french boys blush too.

I was thinking about France today, and how I was so far away from the teenagers who liked the same things as me. They listened to the same music, read the same books, and lounged at my favorite coffee shop. We were worlds away just by virtue of not speaking the same language. 

I met a French boy one day last summer. It was raining hard outside, (as it did for most of the summer- my kind of weather) and my umbrella, much less my shoes, weren’t protecting me very well. My mother and I darted inside a shop, partly to wait out the rain, partly because we were lost, and partly because it looked like our type of store. There were eclectic mixes of furniture, pillows, Eiffel Tower figurines, and Beatles posters. I didn’t want to walk away without buying anything (and the French boy at the register? Even my mother agreed that he was cute). I browsed the Beatles paraphernalia, sure that I would find something there. I ended up with a mug. It’s squat and round, the type of shape that comes across as a square. I have a healthy sense of irony- the Union Jack emblazoned on the mug that I bought in France attests to that. Sometimes I buy things or do things purely because of the story, and as far as souvenirs go, the only one that tops that is the camel bone ring that I stole off the top of a mountain in the Middle East. 

In line at the register in front of me was an older French woman. She had one of the carts typical to that part of Europe, basically a large canvas shopping bag on wheels, with a convenient handle. She was buying a tall, wooden giraffe, half the height of me and nearly as tall as her. The French boy, acting as the gentleman that he was, walked around the front of the counter to help her load it up. As she began to walk out the door, she turned back to him, saying something in French while she gestured to me. His cheeks lit up and he ducked his head. 

It’s an odd to be an American girl in Europe. It’s not so bad in England, where all the boys speak the same language, with the addition of a delicious accent. Half the teenagers there are hipsters, in the way that’s only possible in a rundown city in England. I fell in love with them, the way they wore their slouchy cardigans and fat scarves- and did you know that curse words sound better in a British accent? 

It’s different in France. The smattering of words that I knew did nothing for me in regular circumstances. Faced with an attractive, blushing French boy, the best I could do was duck my head and hand him the mug. 

He scanned it, asking me a question. I shrugged my shoulders, croaking out one of the phrases I’d perfected over the course of the summer: I’m sorry, je ne parle pas francais. He grinned. Was that relief that flashed across his face? His halting English was, if possible, even more beautiful than the lilting accents of the British boys that I loved. “I’m sorry, my English is not very good.” 

“Not at all, it’s fine. Much better than my French.” I smiled up at him. Was I flirting? Is that even flirting, such a short conversation with a foreign boy? 

“I wanted to know if this is a gift, if I should wrap it.” 

“Oh no, don’t worry about it.” 

He smiled again, this time directly towards me. 

I wish I was the kind of girl who could lean forward and ask him quietly what the woman had said that made him so embarrassed- and so relieved when I couldn’t understand her. Flirting is hard enough when the boy is obviously interested and actually speaks the same language. Substitute that with a hopelessly awkward girl and a French boy with barely any English, and you get the kind of story that ends when the girl walks out of the shop.

edit: this is a true story. his name is max.