Sleeping with Paris

by Juliette Sobanet

  Jeff sat down next to me, his big blue gaze intense as he began speaking. “Charlotte, I miss you. I made a mistake. A huge mistake. I don’t love her. I love you. I always have.”

  My stomach twisted in knots as I tried not to hear him. Tried to block out his words. Tried to think of Luc. But it was all too much.

  “I can’t do this right now, Jeff.” I shot up from the table and raced out of the reception hall.

  Just as I stepped onto the elevator though, I heard someone rush in behind me. And as I flipped my head around, I found Jeff staring at me, breathlessly.

  The doors closed, and we were alone.

  Twenty-one

  samedi, le 2 avril

  Your instincts will always know the difference between a good man and a bad one;

  the trick is in listening to your gut before it’s too late.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him frantically. I was done pretending to be calm, cool and collected. I felt anything but.

  He charged toward me and laid his hands on my shoulders, the feel of his skin against mine fueling my wild torrent of emotions for him.

  “Please, Charlotte, hear me out. I’m different now. I’ve had a lot of time to think about what went wrong, and the mistakes I’ve made. And if you’ll give me a second chance, I promise things will be different.”

  “You’re crazy! You’re here with Brooke, and I’m here with Luc. What do you think you’re doing?” I hissed as I willed the elevator to open up on my floor. I needed to get away from him. I could already feel myself falling, plummeting into the depths of his gaze, his touch, his voice.

  Jeff took a step closer to me, his grip on my shoulders tightening. “I love you, Charlotte. I’ve never stopped loving you.” Then, without warning, he leaned in and pushed his lips onto mine.

  I struggled to shove him off of me. “Stop it, Jeff, stop!” I cried. But my efforts weren’t strong enough. He pushed me up against the wall of the elevator and kissed me even harder.

  And even though I hated what he had done to me, and I loathed the fact that he had brought Brooke to this wedding, somewhere deep inside of me, it felt good. It felt good to know that he still had feelings for me.

  That tonight, given the choice, he had chosen me over her.

  And so, after fighting his kiss for a few more seconds, I finally gave in and kissed him back.

  The elevator opened up on my floor, jolting me from the trance Jeff had put me in with his passionate kiss. I broke from his grasp and took off down the hallway. “We can’t do this. Not now, not here. You have Brooke here, and I have Luc.”

  “You don’t really want to be with Luc,” he said in a demeaning tone as he tailed me. “I can tell by the way you look at him. You’re not in love with him.”

  “And what about Brooke?” I asked as I opened the door to my room. “You’re not in love with her either I suppose?”

  “No, I’m not!” Jeff practically yelled as he followed me into the room. “She’s not you. I made a huge, huge mistake, Charlotte . . .” Jeff paused as he looked straight into my eyes. “But after you sent me those emails, I really thought you were gone for good. So I tried to make things work with her. But I don’t love her. I would never marry her. I want you. I want to marry you.” He leaned in and kissed me again as the door slammed shut behind him.

  He said what I’d wanted to hear all year long—that I was the one for him, that he had made a huge mistake and that he loved me, not her. That he wanted to marry me. And in another moment of extreme moral weakness, I collapsed into him and ignored the feeling that this time it was me who was making the mistake.

  It was clear that we hadn’t been intimate in a long time. Jeff all but ripped my dress right off of my body, and I couldn’t unbutton his shirt and pants fast enough. His lips tasted so good, I could hardly stand it. His arms felt even stronger than I remembered as he picked me up and laid me down on the bed.

  But, as I let all of the perfect things he had just said to me sink in, I thought of Luc. Luc, who’d flown across the ocean to be with me at my friend’s wedding. Luc, who’d been there for me all year, so patient, even though I was avoiding commitment like the plague. Luc, who was a real man who fought to keep his daughter. Luc, who treated me better than any man in my life ever had.

  Luc . . . who I was beginning to fall in love with.

  I gazed up at Jeff and realized with sudden and absolute clarity that even though he’d gotten me all stirred up again, he was the last person I wanted to be looking at, let alone climbing into bed with.

  I pushed Jeff to the side, jolted out of bed and scrambled to get my bra and underwear back on. What was I thinking? I had to go find Luc. I had to tell him how I felt.

  “Charlotte, what’s the matter? Come lay with me for a minute.”

  “What’s the matter? What’s the matter? Oh, you have some nerve!” I yelled as I slipped my dress over my head. “If it was me that you had wanted all along, then why did you put yourself on an online dating site? Why did you cheat on me with Brooke? Why did you let me leave for Paris without even trying to come see me? Why didn’t you fight harder to keep me if you really knew that it was me and only me that you wanted to be with for the rest of your life?”

  Jeff sat up, naked in bed, and stared at me with that same bewildered look he’d had on his face when I first confronted him in his office last summer.

  “You want to know why?” I answered for him. “Hmm, let me think. Because you’re full of shit, that’s why. You think you can come in here with your puppy dog eyes and have sex with me and tell me all these romantic things and that’ll make it all go away? That it’ll make me forget that you humiliated me by cheating on me with that girl and then bringing her to my friend’s wedding to throw it all back in my face?”

  Jeff stood up and paced toward me.

  “Put your clothes on and go fuck your girlfriend. I’m sure she’s waiting for you,” I said dryly as I turned around to leave the room.

  “Charlotte, wait, you’ve got it all wrong!” he yelled after me as he pulled his pants on and followed me out the door.

  As I raced out of the room, I ran straight into a fuming little red-head—Brooke.

  “I knew it! I knew you were going to do this to me, with her!” she yelled, pointing at me, drunk and frantic.

  I tried to push past her and leave the shirtless, sleaze of a man behind me to fend for himself, but Brooke wasn’t having it. She grabbed me firmly by the wrist and pulled me back toward her. Her bony little arms were much stronger than they appeared to be.

  She shot her furious graze right through me. “What did you do with him?”

  And there, in Brooke’s icy blue eyes, I recognized something very familiar. It was me, just eight months ago, when I had first found out Jeff was cheating on me. She had that same painful, hysterical look, like a deer in headlights, about to get hit.

  Hannah’s words from this morning rushed back to me. Brooke didn't know that Jeff and I had been engaged when she'd first started dating him.

  And while I didn’t want to perpetuate the drama any further, I figured she at least deserved to know the truth.

  “You want to know what just happened? Your boyfriend just tried to have sex with me,” I said, pointing to my hotel room. “I know what you’re thinking—how could Jeff, my perfect, rich lawyer boyfriend do this to me? Well, I’ve got news for you. He was engaged to me when he started sleeping with you.”

  “What? No he wasn’t. He told me you two had broken up a long time before we started seeing each other. You’re lying. She’s lying Jeff, isn’t she?”

  Jeff stood with his shoulders slumped, a pathetic mess staring blankly at the ground.

  “Why do you think he didn’t end up going to Paris?” I asked as I pulled my arm from her grasp.

  “He said his trip got cancelled at the last minute.” Doubt suddenly clouded her eyes like a raging storm passing through.

  “It got cancelled because I found out he was cheatin
g on me with you, and we were supposed to be moving there together. So, Jeff decided not to go once he’d been caught.”

  A new fire raged in Brooke’s eyes. She wasn't concerned with me anymore. It was Jeff's blood she wanted. “Is that true? Is that true?” she shouted desperately, surely waking up anyone in the hotel who may have been trying to get a good night’s rest.

  Defeated, Jeff muttered back to her, “Yes, it’s true. I . . . I’m sorry.”

  Tears streaked down her perfectly made-up face as she pummeled Jeff’s chest with her bony fists. She was a fiery little thing. “You piece of shit! I can’t believe you tried to sleep with her! I can’t believe you lied to me!” Brooke continued raging and Jeff continued making excuses as I turned around to flee the scene. But my eyes landed on someone else’s gaze this time.

  Luc. Oh God, Luc.

  He had been standing at the end of the hall watching the whole hideous scene unravel.

  Then I noticed that he was holding something in his hands. It was a magazine. It was Bella Magazine. We made eye contact, and then, with a disgusted look on his face, he shook his head at me and turned around. I dug my heels into the floor and bolted after him.

  “Luc, wait, this isn’t what it looks like! Wait!” I called after him.

  Meanwhile, Jeff had pushed past Brooke and was following me down the hallway.

  “Charlotte, wait! What I said was true, come back!”

  I turned around and stared Jeff in the eye. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage for one day? Leave me alone!” And with that, I raced down the hall and jumped into the elevator with Luc just before it closed.

  He glared at me with angry eyes as he shook the magazine in the air.

  “What is this, Charlotte? Did you think I would never see it? Was I just a research project for you?”

  My gut twisted in knots as I struggled to get the words out. “No, Luc, no, you were never a research project. I . . . I started writing this blog about being single in Paris, and it didn’t have names in it or anything, but then the magazine contacted me and wanted me to write an article. You and I weren’t together then, and you had all of those weird phone calls, and I . . . there's no excuse. I’m so sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I know I never meant anything to you because now I see you upstairs with that man, ruining that girl Brooke’s life.”

  “How do you know who Brooke is?”

  “She gave me the magazine,” he said as he shook his head in disgust and stormed out of the elevator.

  That little bitch.

  I chased after him. “We didn’t do anything, I swear. I don’t love him anymore, Luc. I love you. I just didn’t know everything about you, so I didn’t understand what a great person you are. But now I know, and I’m so sorry—”

  “I don’t care if you are sorry. After tomorrow you will never have to see me again.” Luc shoved the magazine in my hands and took off into the DC night.

  I stood in the lobby of the hotel and dropped the magazine to the floor. What had I done?

  “Charlotte,” Katie called. “Where have you been? Are you alright? Where’s Luc?”

  I turned my weary face to meet hers, and with one look, she knew.

  “Oh no. He saw the article, didn’t he?”

  I nodded as I stared at the magazine lying on the ground. I wanted to rip it to shreds.

  Katie took the elevator up to my room with me so we could talk. I opened the door to find the covers all messed about and Jeff’s shirt still on the floor.

  Katie bent down and picked up his crumpled shirt. “What's this?”

  “There's more to the story than Luc seeing the article,” I told her, the shame of what I'd just done making me want to curl up in a ball and never face the world again.

  As Katie listened quietly to the latest turn of events, I noticed the sympathy slowly draining from her eyes. Finally, when I was finished, she spoke.

  “Charlotte, I know that what Jeff did to you was awful, but you have to get over it. I mean, seriously, how could you have taken him into your hotel room when Luc was just downstairs? What is it about Jeff that makes you go so nuts? And this is Hannah's wedding for God's sake. You promised her you wouldn’t do anything to ruin it! Can you ever just get over yourself and all of your relationship drama and just be there for your friends?” She stood up and stormed toward the door, then stopped and turned back around to face me.

  “I'm your best friend and I know I'm supposed to be supportive of everything you do, so I wasn't going to say anything about this, but I can't hold it in any longer. All year you've been writing on your blog about how awful relationships are, how dumb it is to even think about committing to a guy, when here I am, completely falling in love with Joe. At first, I understood. You had your heart broken and you were just lashing out. But as the months went on, you'd be on the phone with me one day, pretending to be happy for me, then the very next day write a blog post about how relationships are the devil. And it hurt my feelings that you couldn't recognize that good relationships do exist, Charlotte. And that I'd finally found one.”

  “Those posts weren't aimed at you, Katie. And I am happy for you. I wasn't pretending.”

  “You can't play both sides, Charlotte. Relationships aren't all black and white, and when you brought Luc as your date for the wedding, I really thought you were starting to see that. That you were starting to calm down and be yourself again. I missed my best friend . . . the one I could always count on. The one I knew before you went buck wild in Paris and decided to sleep around like it was your job. But after what happened tonight, I don’t think you’re the person I used to know. In fact, I don't even think you even know who you are anymore. I sure as hell don't.”

  Katie gave me one last glare, then left me alone in my mess of a hotel room with no one to answer for my despicable actions except myself.

  ***

  I woke to the sound of someone knocking on the door and sprung out of bed thinking it was Luc. He'd never returned to the room after Katie had left, and I'd finally passed out in my bridesmaid dress and heels, waiting for him to come back.

  I ran to the door and swung it open, but to my dismay, I found Jeff on the other side. I started to open my mouth to tell him to leave, but he held his hand up to quiet me.

  “I didn’t come here to fight with you anymore. I knew you were probably in here alone, and I just wanted to see if you were okay.” He looked genuinely concerned, even though I didn’t really believe that was possible.

  “I’m fine. And what makes you think I’m alone?” I shot back.

  “Luc and Brooke are downstairs at the bar together.”

  I felt the blood rise to my head. If that red-headed little monster was trying to steal Luc now, it was on.

  “Oh, well I’m sure they’re just commiserating over what assholes we are,” I said, trying to act nonchalant about it while I clenched my fists and forced myself not to think about what Brooke was probably saying . . . or doing to Luc.

  “Yeah, I’ve pretty much messed everything up. With you, with her, with everyone.” Jeff leaned against the wall and looked down. “I’m sorry, for whatever it matters at this point . . .” he paused and looked up at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “I just don’t understand you, Jeff. You seemed so happy with us last year, and then you went and cheated on me with her, and now here we are, and you want me again. You can’t just play with women like that and expect it to all work out in the end.” As I listened to my own words, I realized I should've been giving this same advice to myself. What I'd done to Luc wasn't much different from what Jeff had done to me.

  “I know I’ve done some really shitty things,” Jeff said. “But I followed you upstairs today because I miss you and seeing you again made me realize how much I love you.”

  “But you didn’t realize those things until you saw me with Luc. You were just jealous. And besides, you’re with Brooke now. This isn't fair to her either.”

  “Not anymore. We b
roke up, and we’re not getting back together. I don’t love her, I never did. And I wasn’t just jealous of that French dude.”

  “Luc,” I interjected, annoyed.

  “Whatever,” he said, as if Luc was nothing more than a speck of dirt on the ground. “I’ve been in love with you this whole time, and I’m ready to do this Charlotte, to really do this.” He stepped into the doorway and leaned in to kiss me.

  But I turned my head. I didn't want his kiss.

  “I don’t love you anymore.” The words dropped effortlessly from my mouth.

  Jeff stopped in his tracks and shot me a questioning glance.

  “I don’t love you anymore,” I said again, firmer this time.

  Jeff took a large step back into the hallway and gazed down at me with his pathetic puppy dog eyes.

  “I did love you, I really did,” I said softly, “but it’s too late now. Too much has happened, and as great as it would be to forget everything and live happily ever after, I think I’ve actually started to move on.” As the words came out of my mouth, I felt them in my heart. I knew then that I really had begun to move on. I didn’t love Jeff anymore. I really didn’t. As wonderful as it felt to have this realization, it felt just as awful to know that I'd given up my relationship with Luc and lost my best friend, all for someone I wasn’t even in love with anymore.

  “Do you love him?” Jeff asked.

  “Luc, you mean?”

  Jeff nodded.

  “Well, whether I do or not, that’s all ruined now, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Jeff said, glancing down at his feet and combing his hand through his wavy blond hair.

  “I think you better go,” I told him as I began to close the door.

  Then Jeff gave me one of those looks. One of those final, parting looks where you know this will be the last time you look into each others’ eyes. He lingered there for a few seconds and then slowly turned around to saunter back to his room. I closed the door and leaned against it, not even believing the day I had just experienced. Probably the worst day of my life. Maybe even topping the day I first found Jeff’s online dating profile.