That Night In Paris

by Sandy Barker

  Oh my, he’s gorgeous.

  I told my lady parts to please shut the hell up and smiled as he sat down, his stature making the short-backed chair seem inadequate. He took off his jacket and turned around to lay it across the back of his chair while I watched his T-shirt pull taut across his back. When he turned around, I lifted my gaze and he lifted his glass in a toast. “To old friends. Salut.”

  I picked up my glass and tapped it against his. He watched me as we both took a sip. It was delicious and I must have seemed surprised, because he laughed. “It’s good, non?”

  “Oui. C’est très bon.” I only had about ten words of French—enough to order a baguette and for a casual chat with a handsome Frenchman.

  “So, Catherine. Twenty years to explain. You should go first.” His eyes challenged mine, a playful smile on his lips. I took another sip—all right, it was a gulp—and breathed deeply.

  Right—a succinct summary of my adult life. Go.

  “Well, I finished uni—I became a teacher, like I’d planned, like my sister, Sarah. You remember Sarah, yes?” A quick nod signalled for me to keep going. “So, I started teaching, obviously …” Why am I nervous? Damned gorgeous Frenchman. “Then ten years ago we moved to London—me and Sarah.”

  “This explains your accent.”

  “Mine?”

  “Yes, it is, ah, mostly English, but still some Australian, n’est-ce pas?” he teased. He was right. I’d never really shaken some of my Aussie-accented words. It was a dead giveaway to anyone who paid attention to that sort of thing.

  “C’est vrai—guilty.” He smiled. “Anyway, Sarah went back to Australia after a couple of years, and I stayed in London. Teaching. And that’s about it,” I lied, ignoring the glaring omission of Scott from my tale.

  “Now you.”

  His lingering look told me he had questions, but he didn’t pry. Instead, he said, “I also finished university and moved to Paris. Then I started working for a magazine—”

  I interjected. “Writing?”

  “Oui, yes, writing articles.” He’d been a terrific writer when we were kids. I was glad he’d stuck with it.

  “There, I met my wife …” Whoa. What???

  “Hold on, you’re married?”

  He licked his lips and took a sip of wine. It took far too long for him to answer and my stomach plunged into my shoes as the moments ticked by.

  “I was. For a short time, a few years. We were very young.”

  “So …?”

  “We divorced, uh, eight years ago. We remain friends.” Oh. “Vanessa.” Great, so she had a name. Vanessa. Certain Jean-Luc’s wife would have been stunning, my mind immediately produced Vanessa Paradis stealing languidly between rose bushes, like in a perfume ad.

  I tried not to be jealous of the woman he had married—mostly because I had no right to be. I abruptly changed the subject. “So, do you still work for the magazine?”

  He shook his head and drank more wine. “Non, I stayed there for a few years, then I went freelance. A little bit of a risk, but it was good in the end.”

  “And now?”

  “Now it is the same. I write for some magazines and some blogs—they are less money, but often more interesting—and sometimes the newspaper. Current affairs, important issues, political matters at times.”

  “Wow, that’s impressive, Jean-Luc.” I meant it.

  “Merci. I think it is interesting—at least for now. I travel a lot, though, and that is, ah, you know, comme ci comme ça.” Like this, like that, the equivalent of “so-so”. I’d never regularly travelled for work, so I could only guess how quickly the shine would wear off. Sarah said the two years she worked for Ventureseek were the best and the worst she’d ever had.

  “And what about the guy?” His question shook me from my thoughts. The guy? Oh, you mean Scott, the cheating bastard!

  “We broke up. Ten years ago. Here, actually.”

  “Here?”

  “Paris.” The surprise on his face was nearly comical. “Yes, I know.”

  “What happened?” I looked at him and oscillated between telling the whole truth, telling an abridged version, or quipping his question away. I went with the short explanation.

  “When Sarah and I moved to London, it was only for a year. Scott … well—we were still together, and I thought we could make it work long-distance. Apparently, he didn’t. He started cheating with a colleague soon after I left—which sucked because he came to visit, and we had a whole trip planned—Paris, Nice, Florence, Rome. He confessed about the affair right before we left on the trip and foolishly, I decided to come anyway, thinking we could fix it—fix us. The whole thing unravelled from there.” So not such a short explanation.

  “I’m sorry, Catherine.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “And now? You have someone?”

  I did not.

  I had not had someone since Scott. I’d had dates and lovers and a couple of fuckbuddies. And I’d stupidly slept with my flatmate a week ago, but no, I did not have someone. I didn’t want someone. I was good without having a someone.

  “No,” I said as lightly as I could. “No one.”

  It was natural I would then ask the same question of him, but a hard lump formed in my throat. I thought of the extra helmet and barely choked out, “And what about you?”

  Again, he took an annoyingly long time to respond. At least, it felt like it. It was probably no more than a second, but time halted while I waited. He shook his head and smiled. “No, no one at the moment.” At the moment. My mind leapt back to Vanessa in her rose garden, a trail of lovely women following her in flowing dresses. Surely, there was a line-up of beauties waiting their turn with this scrumptious man.

  His fingers played with the stem of his wine glass, and I noticed that his sipping had slowed down—probably because he had to drive me back to the campsite soon—too soon.

  “I missed our letters …”

  Guilt engulfed me, followed closely by anger—at Scott.

  “Me too.” Deep breath. “Jean-Luc, I so regret ending our friendship like that. I thought it was the right thing to do … Scott, he was just so jealous of you. But still, I felt terrible about it—feel terrible about it. And I’ve missed you—not only the letters, but you, our friendship.”

  He was staring at his wine glass, his brow creased. “I’m really sorry,” I added for good measure. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I reached across the table for his free hand.

  If I’m honest, before that night in Paris, I hadn’t thought about him in a long time. But it didn’t mean the feelings weren’t there. I’d stuffed them into a little box that I’d tucked away deep inside me. From time to time, I’d open the box and remember what it was like having a clever French boy as my bestie. On trips back to Australia, I’d pull an actual box down from the top of the wardrobe in the guest room and spend an hour or two flicking through photos and reading back over the dozens of letters.

  But in my everyday life, Jean-Luc Caron was a spectre of a long-ago friend. Even watching him across the table, I had a hard time remembering his exact face at the age of fifteen. He looked up and I saw a gloss of tears in his eyes. I am an utter cow.

  He blinked them away. “And right when email became a thing, too,” he replied, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

  “Sorry?”

  “We could have kept writing and saved all that money on stamps.” His smile was gentle, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He squeezed my hand, then let it go. It seemed I wasn’t quite forgiven and all I wanted was to make it right between us.

  “Do you remember when we stole your parents’ brandy?” he asked, taking the conversation off on a much-welcomed tangent.

  “Hah! Oh, yes, I remember that clearly. It was my first taste of a hangover. You, I recall, were fine the next day.”

  “The French, we train our children how to carry their liquor,” he teased.

  “It’s hold their liquor.” He shrugged at my
correction. “And yes, you were quite the sophisticated teenager.” He grinned. “And such a charmer. I think my mum was smitten with you.”

  “We also like older women in France.”

  “Oh, that’s … just, no. That’s awful.” He laughed and his eyes lit up.

  “Everyone thought we were boyfriend and girlfriend,” he said lightly.

  “Even my mum.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. There was this one time I asked if you could sleep over—do you remember? We were going to watch Deep Impact and Armageddon? Anyway, she decided it was time to give me the talk.” His eyebrows lifted a centimetre. “Exactly. I had to explain to her that A) I already knew all that stuff, and B) you were just my friend, and C) Ewww, gross, how could she think I was thinking about having sex? ‘Mum, I’m only fourteen!’”

  “And she responded how?”

  “I think she was as embarrassed as I was. And she let you stay over.”

  “I remember. I slept in the guest room.”

  “Well, yes, I mean, we were friends—just kids really, but still, we were fourteen … even if one of us fancied the other—”

  “I did.”

  “You did what?”

  “I liked you.” It was my turn to laugh.

  “You did not.” His lips rolled in until they disappeared. “You didn’t. You never said.”

  He ran his hand through his hair—my new favourite thing in the whole world. “I was a long way from home, and you were my closest friend, and we spent a lot of time together—every day. And you were very cute …”

  He let the thought hang in the air, and I scoured my brain for any evidence of his twenty-year-old feelings, coming up short. I’d leave the scouring for later. Instead, I latched onto his depiction of teenaged me. “Cute?”

  He shrugged. “You were. Let’s just say it’s a good thing your family had a guest room.”

  “Oh really? You would have made a move?”

  “As you said, I was sophisticated for my age.” I rolled my eyes. He held his hands out, mock offended.

  “And now?” I asked.

  “Now what?”

  “Am I still cute?” Oh bollocks. I did not say that. I glanced at my glass—nearly empty. Bloody wine.

  “Oh, no. Definitely not cute.” Oh. “Sexy, yes. Beautiful, yes.” Ohhh.

  My eyes widened. I did not give them permission, but they were going rogue. I opened my mouth to speak and the words wouldn’t come.

  “I have shocked you?”

  “No, you’ve, well, yes, a little, but … thank you, for the compliment.” He tilted his head and lifted one shoulder, as though my beauty was a given and there was nothing to thank him for. My eyes flicked to the clock above the bar. Coming up on midnight.

  “You need to go soon, yes?”

  I sighed. I didn’t want to go back to the garden shed and sleep in a sleeping bag. I wanted to go to Jean-Luc’s bed and crawl under the duvet and snuggle up with him and reminisce about how much he’d fancied me and never told me.

  “Yes. I should. We leave early tomorrow—at seven.” He sucked air through his teeth in horror. “I know. It’s barely civilised.”

  “And you go where?”

  “Uh, next is the château—it’s in the Beaujolais region, so that should be nice—then Antibes, Florence, Rome … we go to a lot of places.”

  “Over what time? How long?”

  “It’s only two weeks.”

  “Two weeks for all those places?” he scoffed.

  “I know, and that’s not even all of them. We only got into Paris yesterday.”

  He shook his head and tutted, and I suddenly felt very foolish for having booked myself onto a rapid-fire touristy tour.

  “But still, there is something very good in all this.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Eurostar,” he said, grinning. “When you get home to London, we’re only a few hours apart.”

  Bollocks, I was going to swoon again.

  Chapter 4

  I didn’t want to leave the nameless bar in Montmartre.

  I wanted to stay there all night and drink scrummy wine and talk to the handsome man who had once been my best friend.

  After his remark about the Eurostar, it was impossible not to project into the future where we shared an apartment on the Left Bank, him writing the great French novel, and me lying about on beautiful linens, sexily mussed up from all our lovemaking and eating grapes and cheese from a wooden board. Perhaps our future was in the nineteenth century.

  He was talking about his next writing assignment. I should have been paying attention instead of fixating on his long fingers as they tapped on the table.

  “When are you in Roma?” At his question, my eyes lifted to his.

  “Oh, um … Thursday.” He smiled.

  “Parfait.” Perfect.

  “Sorry?”

  “Well, as I said, the interview is on Wednesday.”

  “Oh, right.” Why wasn’t I listening?

  “It’s not so far, Naples to Roma. I could catch the train and see you there.”

  “In Rome?” I must have sounded like a moron.

  “Oui. You arrive on Thursday. Perhaps I can steal you away from your group. For dinner.”

  Ohhh.

  “You know, I’ve never actually been to Rome,” I confessed.

  He looked confused. “Never?”

  “No. I’m really looking forward to it.”

  “Of course. You must. It is extraordinary.”

  “High praise from someone who lives in Paris.”

  “Peut-être.” Perhaps. “So, we have a date, oui, Catherine?”

  It took approximately two-point-four seconds for me to decide. “That should work,” I replied, as though we’d just scheduled a business meeting. What a romantic, huh?

  One of the couples said goodnight to the bartender and left. It really was getting late, and I was trying to eke out the last sips of my wine, but Jean-Luc took the couple’s departure as our prompt to go.

  “We should …” he said, standing.

  “Yes, of course.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so disappointed. Bugger the stupid bus tour to hell. I wondered what he’d say if I abandoned it and invited myself to stay in Paris. Probably something like, “Uh, non, merci, crazy Australian-British woman.”

  Jean-Luc didn’t take my hand when we left the bar. More disappointment, but seriously, what did I expect to happen, that he would declare his undying love for me? He’d thought I was cute twenty years ago, and even though I was head-over-heels in lust, it wasn’t like we’d be sending out the wedding invitations any time soon.

  I had a firm chat with myself on the way back to the scooter. It had been a minor miracle I’d found Jean-Luc again—or rather, that Jaelee had. I’d thank her properly as soon as she was speaking to me again. But I needed to take the whole situation for what it was—a wonderful, remarkable, one-in-a-million fluke—and stop indulging my lustful thoughts.

  The ride to the campsite was far longer than was comfortable, especially as the night’s chill had set in and my bare legs were freezing. It was also shorter than I wanted it to be. Even when we stopped at traffic lights, I held onto Jean-Luc’s waist. We pulled up outside the campsite just after one, and Jean-Luc rocked the scooter onto its stand.

  I had to be up in five hours.

  I didn’t care.

  This hadn’t been a date and I’d never been in this exact situation before, so I wasn’t sure what the protocol was for saying goodnight. I wanted to kiss him, but no doubt that was just my lusty lady parts talking. I slipped off my helmet and started to climb off the scooter, but his hand landed firmly on my thigh, stopping me. Breathe.

  “Attends.” Wait. I waited. He took his helmet off and hung it on the handlebars. He got off the scooter, reached for my helmet and hung it in its spot. Then he climbed back on the scooter facing me.

  There’s something you need to know—scooter seats are not
particularly long. We were very close together, our knees touching, crotch facing crotch. I self-consciously adjusted my dress over the seat so I wasn’t flashing my knickers.

  “Hi,” he said, a smile playing on his ridiculously luscious lips.

  “Hi.”

  He shook his head, his eyes locked on mine, and sighed—not a sad sigh, or a hopeless or frustrated one, but a contented sigh. It was very sexy. Is he going to kiss me? He’s definitely going to kiss me.

  “I still cannot believe it. You. Here. It is … I don’t know the best word in English. I’ve thought about you many times over the years, do you know?”

  I did and I didn’t. It was rhetorical anyway, so I said nothing, my lips pulling into a taut line. There was a flash of sadness in his eyes, which sent another shockwave of guilt through me.

  Then he did something so sweet, so intimate, it brought tears to my eyes. He placed his forehead against mind and rested it there a moment. I closed my eyes and when he lifted his head to press a soft kiss on my forehead, I had to stifle a gasp. Zut alors! The French expressions were coming back thick and fast.

  He sat back abruptly, and I missed the feel of him, the night chill asserting itself between us.

  “I should go,” he said unnecessarily. It was so late, and he had at least another thirty minutes’ ride before he got home. If I’d had more than half a plastic-wrapped mattress to offer him, I would have invited him to stay.

  He climbed off the scooter and helped me off. “Thanks for the ride,” I said, the lightness of my voice a farce.

  Smiling eyes peered at me. “So, Thursday in Roma, yes?” I nodded. “Oh, your number.” He pulled out his phone, tapped out my name, and handed it to me. I added my number and tapped save, then sent myself a text message so I’d have his number. Sure, Dani had it, but what if her phone had fallen in the Seine or something? I wasn’t taking that chance.

  “Here.”

  “Merci.” He leant down, and I nearly cocked up the French-style double cheek kiss. Hopefully, he couldn’t tell how much I wanted a proper kiss. And I did—badly.