From Russia With Love - 2. Chapter 2

Kodi and I sat on the bed watching the TV wearing those really fluffy Hilton dressing gowns; I’ve never been one for dressing gowns but these are so comfy. I got us a couple of cokes from the minibar.

“Eight Euros for a Coke! Who the Hell do they think we are! The bloody Rothschild’s?” I said.

Kodi laughed at me and said, “Well we can always go into the lounge area and they’re free.”

There was a knock on the door and Kodi, still laughing, got up to open it.

“Hey dad.”

“What’s up boys?”

“Kyle’s moaning about the eight Euros for a coke.”

“Oi, I heard that!” I said, failing to conceal a huge grin.

“Can you boys get dressed; we’ve got tables booked for seven.”

“Where are we going? Anywhere fancy?” I shouted from across the room.

“Nope, just to the hotel restaurant, but I still want you boys to look presentable.”

“OK dad. Well, can you give us some privacy please?”

“It’s not like I’ve never seen you in your underwear son.”

“While that may true dad, we’re not exactly in our underwear . . . if you catch my drift.”

“You boys,” said Richard shaking his head. “We’ll meet you in the lounge in ten minutes. Ten minutes, not one second longer.” Mr Waughrin turned around and left.

Kodi and I got out of our dressing gowns, hung them up in the wardrobe, and started to get dressed; not being a gentleman, I peeked. We each wore a coloured shirt, jeans and our trainers; about as ‘presentable’ as a kid is going to get.

We walked into the executive lounge and were greeted by the member of staff on the desk.

“Bonsoir, boys. You're parents are in here?”

“Bonsoir. Yes, our parents are at the table over there,” I said, pointing to our parents.

Our dads were wearing a shirt and tie, and our mums were wearing dresses. I looked at Jess and you could have knocked me over with a feather; she was wearing a dress! I'd never seen her in anything other than trainers and jeans; and scruffy jeans at that. She was wearing a white dress with an intricate floral pattern, black patent leather shoes and she was wearing the butterfly hairclip I'd given her for her birthday earlier in the year.

We walked over to the table and sat down.

“About time you boys got here,” my dad said with a smile.

“Richard gave us ten minutes, dad. We've only been . . . ” I glanced at my watch “oh!”

“Yeah, ‘oh’. Still not to worry, we’ve got about quarter of an hour until our reservation.”

“Jessica, you look lovely; really pretty,” I said.

“You really think so?” she asked, as she gave a little twirl.

“Of course I do, Jess.”

Kodi and I went over to the counter to see what nibblies the lounge had laid out. There was the usual cheese, biscuits and grapes; lots of my favourite brie, camembert and what I think was roule – it had a herb swirl and smelled faintly of garlic. There was a selection of sliced raw veggies and dips; red and green peppers, carrots, humous and taramasalata. There were also some hot meat options of chicken nuggets and some kind of samosa-type thing; there were also some accompanying dipping sauces. However, since we were only fifteen minutes away from having dinner we just took a few of the raw veggies and some of the humous to dip them in. We also grabbed a coke each.

We sat back down at the table and Kodi noticed a family sitting at a table in the corner of the lounge. He gave me a nudge and said, “Cutie at 5 o’clock.”

I glanced over my shoulder to get a look at whoever it was Kodi was referring to. Kodi wasn’t wrong, the boy was so cute; pale blue eyes, a mop of light brown hair and flashing some skin where the top button of his shirt was open; I thought he looked like Elijah Wood did when he was in the film Forever Young. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t kick him out of bed,” I said.

My mum suddenly slapped me across the back of the head. “I heard that Kyle McMichaels.”

“Ow, Mum. That hurt.” I rubbed the back of my head where her wedding ring had caught me and winced.

The boy we had been talking about glanced over at our table after hearing the slap; which I think had actually been a lot harder than Mum had intended.

Still rubbing my head I said, “I wonder if . . . .”

Kodi, who probably knows me better than I know myself, interrupted me mid-sentence. “Nah, Kyle. He’s straight.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“What’s the chance of us meeting a cute bit of French tottie for a ménage a trois?”

Now it was Kodi’s turn to get the slap across the head.

“Jesus, Mum. No need to take my head off. I was only kidding.”

“That is not the kind of kidding you will do in front of Jessica,” Janet said. “Or me for that matter,” she added as an afterthought.

By now the cute boy, who appeared to be around our age, looked as though he was becoming very concerned about our mothers’ apparent approach to discipline.

“Mum, I think you’re scaring the natives. That kid looks really concerned about us.”

My mum glanced over at the boy and said something to him in French which made him laugh.

“What did you say to him, Mum?”

“I told him that if he knew what you two wanted to do to him, he’d ask us to slap you again; only harder.” Kodi and I couldn’t help but laugh along with my mum.

We left the lounge and headed downstairs to the restaurant. Mum confirmed our reservation with the maître d’ and we were shown to our table.

We looked through the menu of the hotel’s Le Safran restaurant and I was slightly surprised at the absence of what I thought were traditional French foods (no snails, no frogs legs, no French onion soup – not that I had any intention of even contemplating eating such things, just surprised by their absence). I have tried things like buffalo and reindeer in the past, but to my mind they are still a normal thing to eat, kind of like beef and venison and stuff; but I’m not quite prepared at this time in my life to venture into the realms of sampling the delights of garden pests and pond life.

Our waiter came over and gave us some French bread and some butter and took our drinks order to give us time to look over the menu in detail; our parents decided to share a bottle of red wine and us kids each had a coke. The waiter returned with a couple of pitchers of water, and poured some into each of our water glasses.

Fortunately none of us are overly fussy with our eating habits, and once Mum had translated the menu for Kodi, Jessica and me into English we actually found a lot of things we quite liked the sound of. Me and Kodi ordered the roast lamb, Jessica (not being a big red meat lover) had the tuna, and our parents all decided to have the steak.

We sat in relative silence while we waited for our food to be delivered, and I looked over at my Kodi and my mind started to wander.

I thought back to that magic day at the beginning of November of last year when Kodi and I realised just what it was that we truly felt for each other; God have we really been together nine months already. I had always considered myself a happy kid who wouldn’t change anything from his childhood for anything, but after we shared our first kiss – not just our first kiss with each other, but our first actual, proper kiss ever – I had to redefine my meaning of happy. I think it was Arethra Franklin who sang a song called “It’s In His Kiss”, about how to know if another person really loves you or not. I used to think that kind of lovey-dovey romantic slush was just a load of hyped up nonsense used to sell songs and poetry; but in that first kiss I knew how deeply Kodi loved me. I know I’ve never kissed anybody like that before him, and I can’t see myself ever kissing anybody else like that, so I actually have no basis for a comparison, but I don’t believe it’s possible to fake emotion like that.

We’ve progressed beyond how we used to kiss right at the start, and Lord knows I’m not complaining, but I can remember a time when Kodi would kiss me so softly I’d have to open my eyes to make sure he was actually kissing me – and when I’m really really lucky my little piece of Welsh gold can still pull it off.

My reverie was interrupted when the waiter brought our dinner out. I was actually quite impressed by the size of the servings – I’ve seen the portions in these kinds of fancy restaurants and they wouldn’t fill up a supermodel. Both Kodi and I are big vegetable lovers, and I for one was disappointed by the lack of variety on the plate, and I imagine Kodi was too; not that it detracted from the meal in any way, just I prefer a bit of a selection.

Jessica attacked her tuna like she was afraid it was going to getting up and walk off her plate of its own volition. My dad commented that his steak looked slightly underdone for having been ordered medium, until Mum told him that what we call ‘medium’ and what the French call ‘medium’ are two entirely different things; after all to us Brits ‘well done’ means cremated until its shrunk by forty percent and is bone dry (hence why we pour liberal amounts of gravy over our steak), whereas ‘medium’ means cremated and only having shrunk by twenty percent. Both Kodi and I are like my mum though in that we love our steak looking like it could still moo. Though after seeing everyone else’s dishes I was very happy I chose the lamb.

Throughout dinner there was the usual chit-chat about this and that, and we also talked about what we were going to do with our couple of days in Paris. While we all talked, Kodi and I tried to see if we could get away with a little footsie, but sadly found that we were too far apart to do it discretely.

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow Dad?” I asked

“Well, since we have two full days here in Paris I want to try and fit a couple of things in each day without us overloading ourselves. My ideas were to visit the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Notre Dame and The Sacre Coeur. We’d need to get to both the Eiffel Tower and The Louvre early if we want to beat the queues, but we’ll have to go to The Louvre tomorrow as it is closed on Tuesdays.”

“What about the Versailles Palace?” asked Jessica.

“Well Jessica, the palace is quite a way outside of the city and we’d need a whole day to see it; that would mean we’d have to miss out on something else.”

“Oh, I thought it would have been like Buckingham Palace in London. You know, right in the middle of the city?”

“No, Jess. It’s more like Hampton Court Palace. You remember how long it took us to get there when we went for your birthday?” Kodi asked his sister.

“Oh God, it’s not that far away is it!”

“Jessica, language!”

“Sorry Mum, but you know what I mean.”

At that point the waiter cleared our plates away and we order our desserts and our parents ordered coffee. After finishing our desserts, Dad signed the bill and we retired for the evening.

“Boys I’ll be calling for you at 7:30 so make sure you are up and awake.”

“Sure Dad, see you in the morning,” Kodi said.

“Night, all,” I said, as I opened the door to our room.

I locked the door behind me, and made sure all of the lights were switched off. Kodi and I stripped and jumped into bed. I set the alarm on my phone for 06:30 and we snuggled into each other, kissing each other as we fell asleep.