That Night In Paris

by Sandy Barker

  Stand aside, Justin. We’re bringing sexy back all by ourselves.

  At first, I was aware of being watched, but soon it felt like we were alone on the dance floor. My God, he was sexy—definitely the hottest man I’d ever laid hands on. I was so completely in lust, I thought of asking Lou to “borrow” her room.

  “Low” by Flo Rida started and Jean-Luc surprised the hell out of me by singing along. I couldn’t hear him above the music, but he knew all the words. “Them apple bottom jeans …” he mouthed. I danced apart from him, watching as he got “… low, low, low, low …” I grinned and he waggled his eyebrows at me. At the end of the song, I clapped and he pulled me into a hug. “You are not the only one who sings,” he said in my ear. I leant back so I could kiss him.

  “Can we please leave now? I want you all to myself.” “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk started and I jumped up and down.

  “After this one?” he asked. I nodded as I started to move to my favourite 70s throw-back song. Lou came over. “Bus stop!” she called out over the music.

  “Oh yes! But I don’t know if I remember it.”

  “Follow me!” She started the moves and after the first round, I was fluent again. Jean-Luc had joined in and soon we were a group of about fifteen. We wouldn’t have won any dance competitions, but I was giggling with glee by the time the song ended. There was a round of hugs and high-fives from the impromptu dance troupe, and when I flapped a hand in front of my sweaty face, Lou led the way off the dance floor. “I need a drink,” she said. “Want one?”

  “We’ve got drinks over here.” I pointed to the table where our vodka tonics sat, the ice well and truly melted. She nodded and went to the bar. At our table, I took a sip of my vodka. I should probably have been drinking water after all that dancing but watered-down vodka would have to do.

  I searched the dance floor for Jean-Luc. He’d accumulated quite the fan club since I’d left him. Six women danced around him, all laughing or smiling. He was too. I didn’t mind. I knew he was coming home with me.

  Lou came back with her drink. “You guys are really cute together.”

  My eyes flew to her face, but she was watching the dancing. “What do you mean?” She looked at me and I knew from her expression I’d spoken too harshly. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You’re not …?” She let the question trail off as she shook her head, questioningly.

  “I don’t know, Lou. I mean, look at him. He’s so hot, it’s ridiculous. And I wasn’t kidding about the sex. It’s definitely the best I’ve ever had.”

  “And he adores you. That’s obvious.”

  “But, I—”

  “Cat, come on. He came all this way for you, and you guys get along so well.”

  “He’s … he’s amazing. But I’m really scared I’m going to break his heart again.”

  “Why?” She was clearly baffled.

  “Because I don’t want anything beyond this.” I caught myself. My voice had shot up about three octaves. I was getting defensive and Lou didn’t deserve that. I was the one I was annoyed with. I took a breath. “I’ve loved—sorry, really enjoyed—my time with him, but for me it’s just sex and catching up with an old friend.”

  She was frowning at me. She searched my eyes as if she was looking for clues, and I felt like I’d disappointed her. Finally, she said, “Really? The man drives halfway across the continent. That man there, who is charming to your friends, and gives you forehead kisses, and looks at you like you’re the most precious thing on this planet. That guy, that super-hot guy, and you’re ‘just friends’?”

  She punctuated her point with, “I don’t buy it.” Her eyes locked onto mine. She wasn’t backing down.

  “Well,” I said, with as much conviction as I could muster. “It’s the truth. I’m not interested. I don’t do relationships,” I added matter-of-factly.

  “Well, what I’ve found is, sometimes things happen that you don’t plan for.”

  I knew she was talking as much about her and Jackson as she was about me and Jean-Luc. I also knew that everything she was saying was coming from a place of love. A rush of affection for Lou—my dear, sweet, recently appointed bestie—engulfed me. I reached up and gave her a hug.

  “I love you, Lou,” I said.

  She returned the hug, but when I stepped back, she was frowning again. “I love you, too. So, don’t screw this up.”

  “Hah!” I laughed. She tried to keep a straight face, but caved, giving me a reluctant smile. The man himself arrived right afterwards.

  “Hello, ladies,” he said, grabbing me in a big sweaty hug. I didn’t even mind. “Louise, I am going to steal her away now.”

  She handed me the key to her room, so we could retrieve the rest of our clothes. “Here. Just leave it at the front desk when you’re done.”

  I gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Coach leaves at eight?” I confirmed.

  “Yup.”

  Jean-Luc gave her two kisses, one on each cheek, and I saw her tight mouth soften. “Au revoir, Louise. Please say goodbye to the others for me. And thank you.” He said the last part a little quieter and I wondered exactly what he was thanking her for. She smiled and gave one of his hands a squeeze.

  It was a little chilly on the walk back to our apartment, and I was happy for Jean-Luc’s arm around me, like that night in Rome. At the apartment, we opted for a quick shower to wash the dance floor off us. That was when we discovered that standing sex is a little tricky when your height difference is nearly a foot.

  It was a good thing Jean-Luc was strong enough to lift me up, which he did before having me against the shower wall, my legs around his waist and my arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

  Dry and naked we retired to the California king and took our time, savouring each other, giving each other pleasure. Making love.

  I double-checked that the alarm on my phone was set for 6:30am, then we fell into a welcome sleep around midnight. But as easy as it was to fall asleep, I was wide-awake at 4:00am, my stomach in knots and I knew it had nothing to do with the wurst.

  I don’t want to say goodbye.

  I finally fell back into a restless sleep around 5pm The alarm—aptly named—startled me awake. Jean-Luc moaned sleepily, and I leapt out of bed to get in the shower. I knew if I hit “snooze”, I would miss the coach’s departure.

  ***

  “You are very quiet,” he said.

  We were seated next to each other at the kitchen counter and I was sipping my Parisian breakfast of a milky coffee. I’d kill for a cup of tea.

  I knew I could no longer put off what I needed to say. The coach was leaving in forty-five minutes.

  “Am I?” Stalling. Coward, I thought.

  He trailed fingers up and down my back and I shrugged him off. A quick glance showed what I already knew. I’d hurt him—I was hurting him. “I’m sorry. I guess I … I don’t like goodbyes.” Liar. Saying goodbye to a lover was easy. This is easy. You know how to do this.

  “I want to see you again.” There it was. Had he said, “Hey, when can we catch up again?” I would have known we were on the same page. What he had said was loaded with far more meaning.

  “Sure. Yes. We should make plans.” The acquaintance in the street. Non-committal. Casual.

  “Catherine, look at me.”

  I did.

  He tentatively took my hand and I let him. What else could I do? “By chance, fate, we found each other again. I …” He looked down, as though searching for the words. I welcomed the reprieve from both his words and his eyes, which were wrenching my heart.

  I was about to break his and I could barely stand it.

  “I loved you once. I was a boy then, but I am a man now.” He looked up. “I am wiser now. I know that this is not love—yet. But it could be. It is not usual, what is between us.”

  “There is a strong attraction, yes.” A flicker of honesty.

  “It is more. There is a pull, yes?” he looked at me intensely.

  “Yes.�
�� Madly in lust. Madly in lust. “But—”

  “You have been on my mind constantly since that night in Paris. In Naples, I am working and I am thinking about you. In Roma, waiting for you to arrive, you. After kissing you, all I could think about the next day and the entire drive here, was you. Making love to you. Holding you. Talking to you. All of it.

  “The physical pull is very strong between us. I know this. Making love to you, it takes me out of myself. I know you feel that too. But it is more, Catherine. There are old feelings that have come again. I missed my dear friend, and now she—you—are here. And where my body and my heart meets, that’s where you are.” He clenched his jaw and his eyes seemed to will me to understand.

  The thing was, I did understand. And it was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to me and it spun around inside me whipping up a frenzy of turmoil.

  It was my turn to talk. “Yes. To everything you just said. The attraction, how it is physically between us, that is undeniable.” I smiled, hoping to break the tension and I saw his jaw unclench—a little.

  “And once there was this boy I loved—and I did love you. You were my best friend and even though it was my doing, I really missed that boy when he wasn’t a part of my life anymore. And when I’m with you, or thinking about you, I am trying to see the boy, to reconcile you—this gloriously handsome, grown, accomplished man—with the sweet, hopeful, precocious boy. Because part of me wants him back.”

  I saw relief in his eyes, which tore at me. I knew I needed to get the next part out before I lost my nerve.

  “Wait. There’s more.” A look of concentration settled on his face. I took a slow breath. I had one chance not to mess this up. “We have this attraction, this physical intensity between us here …” I indicated one end of the spectrum with my hand “… and over here, we have the friendship we both want to rekindle.” He nodded, listening intently. “But here, in the middle, is a spectre. You said you were once in love with me, and I am very afraid that will happen again. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  A thousand thoughts seemed to flutter across his eyes in an instant. It took a lot of courage not to break eye contact with him.

  “You …” He looked down. “You do not want to be in love.” It was a statement, a realisation.

  “No.”

  “So, you are afraid of love?”

  “I wouldn’t say I’m afraid.” Defensive.

  “What would you say?” There was an angry edge to his tone and I didn’t blame him.

  “I—” I tried to answer. He deserved an answer. “I … this is what I want, to not be in love.”

  I sounded far less convincing to myself than I hoped I sounded to him. Tears filled his eyes but didn’t fall. He drew a sharp intake of breath. “Are you sure?”

  Was I? Why wouldn’t I budge on this, even for Jean-Luc?

  But I knew why. Like I’d told Lou, I became a shadow of myself after Scott and I parted ways in Paris. The whole excruciating thing—the cheating, the lies, the accusations that it was all my fault—it broke me. I had moved through life like a marionette, doing everything I was supposed to and feeling none of it. I smiled when it was expected and cried in private. Eventually, after aeons, I stopped crying and went numb. It took years to get back to myself.

  I wasn’t chancing that again. Not ever. Not even for Jean-Luc.

  I nodded, steadfast. He made a sound, a slight groan. He said nothing more—just left the room and went to stand on the balcony.

  As I watched him lean against the railing and his head drop to his chest, my heart breaking at what I’d done, I couldn’t ignore the thought buzzing around my mind. It wasn’t Jean-Luc who broke my heart.

  Somehow, I got through those minutes—we got through them. I finished my unwanted coffee and washed the mugs in the sink, then brushed my teeth. I did a final check of the room for wayward clothing that might have been flung across it during our lovemaking. Lovemaking. The word sat like lead in my stomach.

  Never again, Cat.

  I zipped up my case and when it was time to walk to the chalet, Jean-Luc insisted on carrying it down the stairs to the street. I raised the handle so I could pull it behind me. He walked alongside me and I took a moment to enjoy the sunny morning and the crisply scented air. It was so beautiful there and I didn’t want the memories of Lauterbrunnen to be marred by the last half an hour.

  When the coach was in sight, with Tom and some of the women from the tour loading the group’s baggage underneath, Jean-Luc stopped. I set my case upright and forced myself to look at him. I owed him that much.

  “I, uh … I wanted you to have this,” he said. He pulled out the letter he’d mentioned the day before, still in its envelope, from his back pocket. “I have read it perhaps a hundred times.”

  Oh God, the letter. I’d forgotten. I didn’t want it, but how could I refuse it?

  “Oh, right.” I took it and tucked it into my messenger bag. “Thanks,” I added weakly.

  The silence between us seemed never-ending. “Jean-Luc—”

  “Goodbye, Catherine.” He reached down and enveloped me up in a hug. I wrapped my arms around his waist. He held me for some time, resting his head on mine. Then he kissed the top of my head, turned and walked away before I could say anything more.

  What the frigging hell had I done?

  Chapter 18

  I was numb as I handed my case to Tom. He flashed me a smile, but it disappeared as soon as he saw my face.

  Most of the group were milling about outside the coach, perhaps enjoying their last moments in Lauterbrunnen, but I just wanted to get on the coach and hide away from everyone. I chose a window seat at the back, facing away from the direction Jean-Luc had walked—away from “our apartment”.

  With my head pressed to the glass, I replayed the morning in my head at least a dozen times, and there wasn’t one iteration where I came out as anything other than awful.

  I was awful.

  But I was also safe from heartbreak—or so I tried to convince myself.

  I glanced at the clock at the front of the coach: 7:47. Where was Lou? I needed her.

  People started to file on. By now, every face was familiar and I even knew a few more names, but I wasn’t in the mood for polite niceties. I stared hard out the window until I felt someone sit down next to me.

  “Hey,” said Lou gently.

  Her kind tone was my undoing. Silent sobs racked my body and I squeaked out, “Oh, Lou.”

  She wrapped her arms around me and patted my back and made shushing sounds. I let her. She eventually let me go and pulled a packet of tissues out of her bag. “Here.”

  “Thank you,” I said through a nose full of snot. It sounded like “tonk oo”. I blew my nose and wiped my face.

  “So, tell me.”

  The coach pulled away. I hadn’t even noticed the minutes tick away or the coach filling up, but I was grateful for the droning lull of the engine to mask my words from the people around us. “I tried not to, but I think I hurt him.” I played with a soggy tissue in my lap.

  She sighed. “You said the thing about the middle, didn’t you?” I turned to meet her eyes and nodded. “And it’s definitely what you want?”

  “I think so. Yes. No, it is what I want.” She gave me the look I’d given other people many times. I was usually the one who counselled, who delivered the doses of tough love, who told it like it was. I probably wasn’t going to like what she had to say.

  “You don’t sound particularly sure.”

  “I am.” I wasn’t.

  I could see the machinations of her thoughts playing across her face. “Okay, so obviously the sex was good.” I nodded like a child. “And you seemed to have a lot of fun with him, there was an ease between you.” It was a statement, not a question. Still, I continued to nod. “And how was the conversation?”

  I considered the last two days and smiled involuntarily as I recalled the quips, the banter, the teasing. There had also been more important conversat
ions about where our lives had gone, where they might be heading.

  “Good. We talked—a lot.”

  “So, the friendship is there, the attraction is there, but …” She left the thought unfinished, but with her stating it so simply, I had a sickening realisation.

  “I am afraid of the middle,” I said to myself.

  “Say again?”

  “Jean-Luc said I was afraid of love, but I’ve been telling myself I’m not afraid. All I want is to protect myself from something that kicked the living daylights out of me. I thought I was being smart—brave even.”

  “You can only really be brave if you feel the fear and do it anyway. Brave people aren’t fearless people. They’re brave because they’re scared and they don’t let the fear stop them.”

  I digested what she’d said. I didn’t like being wrong, but it made sense. “That … it’s really astute, Lou.”

  She laughed lightly. “Well, we can thank Susan Jeffers for the catchphrase, but yeah, the sentiment is well-founded.”

  “So, I’m not brave, I’m a big fat coward.” Self-pity crept back in.

  “Well, you’re not big or fat.” I looked at her, shocked she would be so harsh, but the kind smile on her face disarmed me. “How did you leave things?”

  “Badly. It was a total palaver.”

  “And that means …?”

  “I told him I just want to be friends, even though he wants to see where things can go. And from what he’s said over the past couple of days … well, he’s alluded to us being together, you know, together together.”

  “And you told him outright that you don’t want that?”

  “Yes.”

  There was no more supposing. I had definitely hurt him. Again.

  “I don’t even know if we’re still friends.” I was awash with shame and regret and confusion. Convinced I was doing the right thing, I had done the wrong thing and I’d probably lost my friend. You stupid cow, Cat.

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly remembering the letter. I took it out of my bag. “And he gave me this.” I held up the offending item and frowned at it.