by Anna Bloom
His gaze flickers to mine and I instantly look away. There is no future in that conversation at all.
“Brother or sister?”
“A sister.” A firm press of his lips makes me want to know more. I lean forward waiting for more titbits about his life like a puppy waiting for training snacks. “She’s not keen on settling down. Lives in Paris.”
“Ah, Paris.” I stare wistfully out of the window.
“You like it there?”
“Never been, but my heart tells me I would.”
Henri’s face folds in distaste. “Too touristy.”
“More so than London?” I laugh louder now, waking up the waitress from her doze behind the counter.
“I think so. There are some good places to eat, but you have to know where to look. Everything else is cheap tourist fare.”
“Heaven forbid cheap tourist fare.” I grin into my coffee.
He mutters under his breath in French. I’m guessing disparaging remarks about said tourist fare while I muse on his words. “So, your ‘contact’ you stop in and check up on in Paris is actually your sister.
He meets my gaze again. “Very perceptive.”
“I try.” I smirk back but then I drop the smile while I try to piece my mystery man together. Sure, he’s sitting right here, and I could ask him, but I have a feeling his answer would be very evasive and French if he wanted them to be. “So, you go from here, to Paris, and then on to your home all to see your sister?”
“Yes.” He pretends to read the paper, his fingers curling a little into gentle fists.
“You must be the best big brother in the world.” I take another sip of my coffee. “You are the big brother right?”
“Yes,’ he repeats, looking up in surprise and I point to myself.
“Big sister. I can tell the signs.” I try to smile but it sits lopsided on my face.
“Well, my little sister is the devil’s mistress in disguise. And your sister sounds relatively sensible, no? Apart from marrying a man not worthy of her.”
I get that empty sensation in my stomach again. “She went off the rails once. When she was fifteen or so.”
“What happened?” He links his long fingers together, expression expectant.
“It was my fault. My parents were really strict: always wanted us to do better, to do more. I rebelled against it.” I chew on my lower lip. “Then I guess Liv just copied me. She got in a bad crowd, usual teenage stuff. Mum and dad blamed me; their perfect blonde angel was ruined because of me. They’d always been tough on me anyway. I never got the rope that Liv later used to suspend herself from disaster with.”
Henry tilts my chin with a finger, and I look up in surprise, not even realising I’d dropped my gaze. “Then what happened?”
I do my best French shrug. “I moved out. They wanted to blame me for things that were half their fault. If they hadn’t had been so bloody awful to me then I wouldn’t have behaved the way I did and then Liv wouldn’t have copied me. Words were said.” I swallow hard. “I haven’t really spoken to them since. Maybe the first couple of Christmases, but I quickly realised they had nothing really to say to me. They didn’t get me.”
“And who are you, Julianna Brown?”
Another impressive shrug. “I don’t know.”
“You tell me that you used to rebel, but yet you live in a flat devoid of all colour. That wrap is the brightest thing I’ve seen even close to you, and you talk about your cat like he’s a live-in-lover.”
“I do not,” I protest.
He stares at me intently. “I’m interested to know where this firecracker went.”
“Two years ago, I got meningitis. I nearly died.” The words just blurt across the checked tablecloth between us. “It made me think that maybe what they’d said all along was right. Maybe I didn’t take things seriously. Maybe I didn’t strive for the best. Hell, by this point I was fully ensconced at Satire Weekly, a job that was pretty much going nowhere, as I found out yesterday when my boss told me we were going to fold.”
“What! No satire! And I’ve been enjoying my subscription so much.”
“What?” I frown over his side of the table.
He lifts his shoulders and drops them. “I wanted to know what it was all about. Call it an unexpected interest in satirical literature.” His midnight eyes stare at me unabashed.
“You paid for it?” I grin up at him, wanting to get rid of the heaviness that has fallen on our unexpected weekend dalliance. “Wow, I must have been good in bed.”
“Now that I can attest to.” He glances at his leather strapped watch. “Which makes me think. How long until this party?”
“Why?” I bat my eyelashes.
“Because I want you on that sofa and I can’t wait until tonight.
Well, if he puts it like that. I stand and grab my coat, and march for the counter where I pay for the breakfast before he can say otherwise.
“Are you coming?” I call out when I get to the door and he’s still picking up his paper. “Time is of the absolute essence here.”
“Ah, ma petite, you know I don’t like to rush.”
My legs turn to jelly and I can only wonder if I can walk home at all.
By the time we are at Notting Hill and standing outside my sister’s slate-grey front door my legs are still trembling. “What are you so nervous about?” Henri chucks my chin, a smile teasing his mouth.
What am I so nervous about?
“I don’t really know,” I state truthfully. The last couple of hours have been magical, unreal I suppose in many ways. “Who are you when we walk inside there?” I just need clarification on this point.
“You don’t want to introduce me as your lover?” he asks, his finger running down my cheek turning me to a shivering goo.
“Lover?” I can barely say the word, it seems so foreign. It’s an exotic notion to have a lover. Us British girls we have ‘boyfriends’, ‘that bloke I like’, and at a push ‘fuck buddy’.
None of those explain Henri properly.
I shake my head, scattering my confused thoughts. “You’re right. I’m overthinking it. This is just fun, right?”
His lips find mine, warm and sweet. “The very best kind of fun.” Another kiss. “Now can we knock on the door. I want to see the huge bear I bought.”
I laugh into a kiss, unable to pull away from his warmth, the taste he has. We don’t need to worry about knocking because the door pulls open, Liv standing there, her mouth as wide as the Dartford Tunnel. “What on earth?”
“Hi,” I duck my head, “Sorry we’re late.” She’s not staring at me. She’s looking straight at Henri, eyes and mouth wide circles. “And this is my lover.”
What the fuck?!
“No! Oh God, sorry, that’s not what I meant.”
Henri roars a laugh and then steps up towards Liv. “Olivia, I presume? I’ve heard a lot about you.” He holds her arms delicately while he kisses her on both cheeks. “It’s a pleasure. I’m Henri.” His accent seems even thicker if that’s possible and I’m not sure if he’s laying it on just a little.
“Uh.” She has nothing. I know, Liv, he rendered me speechless the first time we met too.
“Are we coming in?” I prompt.
“Sure.” Flustered and adjusting her loose fit sweater, she steps back to allow us in. Henri stoops a little as he ducks through the door. I hold onto the waistband of his jeans and follow behind, needing some anchorage in the moment. Until Liv pulls me back by the elbow. “What the hell?” she hisses. “Who the fuck is that?”
There’s a slash of betrayal in her expression and my stomach flips. I think I’ve just traversed the Sister’s Coalition Agreement.
“It’s Henri. I told you about him in January.” I whisper back, knowing full well he is too close not to overhear the start of my interrogation, because believe me this is only the start. I’ll still be under it when he’s back in gloriously sunny France and doing what he does with cheese.
Her eyes wi
den. “That’s love bite man?”
From behind I can see his cheeks curve. Yep, he’s listening alright.
“But you haven’t seen him in months?”
I wince. “That’s not strictly true.”
Liv’s onslaught of hostile attack questioning is ceased by the screech of Paige as she skids into the hallway so fast she leaves track marks in the thick carpet. She shudders to a halt and stares up at Henri. I sigh. “Jeez, you could have brushed her hair.”
“I tried. She was waiting for you.”
Paige looks like a character from an awful cartoon movie she made me watch one Saturday afternoon. Wearing just knickers and with her hair hanging in her face in knots she looks like she should live with dinosaurs.
“Happy birthday, my beautiful.” I drop to my knees and hold my arms wide for her to jump into, which she does with a crushing blow to my chest.
“Easy with Aunty Jules,” Liv warns, and I glare at her. Henri’s gaze is on me and I can feel it burning through the layers of my skin as he tries to see inside my locked treasure chest of ‘sad’.
“It’s my burfday,” Paige tells me, holding up three fingers.
“Wait.” I uncurl a fourth from her tight fist. “You need an extra one because you are…”
“Fithe,” she explains through her hair.
“Four. You’re four, and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I tell her earnestly, because thankfully, she is all her mum and very little of her dickhead dad. Snuggling in closer I whisper in her ear. “Where’s the big bear?” Which makes her bounce in my arms.
“Mummy gots it upstairs. She said bad, bad words.”
“Did you make her have soap?” I ask, trying to brush her hair back and balance her in my arms.
“I twieds, but she said her drink was soap.” She scrunches her nose, sniffing out the obvious lie.
“To be fair, it probably tasted like soap, so shall we let her off?”
Paige nods, wide eyes luminous. “She’s sad.”
Liv’s cheeks colour when I glance up at her.
“I know,” I whisper. “Shall we get dressed for your party to cheer her up? Look I wore your favourite red cardigan.” I make a show of swinging the long line knit around my thighs.
She eyes me approvingly and then looks at her mum before giving me a slow nod. “Sorry,” I say to Henri. “I’ve got urgent auntying to do.”
“Don’t mind me,” he smiles and all three of us girls just stare at him dazzled. “Although. I want to see my bear.”
Paige’s eyes widen. “It’s amashing.”
“Oh, I know.” He nods with all seriousness and then turns to Liv holding up the bottles of wine he insisted we stopped to buy, to which I’d agreed, not knowing it was going to take forty minutes of perusing labels. “I’ve bought some wine, shall we?”
I breathe a sigh of relief that he’s going to face the kitchen audience by himself. Sure, that makes me a bad person, but if I sporadically shout ‘lover’ again at anyone today or this lifetime I’d spend all eternity remembering it. Bad enough I’ve said it once to Liv.
As I carry Paige up the stairs, her strangling around my neck like a limpet on a rock, I consider the word lover. What is that? Someone you are sexually active with? Someone you are fond of, maybe too fond? But lover sounds like it should be fun, and while this isbelieve me I’ll die a happy woman remembering how Henri woke me up this morning with his mouth in unexpected placesit feels bittersweet too.
Maybe if I wasn’t dying. Maybe if he wasn’t living in France with his grieving mother, then lover wouldn’t be the right word at all. Maybe it would be more.
I catch myself smiling in the ornate white mirror on Paige’s bedroom wall. I already know that I don’t think Henri would ever have a ‘word’. He simply just is, and I can let that be. Let this be.
I think.
After some pretty swift administration with a hairbrush, a wet flannel, and some serious wrestling into cotton, I take the birthday girl downstairs where she is applauded like a duchess. “Remember the ice-cream,” I whisper in her ear before she scampers around the kitchen island to twirl for Liv.
“Biggest bowl ever.” She motions a massive circle with her arms, and I cringe. I don’t think there will be that much bribery ice-cream in the house.
“Want your present, princess?” My eyes flit to Henri who’s stood looking various levels of sexy with a glass of red loosely gripped in his fingers. Somehow, he makes holding a glass sexy. Now that is a life skill and make no mistake about it. Liv’s friends, Hailey and Charlie, are staring at him with no regard for manners, while Rachel is trying very hard not to look because Peter is standing right at her side. Instead, her face looks contorted mid-aneurysm. “Everyone met Henri?” I grin and I’m met by nods.
“So, what do you do again?” Peter asks, puffing his chest. Bless him for trying.
“My family own a cheese business.” Henri smiles and takes a sip of his drink, shoulders relaxed.
I’m still sure cheese is code for mafia.
“Oh, I love cheese,” blurts Hailey.
“Hey, I thought you were vegan,” Charlie shoots at her but then cracks a grin. “It’s okay. I’ve heard the cheeseburger rumours.”
“And what do you do in London?” Liv asks. Interrogation 101—don’t let the victim relax for one moment. His gaze flicks to me and my cheeks warm. I’m what he does when he comes to London.
“Any chance of a glass of wine,” I mutter to myself getting zero response.
“I visit restaurants who purchase direct from us. We are a very innovative business and when our clients have ideas we like to try and build on them.”
“But cheese is cheese right?” Peter asserts.
Henri flashes his best enigmatic smile. “Indeed, it is.”
Definite mafia.
“So, petite princess.” Henri turns to Paige. “Is your aunty giving you your present?”
Oh crap, yes.
“Here you go, munchkin.” I hand her over the gifts that Henri helped me buy just yesterday afternoon. It feels like a lifetime ago.
Imagine if you could live a lifetime in every day.
I’d probably do anything for that right now.
Henri squats down next to where Paige is savagely ripping at paper. “Here, pull this bit.” He helps her and a large lump forms in my throat as he ducks his head down.
To live a lifetime in one day… maybe that’s all I’ve got now.
One day at a time, each one as full as possible.
Seeing Henri crouched with Paige, his face animated as she wrestles the correctly sized Hamleys bear out of the paper along with various books, pyjamas, and a tiara that Henri insisted on, I feel the source of my life ebbing away from me.
I will never have this.
Never have birthday parties for my children.
Never watch their father interact with them.
All too soon I’m mourning a life I’ve forgotten to live and the evidence of that is six-foot-four with a dazzling smile who’s currently talking to my niece like she’s the most important person in the room, possibly the planet.
God, I’ve been a fool.
A total fool.
Too scared by nearly dying, I’ve now forgotten to live at all.
“You okay, Jules?” Liv links her hand through my arm, tugging me into her side.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you last month when I saw him again. I just…”
“It didn’t feel real?”
“Can you blame me?” I offer a dry snort of a laugh.
“No, not at all.” She pulls me slightly to one side, but she needn’t worry about us being overheard; Paige is making a terrific amount of noise, and everyone is clapping as she puts on her tiara and declares herself the queen. “But you know this is dangerous territory. Have you even told him?”
Henri’s eyes flash up to mine right at that moment and my stomach dips at the smile he gives me. It’s full of unspoken words that make my pul
se race in my veins.
“It’s just fun, that’s all. He’s not interested in anything serious, he’s told me.”
We both watch as Henri concedes to being Paige’s royal pony and crawls around on his hands and knees while she yee-haws—not very royal if you ask me.
“You sure about that, Jules? Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you’ve never brought home a man who’s done that before.”
“I’ve never brought home a man.”
She touches her top lip with the tip of her tongue before laying down her trump card. “My point exactly.”
16
Rain
Liv throws her arms around Henri, Lenny squished between them. “Next time you are in town make sure you come and say hi.” She blushes and tucks her hair behind her ear.
Maybe she can have him when I’m gone.
The thought blasts out of nowhere. What was that?
“I will, if Julia invites me again.” He winds his arm around my waist and kisses the top of my head.
Liv meets my gaze and we both know the unspoken words. I force them away though because I’m absolutely one hundred percent fine and can’t see it changing any time soon.
“Come on, it looks like it’s going to rain.” I cast a glance up at the dark sky. It looks rather like my emotions feel. Like they could burst at any point and just pour down. My throat still feels thick from singing happy birthday to Paige.
So many last things.
I snuggle into Henri’s side as we meander down the road. The familiarity he weaves over me is on the level of being profound.
“You’re quiet, ma petite.” He breaks the silence as the stars start to shine above us. “That sadness has grown today, no?”
I shake my head. “Not sad.”
“I hope not. Otherwise, I would think I’m doing this weekend date wrong.”
“A weekend date? You’re making this shit up now.”
With a low laugh he stops and pulls me around, hungry lips finding mine, his body protecting me from the chill in the air.
I want to freeze frame this. Kisses under starlight.
“I could kiss you as a full-time job.” I breathe out a shuddering breath when he finally returns ownership of my lips; not that they feel like mine, all warm and buzzing.
