“Today?” she says, thinking. “It’s Saturday in June, so the crowds will be ridiculous; skip the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. Hit Luxembourg Gardens.” She yawns loudly. “Report in tomorrow. I’m going back to sleep.”
She hangs up.
NOTHING IS MORE surreal than this, I swear it. I eat at the window, staring out at the view, and then move into the small, tiled shower, where I shave and wash and shampoo until I feel like every inch of me has been sufficiently scrubbed. When I step out, the steam begins to clear and in a rush, it hits me that I can’t just go home and grab the things I forgot to pack. I have no blow-dryer, no flatiron. I can’t meet up with the girls tonight to tell them everything. Ansel is gone for the day and I have no idea when he’ll be back. I’m alone, and for the first time in five years I’m going to have to dip into the savings account I’ve watched grow with pride. Every one of my paychecks from the coffee shop I worked in throughout college went directly into that account; Mom insisted on it. And now, it’s going to allow me to have a summer in France.
A summer. In France.
My reflection in the mirror whispers, What the fuck are you doing? I blink my eyes closed, pushing myself into autopilot mode.
I find my clothes; he’s made room for my things in his dresser and closet.
You’re married.
I brush my hair. My toiletries are unpacked, tucked into one of the drawers in the bathroom.
You’re living with your husband in Paris.
I start to lock up the apartment using the spare key Ansel left for me right next to a small bundle of euros.
I find myself staring down at the unfamiliar paper bills, unable to quell the unease I feel at Ansel having left me money. It’s such a visceral reaction, the way my stomach tightens at the thought of living off someone else—someone other than my parents, I guess—that I have to push it aside until he’s home and we can have a conversation that doesn’t involve me with my head in the toilet.
In Las Vegas, and then in San Diego, we were on even footing. At least, it felt more even than it does now. We were both on vacation, carefree. After, I was headed to school, he was headed back here to his job, and life, and well-decorated flat. Now I’m the post-college squatter with no plans, the girl who needs directions to the métro, and snack money left by the door.
I leave the money where it is and cross the narrow hall to the elevator. It’s tiny, and with barely more than two feet on either side of me, I reach out and press the button marked with a star and the number one. The lift groans and shudders as it makes its descent, wheels and gears whirring above me until it lands with a thunk on the ground floor.
Outside the apartment it’s loud and windy, hot and chaotic. The streets are narrow, the sidewalks made of pavers and cobblestone. I start walking, stopping at the corner where the narrow road opens up into what must be a wider, main street.
There are crosswalks, but no clear pedestrian rules. People step off the curb without looking. Cars use their horns as frequently as I take a breath but they don’t seem the slightest bit annoyed. They honk, they move on. There don’t really seem to be lanes, just a steady stream of cars that stop and go and yield in a pattern I don’t understand. Street vendors offer pastries and bottles of bright, sparkling sodas, and people in suits and dresses, jeans and track pants rush past me as if I’m a stone in a river. The language is lyrical and fast . . . and completely incomprehensible to me.
It’s as if the city is spread lusciously before me, prepared to pull me fully into its intricate heart, into mischief. I’m instantly, deeply enamored. How could I not be? Everywhere I turn the streets look like the most beautiful sets I’ve ever imagined, as if the entire world here is a stage, waiting to see my story unfold. I haven’t felt this kind of buzz since I was dancing, lost in it, living for it.
I use my phone to find the métro station at Abbesses, only a few blocks from Ansel’s apartment, manage to locate the line I need to take, and then I’m left waiting for the train, struggling to take in my surroundings. I send Harlow and Lola pictures of everything I see: the French posters for a book we all loved, six-inch heels on a woman who would already be taller than most men on the platform, the train as it blows into the station, carrying hot summer air and the smell of brake dust.
It’s a short ride to the sixth arrondissement, where Luxembourg Gardens are located, and I follow a group of chattering tourists who seem to have the same destination in mind. I was prepared for a park—grass and flowers and benches—but I wasn’t prepared to find such huge stretches of open space nestled in the center of this busy, cramped city. I wasn’t expecting the wide lanes lined with perfectly manicured trees. There are flowers everywhere: row after row of seasonal blooms, cottage beds and wildflowers, hedges and lacy blossoms of every imaginable color. Fountains and statues of French queens offer contrast to the foliage, and the tops of buildings I’ve seen only in movies or pictures loom in the distance. Sunbathers stretch out on metal chairs or benches under the sun, and children push small boats across the water while Luxembourg Palace watches over it all.
I find an empty bench and take a seat, breathing in the fresh air and the scent of summer. My stomach growls at the smell of bread from a nearby cart but I ignore it, waiting to see how it handles breakfast first.
It’s then that I realize again that I’m in Paris. Five thousand miles from everything I know. This is the last chance I’ll have to relax, soak it in, create my own adventure, before I begin school and the regimented march from student to professional.
I walk every inch of the park, throw pennies into the fountain, and finish the paperback I had tucked in the bottom of my bag. For the span of an afternoon, Boston, my father, and school don’t even exist.
Chapter EIGHT
I’M ON SUCH a high from my day, I stop at the small market on the corner, intent on making Ansel dinner. I am all over this Paris thing, check me out. I’m learning to make do with the language barrier and find that the Parisians aren’t nearly as frustrated that I don’t speak French as I’d expected. They just seem to hate it when I try and then mangle it. I’ve been able to get by just fine with some pointing, smiling, innocent shrugging, and s’il vous plaît, and manage to buy some wine and prawns, fresh pasta, and vegetables.
But my nerves creep back in as I walk to the rickety elevator and as it noisily ascends to the seventh floor. I’m not sure if he’ll be home yet. I’m not sure what to expect at all. Will we pick up where we left off in San Diego? Or is now when we start . . . uh . . . dating? Or has the experience of our first few days put him off this little experiment altogether?
I lose myself in cooking, impressed with Ansel’s small kitchen. I’ve figured out his stereo and have some French dance music on as I happily bounce around the kitchen. The apartment smells of butter and garlic and parsley when he walks in, and my body grows tight and jittery when I hear him drop his keys in the little bowl on the entry table, put his helmet on the floor beneath.
“Hello?”
“In the kitchen,” I reply.
“You’re cooking?” he calls, rounding the corner into the main loft of the apartment. He looks good enough to devour. “I’m guessing you feel better.”
“You have no idea.”
“It smells wonderful.”
“It’s almost ready,” I say, begging my pulse to slow. Seeing him makes the thrill inside me bloom so wide my chest grows tight.
But then his face falls.
“What is it?” I follow the path of his eyes to the pan on the stove where I’ve tossed the prawns with the pasta and vegetables.
He winces. “It looks unbelievable. It’s just . . .” He swipes a palm across the back of his neck. “I’m allergic to shellfish.”
I groan, covering my face. “Holy crap, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he says, clearly distressed. “How would you have known?
”
The question hangs between us and we both look anywhere but at each other. The amount of things we know about each other seems dwarfed by the amount of things we don’t. I don’t even know how to go back to the introduction phase.
He takes a step closer, telling me, “It smells so good.”
“I wanted to thank you.” It takes a beat before I can get the rest out, and he looks away for the first time I can remember. “For taking care of me. For bringing me here. Please wait, I’ll go get something else.”
“We’ll go together,” he says, walking closer. He puts his hands on my hips but his arms are stiff and it feels forced.
“Okay.” I have no idea what to do with my own arms, and instead of doing what I think a normal woman would do in this situation—put them around his neck, pull him closer—I fold them awkwardly across my chest, tapping my collarbone with my finger.
I keep waiting for his eyes to flare with mischief or for him to tickle me, tease me, do something ridiculous and Ansel-like, but he seems beat and tense when he asks, “Did you have a good day?”
I start to answer but then he pulls one hand away, digging into his buzzing pocket and pulling out his phone, frowning at it. “Merde.”
That word I know. He’s been home for less than three minutes, and I already know what he’s going to say.
He looks back up at me, apology filling his eyes. “I have to go back into work.”
ANSEL IS GONE when I wake up, and the only evidence I have that he came back at some point is a note on the pillow beside mine telling me he was only home for a couple of hours and slept on the couch, not wanting to wake me. I swear I can feel something inside me splinter. I went to bed in one of his clean T-shirts and nothing else. New husbands don’t sleep on the couch. New husbands don’t worry about waking up their new, jobless, tourist wife in the middle of the night.
I don’t even remember if he kissed my forehead again before he left, but a very large part of me wants to text him and ask, because I’m starting to think the answer to that question will tell me if I should stay, or book the flight for my return trip home.
It’s easy to distract myself and fill my second day alone in Paris: I wander around the exhibits and gardens at the Musée Rodin, and then brave the interminable lines at the Eiffel Tower . . . but the wait is worth it. The view from the top is unreal. Paris is stunning at street level, and hundreds of stories up.
Back in the apartment Sunday night, Lola is my companion. She’s sitting on her couch at home in San Diego, recovering from whatever virus we both got, and replying to my texts with reassuring speed.
I tell her, I Think he regrets bringing me back with him.
That’s insane, she replies. It sounds like work sucks for him right now. Yes he married you, but he doesn’t know if it will last and he has to take care of the job, too.
Honestly, Lola, I feel pretty moochy, but I don’t want to leave yet! This city is ahhh-mazing. Should I stay at a hotel, do you think?
You’re being sensitive.
He slept on the COUCH.
Maybe he was sick?
I try to remember if I heard anything. He wasn’t.
Maybe he still thinks it’s shark week?
I feel my eyebrows inch up. I hadn’t considered this. Maybe Lola is right and Ansel thinks I’m still on my period? Maybe I really do need to be the one to initiate some sex-type things?
OK that’s a good theory.
Test it out, she replies.
Forget the T-shirt. Tonight, I’m going to sleep naked, no covers.
I WAKE, GLANCING at the clock. It’s nearly two thirty in the morning and I immediately sense that he’s not home yet. The lights are all out in the apartment, and beside me, the bed is empty and cold.
But then I hear a shuffle, a zipper, a tight moan coming from the other room.
I climb out of bed, pull on one of his T-shirts he’s left in the laundry bin and which smells so acutely of him that for a beat, I have to stop, close my eyes, find my balance.
When I step into the living room and look to the kitchen, I see him.
He’s bent over, one hand braced on the counter. His dress shirt is unbuttoned, tie hanging loosely around his neck and pants pushed down his hips as his other hand flies over his cock.
I’m mesmerized at the sight, the sheer eroticism of Ansel pleasuring himself in the dim light coming in from the window. His arm moves quickly, elbow bent, and through his dress shirt, I can see the tension of the muscles in his back, the way his hips begin to move into his hand. I step forward, wanting to see better, and my foot catches a squeaky board. The sound groans through the room, and he freezes, his head snapping to look over his shoulder.
When his eyes meet mine, they flash with mortification before slowly cooling to defeat. He lets his hand fall away and his head drops, chin to chest.
I approach him slowly, not sure if he wants me, or wants anything but me. Why else would he be out here doing this, when I was naked in his bed?
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” he whispers. In the light coming in through the window, I can see the sharp line of his jaw, the smooth expanse of his neck. His pants are slung low on his hips, his shirt unbuttoned. I want to taste his skin, feel the soft line of hair that travels down his navel.
“You did, but I wish you had tried to wake me if you wanted . . .” I want to say “me” but again, I’m not at all sure that’s what he wanted. “If you needed . . . something.”
God, could I be less smooth?
“It’s so late, Cerise. I came in, started to undress. I saw you naked in my bed,” he says, gaze fixed on my lips. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
I nod. “I assumed you would see me naked on your bed.”
He exhales slowly through his nose. “I wasn’t sure—”
Before he finishes the sentence, I’m already lowering myself to my knees in the darkness, moving his hand away so I can lick him, bring his need back to life. My heart is beating so hard, and I’m so nervous I can see my hand shaking where I touch him, but fuck it. I tell myself I’m channeling Harlow, confident sex goddess.
I tell myself I have nothing to lose. “I went to bed naked on purpose.”
“I don’t want you to feel obligated to be with me like this,” he croaks.
I look up at him, flabbergasted. What happened to the delightfully pushy guy I met only a week ago? “I don’t feel obligated. You’re just busy . . .”
He smiles, gripping his base and painting a wet line across my lips with the bead of moisture that appears at his tip. “I think we’re both being too tentative, maybe.”
I lick him, playing a little, teasing. I’m greedy for the breathless noises he’s making, the rough eager grunts when I almost take him in and then pull away to kiss and play some more.
“I was thinking about you,” he admits in a whisper, watching me draw a long wet line from base to tip with my tongue. “I can barely think about anything else anymore.”
This admission uncoils something that had grown tight and tense in my gut, and I only realize how anxious I’d been about this when he says it. I feel like I’ve melted. It makes me eager to give him pleasure, sucking more of him, giving him the vibrations of my voice around him as I moan.
Seeing him like this—impatient, relieved at my touch—makes it easier for me to keep playing, keep being this brave, brazen seductress. Pulling back, I ask, “In your mind, what were we doing?”
“This,” he says, tilting his head as he slides a hand into my hair, anchoring me. I prepare myself to feel the full invasion of him into my mouth only a second before he pushes in deep. “Fucking these lips.”
His head falls back and he closes his eyes, hips rocking in front of my face. “C’est tellement bon, j’en rêve depuis des jours . . .” With apparent effort, he straightens, leaning over a little, growing rou
gher. “Swallow,” he whispers. “I want to feel you swallowing.” He pauses so I can do what he’s asked and he moans hoarsely as I pull him deeper into my throat with the movement.
“Will you swallow when I come? Will you make a little hungry sound when you feel it?” he asks, watching me intently now.
I nod around him. For him, I will. I want anything he’ll give me; I want to give him anything just the same. He’s the only anchor I have to this place, and even if this marriage is only pretend, I want that feeling back, when it was free and easy between us that night in San Diego, and the one before that, which I only remember in tiny fragments, flashes of skin and sounds and pleasure.
For several minutes he moves, treating me to his quiet growling sounds and whispers that I’m beautiful, giving me every inch along my tongue before pulling almost all the way out and jerking his length with his fist, the crown of his cock tapping against my lips and tongue.
It’s like this that he comes, messily, spilling in my mouth, on my chin. It’s intentional, it has to be, and I know I’m right when I look up and see his eyes darken at the sight of his orgasm on my skin, my tongue swiping out, instinctively. He steps away, running his thumb over my lower lip before bending to help me up. With a damp towel, he gently wipes me clean and then steps back, preparing to lower himself to his knees, but he weaves slightly and when the streetlight outside catches his profile, I can tell he’s about to fall over in exhaustion. He’s barely slept in days.
“Let me make you feel good now,” he says, instead leading me toward the bedroom.
I stop him with my hand on his elbow. “Wait.”
“What?” he asks, and my thoughts trip on the rough edge in his voice, the simmering frustration I’ve never before heard from him.