I did.

Very dignified. Very sober.

The number appeared.

She looked at it.

“0.18.”

“You see!”

“What I see is mostly that you drank when you were already a little emotionally off your feet.”

“That’s a very aggressive sentence. Admit you were wrong!”

“No. And it’s a very accurate sentence.”

Then she put the device back on the table.

“Right.”

“Right?”

“You’re clearly not drunk.”

“Thank you for this victory.”

“But you still look like a boy who is going to think far too much if he goes back to his room alone.”

I said nothing.

Because it was true.

Obviously.

She sighed softly.

“Okay.”

I looked at her.

“Okay what?”

“You can stay a little.”

The sentence warmed me far more than it should have.

“A little?”

“Don’t take advantage.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking very loudly.”

That wasn’t false.

We settled on the bed.

Not against the headboard, not in some ridiculous romantic-movie position. Just sitting, side by side, with a still reasonable distance between us.

At first, we talked about almost nothing.

The cooking chef. Mehdi, who would probably wake the whole floor if he decided to tell another anecdote at one in the morning. Mister Delmas, who was surely sleeping with a schedule under his pillow.

Jade too, very briefly.

“She seems less… sharp tonight,” I said.

“She understood something.”

“What?”

Lyralda gave me a sideways look.

“Think a little.”

I didn’t insist.

Because part of me was starting to understand, and the other part did not want to look at the information too directly.

The silence came back. Not bad. Just full.

I looked at my hands. The bed. The edge of the duvet. Anything except her, which was an increasingly absurd effort considering we were both in a hotel room at what was probably an unreasonable hour, after an already far too heavy evening.

“Eliott.”

“Yes?”

“Look at me.”

Very bad sentence for my stability.

I did anyway.

She was turned toward me, one arm folded on the bed, still looking calm.

But less closed than usual.