Caught Up In Us

by Lauren Blakely

  I asked the men how much.

  “For the keys?”

  “Yes.”

  A man laughed, showing crooked, yellowed teeth. He took a drag of his cigarette, inhaling deeply. “No one’s ever asked before. You want to take them off our hands?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Five euros.”

  I pursed my lips together and resisted breaking out in a smile. The keys were perfect. They were pretty, but they also said something. Keys were staples of charm necklaces, so they had universal appeal, but these particular keys had a unique look that stood out, a sense that they could unlock stories, or hearts, or secrets.

  “Sold.”

  I handed the man a bill, he stuffed it in his pocket, and gave me the battered cardboard box. I closed the tops, and managed to stuff the box inside my cavernous shopping bag. I wheeled it away, made a few more stops, then hailed a taxi. As we raced towards the Eiffel Tower, passing cafes full of people lingering on salads and breads and coffees, and bakeries peddling croissants and tarte normandes and chocolate eclairs, I replayed my three days in Paris. At a market in the Marais I’d found boxes of star, sun and moon trinkets, at a street vendor in Montmartre I’d stumbled across elegant glass hearts. I’d still have to do the hard work in assembling the necklaces, but I had the materials, and they looked both fresh and French. In the evenings, I’d taken myself out to dinner, at a bistro near Notre Dame, at a cafe tucked at the end of a courtyard, at a bustling Korean place around the corner from the hotel. I’d been alone, but Paris has a way of surrounding you so you don’t feel quite so lonely. I’d also stayed far away from the W Hotel near the Opera House, and from Bryan. The fact that I hadn’t set up my cell phone for international calling helped. No one could reach me easily.

  The taxi driver stopped at the light at one of the boulevards, and I admired the buildings. They had that elegant centuries-old look about them with long, tall, open windows. When the light changed, the driver zipped across traffic, took a sharp turn and let me out at my hotel.

  As I pressed the button for the elevator, the desk clerk called out to me.

  “Ms. Harper. There is a message here for you.”

  “For me?”

  Perhaps it was Mrs. Oliver, but she was on her vacation. I hoped something hadn’t happened to my parents. The clerk handed me a small, white envelope. It was sealed, but my name was on the front. I opened it and unfolded a sheet of paper.

  Kat — Remember when you said if I ever needed your translation services that I’d know where to find you? I do need help. Is there any way you can come to dinner tonight? The woman in charge of the padlocks has a My Favorite Mistakes necklace. She loves your designs, and would love to meet you. I think it could seal the deal. I hope you’ll say yes to dinner at 8. I can send a car for you.

  —Bryan

  There was a phone number for his hotel. I stared at the note, as if it would reveal my answer. Should I go? I still felt raw inside now that I knew the truth. I’d been tricked, and even if he felt he had to set me free during college, I’d rather he’d have told me he loved me before he left. Instead, he said nothing, and I was played a fool.

  I was left empty-handed, a broken-hearted idiot.

  But if my presence would help Made Here launch a new line of cufflinks fashioned from the leftover promises from the lover’s bridge, well, that seemed fitting, as well as the sort of thing a protege should do. It was business, after all. Only business.

  I handed the paper to the clerk, and asked him to call The W and confirm a car for pickup.

  *****

  Orange flames glowed in the nearby fireplace, warming the restaurant. The waiter cleared away our dinner plates as Gabrielle Roussillon informed him that the meal was marvelous. She’d had rabbit and asparagus. I’d had chicken and roasted potatoes, and while I couldn’t vouch for the bunny, my French yardbird was indeed fantastic. The white tablecloth was now marked with a splotch of red wine from where Gabrielle had spilled some of her drink while talking with her hands.

  Gabrielle was a chatty woman and had commanded the conversation. The pleasant byproduct of her loquaciousness was I could focus on her rather than Bryan as she told bawdy tales of the time she’d lived in Rome, and all her affairs with Italian men. I’d laughed, not simply to humor her, but because she was one of those in-your-face type of people, who could tell a saucy tale with a special sort of panache. She was curvy and broad-shouldered, with sheets of jet black hair. She wore a ring on her left index finger and mentioned a husband once or twice. I wondered if it was an open marriage. If he had a mistress, and she has misters, like her Italian lovers. It hadn’t seemed that long ago since she’d been in Italy.

  She leaned back in her chair, and tapped a charm on her necklace. It was one of mine, and the charm was a pizza pie. “I don’t know if you remember this, but I ordered this one online from you a year ago.”

  I flipped through my mental file of necklace orders. I certainly didn’t remember all of them, but a pizza pie charm stood out. “It’s not often I get a request for a pizza pie. I think I found it at a toy shop. I can’t believe that’s yours.”

  “Small world. It’s for all my Italian men.”

  “But, of course,” Bryan said. I didn’t look at him. I’d barely looked at him most of the night. My heart was still sore.

  “And yours?” Gabrielle pointed at my throat. “What’s on yours?”

  I walked her through some of my charms, telling her the same stories I’d told Bryan that afternoon in Washington Square Park of the English major I never became, and the building that I almost moved into.

  “And that one?” Gabrielle touched my movie charm. “Were you almost a movie director?”

  I laughed and shook my head. “No.”

  “Then what is this for? Is it to remind you to stop watching movies?”

  “Sort of.” I looked at the fireplace to avoid eye contact. I’d never told Bryan about the movie camera. I’d never told anyone but Jill what it stood for.

  “Kat, Kat, Kat. A woman like me knows when a woman is lying. What is the movie camera for?”

  I returned my focus to the French civil servant Bryan needed to charm. “It’s for a boy.”

  “And who is this boy?”

  “My first love. He was my first favorite mistake.”

  “Ah. See! I knew it wasn’t just about the cinema. Tell me about him.” Gabrielle placed her elbow on the table and tucked her chin in her hand to wait for a story. I glanced briefly at Bryan. He was watching the two of us.

  “I met him when I was seventeen.”

  “Young love. The best kind.”

  “And he was wonderful. And kind. And funny. He made me laugh. And he kissed like a dream.”

  “So he definitely wasn’t a Frenchman, because they kiss like bores!”

  “We used to go to the movies together all the time, and we made out in the theater.”

  “That is why I say young love is the best kind. You can’t keep your hands off each other.”

  I nodded, as waiters circled the small restaurant, clearing tables, and serving other diners. Low music played overhead, tunes like those sung by the torch singer who lived across from me when I called this city home. Songs of love gone away, or love gone awry.

  “But he broke my heart.”

  “And so you vowed to guard your heart from that kind of boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still pine for this boy?”

  “Yes,” I said, a hitch in my throat.

  “You are beautiful and you are still so young. We cannot have a young, beautiful, smart woman in love with a boy who doesn’t care for her.”

  “He does care for her.” The words came from Bryan. I turned to him, to look into his pine green eyes with their hints of gold. Those eyes practically infiltrated me with the way they knew me. “He always cared for her. He always loved her. He’s madly in love with her. She’s his Love, Actually. She’s his Casablanca. She’s the one he’d stop the
bus for, the one he’d run through traffic for, the one he’d drive like a crazy man to the airport for and run through the terminal to stop the plane. Her name’s above the title for him. She’s the opening credit and the closing credit. She’s the love of his life.”

  Then in a voice so low only I could hear, he whispered forgive me.

  With the white tablecloth obscuring us, I reached for his hand. He laced his fingers through mine, squeezing tight. I squeezed back, and I let go of the hurt. I let go of the ache. I let go of the past.

  “He is not a mistake then,” Gabrielle announced.

  “He’s not. He’s the one,” I said.

  Gabrielle raised her wine glass, now nearly drained of its contents. “So we drink a toast to love, and we drink a toast to business. You have a deal to buy the padlocks from the city of Paris.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Bryan opened the door to the town car he’d reserved. Gabrielle gave him a kiss on each cheek, then got inside. He shut the door, and we both waved as the driver sped off to take her home. We crossed the cobbled street and turned onto the sidewalk running along the river Seine. The muted yellow gaslight from the streetlamps flickered and illuminated our path along the slate-gray ribbon that sliced its way through the city.

  “You were amazing back there,” he said.

  “Oh, you’re too sweet.”

  “I would call you a good luck charm, but I’m pretty sure it’s a hell of a lot more than luck that just went down in there. Brains, talent, beauty, brilliance. Is there nothing you can’t do?”

  “I’m not terribly good at cooking or gardening.”

  He snapped his fingers as if disappointed. Then he turned serious. “Kat, thank you. Thank you so much for what you did.”

  “I’m glad I could be of help.”

  Bryan reached for my hand. “Am I allowed to hold your hand? Or does that break the on ice rules?”

  “I’ll bend on this one for just a moment.”

  We turned onto the Pont du Carrousel that arced over the river. A dinner boat tour floated underneath the bridge, it lights drawing yellow squiggly lines along the water. The Louvre watched over us nearby.

  “Would you bend on another one? Because I’d really like to kiss you by the river Seine.”

  He gave no room to answer as he pulled me close and dusted his lips on me, leaving a soft, barely wet kiss.

  “We should stop. We should be good.”

  “We should. But I’m crazy in love with you, and if makes things better, I’ll never stop telling you that. Besides, I have five years of feeling it but not saying it to make up for. So I’ll say it again. I’m madly in love with you, Kat Harper.”

  “Fine,” I said with a smile. “That earns you one more kiss.”

  He pressed his lips on mine, tracing them with his tongue in a way that made me shiver. I looped my arms around him, underneath his jacket and against his shirt. I walked back a step or two until I met the railing on the bridge and leaned against it. He ran his hands through my hair, moving closer, as the space between us compressed. My body melted into his and I inhaled his cool, clean skin. I wanted to feel him, touch him, taste him, have him. I was crazy to be so close to him. I was foolish to ever think I could have resisted.

  Maybe you could say I was selfish. Maybe you could say I was stupid. Maybe you could wonder why I didn’t wait five more weeks.

  All of that and more was true.

  But I ceased caring. I stopped reasoning. I tossed the rules out the window and threw caution into the river Seine because I was in Paris with the only man I’d ever loved.

  I felt fluttery, twitchy, agitated. I didn’t know if it was fear or desire. Either way, there was no turning back. I was going there with Bryan, going to wherever we were going. I didn’t feel guilty, I didn’t feel naughty, I didn’t feel wrong. I stepped into our future as I broke the kiss. “Take me to your hotel room.”

  I’d never seen a man hail a cab so fast in his life.

  *****

  The taxi slowed down for a light on the rue de Rivoli. I peered ahead, noting the clogged street in front of us, the boulevard packed with cars. We wouldn’t reach the W for another ten minutes at this rate, so I closed the scratched-up partition that separated us from the driver.

  “It’s like you can read my mind,” Bryan said, and returned for a deeper kiss. But I wanted more than kissing and he knew it. He moved his hand across my leg, his fingers dancing down to my inner thigh. I opened my legs a little bit, an inch or two, enough to let him know to keep going.

  He didn’t stop kissing me as he traced the outside of my panties. He’d always made me weak in the knees with his lips alone; now it was like double or triple the pleasure with his kisses and his hand. As I tasted the soft underside of his lips, he dipped his hand inside my panties, first pressing on my pubic bone, then making his way between my legs. He kissed me softly, while his fingers explored me, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, always the right way. I barely moved for the next few minutes, except to subtly push against his hand as his fingers glided over me and inside me and around me. He traced me lightly at first, then harder, pressing down in all the right places, savoring how much my body wanted him.

  “Please don’t stop touching me.”

  “I have no intention of stopping.”

  He’d been a pro on the phone, narrating and guiding me, and bringing me to orgasm with words alone. He was even better in person, his hands like magic hands that knew how to make me moan, or sigh, or cry out as his fingers grazed across me, then narrowed in on the one place I wanted him most.

  “Keep touching me like that. I want to be kissing you while I come.”

  His hungry lips devoured me as he stroked me. My insides were lava, and my body ached for all of him. I wanted to fall away from his mouth, so I could moan, so I could sigh, so I could breathe heavily and say his name. But he kept kissing me, even as my lips fumbled at his, and I writhed, my breaths coming faster. He zeroed in and I bit gently into his lip, managing to gasp out the words I’m coming, as I finally let go of his lips.

  I shuddered, and clasped his hand against me. I stayed there, basking in the aftershocks of the most intense pleasure, of the way the boy I’d fallen for, the man I loved, had brought me to this state. “You didn’t stop kissing me the whole time and there I was, coming while you were kissing me. It was like my two favorite things at the same time.”

  “Good. Because there’s a lot more on the menu tonight,” he said, as the taxi pulled up to the hotel and Bryan handed several bills to the driver. He made a brief stop at the front desk and then we stepped into a waiting elevator. As the doors closed, he placed his hand on the small of my back. We made it to the fourth floor, down the hall, and to his room. He slid the card key in the door, and once inside, I tore off my coat, and he tossed off his jacket.

  His room was heavenly, with a gorgeous gilded mirror and antique nightstands. French windows, fittingly, led to a balcony. But I had little interest in the surroundings when there was a king size bed with a soft, white, down comforter that called my name. I longed to be naked on it, with my legs wrapped around Bryan.

  He stood behind me and ran his hands along my arms. He reached my hands, clasping my fingers in his and whispered in my ear. “Do you have any idea how much I want to make love to you right now?”

  “How much?”

  “More than I have ever wanted anything before.” He swept my hair from my neck and kissed me there, sending tingles of insane pleasure down my spine. I understood the meaning of the word swoon — I had become the very definition. He walked me to the bed, and laid me down, then pulled off my boots. He ran his hands up the inside of my legs. Every touch thrilled me. Every second of contact sent me higher.

  “You have far too many clothes on, Kat.”

  “Take them off. Take them all off.”

  He unzipped my skirt, and gently removed it, placing it on the nearby chair. My sweater was next, and he made that groan I found so sex
y when he saw me in only my bra and panties. Then it was my turn. I unknotted his tie, then began on his shirt, enjoying the release of each button, as I trailed my hands down the white tee-shirt underneath. Soon, his shirt was off, then I pulled the tee-shirt over his head. I took a step back to admire him. His chest was broad and sturdy, his stomach flat and cut, his waist trim and exactly the kind I wanted to hold onto. I ran my teeth over my bottom lip as I looked at his pants, at how turned on he was.

  He unhooked my bra, and touched my breasts in a way that made me even hotter for him, if that were possible. He kneeled down to strip off my underwear, then kissed my ankle and traced a line up my calf to behind my knee. My insides were on fire. My body was a flame. He pressed a palm gently against my belly, guiding me back onto the bed.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, as he returned to my thighs, grazing his tongue between my legs, tasting my desire for him.

  I gasped in pleasure and arched against him, as he traced long, soft, lingering lines up and down.

  “It’s better than on the phone,” I whispered between ragged breaths, as I grabbed at his soft, thick hair. I needed more. My body ached for his mouth on me. His firm hands hugged my thighs, and he made these sounds as if I were the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.

  The way he moved his tongue, the way his lips kissed me made me believe nothing else existed, and that this pleasure was all there was, it was all I felt, all I wanted. To be spread open to someone, to have his mouth devouring you, to say his name, and then to cry out in crazy ecstasy. Nothing could ever be better than this.