We stand facing each other, Maguy measuring the truth of my words. She nods and throws a sunny smile at me and I conclude I’ve passed the test.
“Go and join le Monsieur,” she orders. “Dinner is served at eight thirty, so you have plenty of time to solve the problems of the world together.”
Outside, the temperature has dropped and I pull my shawl tighter around my shoulders. The mistral—the Northwesterly wind that blows down the Rhone Valley into Provence—has awoken and goose bumps rise over my arms. I’ve showered and changed into some low-key clothes: A maxi-dress, no make-up but I’ve blow-dried my hair. I’m all for the ‘natural’ look, but my locks are one of the few things I’m vain about. I also wear the vintage pearl necklace and matching bracelet I brought with me. The pearls are fake, but I like their soft caress against my skin.
I peer over the railings at the edge of the terrace and find Zach sitting on the other end of the beach. He has chosen one of the large rocks we were aiming for during our aborted swimming race. Beside the choppy waters, his arms fold around his knees, his gaze fixed at a distant spot on the horizon.
I climb down the steps that snake down the cliff and make my way across the beach. In my flip-flops, I have no fear of the cobbles anymore. When I reach Zach, a gust of wind causes my dress to billow around me. I gather it in one hand and take the one Zach extends to help me sit down beside him.
He welcomes me with a light kiss on the back of my hand. Years living in Europe has left its imprint on him.
“You look beautiful.” His expression is so sincere.
I move to readjust my curls that are dancing rock ‘n’ roll in the wind to hide how flustered I feel. “Thank you” is my plain answer. Damn, where is my wit when I need it? “I’ve just had a heart-to-heart with Maguy.”
“And you survived unscathed?” He feigns checking me out.
“She revealed some interesting facts.”
“Such as?”
“Well, apparently, there’s this girl back in the States you’ve always planned to seduce. I wonder who it might be.”
Zach looks away like a teenage boy in front of his first crush. The reaction is unexpected and I feel like a bully.
His hand covers mine, but he doesn’t raise his eyes to meet mine. “After…” his voice breaks. He clears his throat. “After my mom’s death, after we parted ways, I couldn’t hold myself together. I finished Harvard Law because it gave me something to focus on every day, but once it was done I had to get away.” I keep my mouth shut to allow him time to finish. “I went to Sweden and the distance from home helped me process the shit show of that summer with my parents, you, and…” He stops and tightens his jaw.
“I can’t imagine anyone could go through what you went through then and manage to keep it all together. Anyone.”
“I know that now, but I needed to heal away from home, away from you. For my own sake and for yours. It was only then, when I started getting my life together, when my business was taking off, that I finally let myself think about you again.” He lets out a short laugh then shakes his head.
“What?” I prompt.
“I let myself remember what you had meant, what you could have been… what we could have been together.”
“Why didn’t you contact me?”
“Because I had no right to. I still don’t… I—”
I hush him with the tip of my finger. “I want to move on, Zach. What happened, happened. We were both younger and it’s not as if our parents were any help. I mean, if you exclude a black Amex.”
“Lenor, there are things you need to know. Things I should have told you before making love to you.”
“Then let me find them out by myself.”
“It’s more complicated than you could ever—”
The truth is that I’m still scared of the past. I want to flee away from it as fast as I can. “I don’t want to talk about that summer again but…if we really have to get into the past, then what happened between you and Clara?”
“Clara?”
I nod tartly. “You two clearly have some shared history. You said I should know more about you and this is one of the things I want to clear.”
Zach waves his hand at me. “I know she hasn’t been very welcoming to you. Deep down she’s scared of losing her closest friend. We were together for a while, but it didn’t last.”
“Why not?”
“I… I liked her, but I didn’t want to fall for her. I couldn’t love her the way she loved me.”
I square my shoulders and my hand leaves his to rest on my lap. “I guess that’s the fate of the girls who cross your path. None of us are good enough to graduate from friend-with-benefits to The One.”
When he starts again, it’s as if he hasn’t heard anything that I’ve just said. “What I felt for Clara, it helped me to figure out what I felt for you and to understand the differences.”
“The differences?”
“Between connecting with someone, getting along well, even trusting her, and… sharing the same soul, the same heart.”
My mouth shapes into an ‘O’ and I forget to breathe. Suddenly, the waves crash more loudly at our feet. Zach’s gaze stays glued on me.
“I’ve scared you,” he says.
I shake my head but still don’t utter a word.
It doesn’t deter him. “I wasn’t strong enough to know it was love that summer, but I got it in the end. I hadn’t seen you for a year and you were still within me, in what I heard, what I said and what I saw. You were everywhere. I was talking to you in my head and even sometimes out loud.” He laughs and runs his hand through his hair. “That was when I knew that either I’d turned completely batshit crazy or that you were much more than my best friend, more than a summer fling. That’s when I knew you were My One.”
I swallow hard and have to refrain from pinching myself. So many times, I fantasized about Zach having an epiphany about me, about us. I had it all planned out. Him going down on his knee, apologizing for all the hurt he’d caused, begging me to forgive him and to take him back. Of course, I would take the high moral road while kindly, but firmly letting him down.
But I have no intention of letting him down. Not now. Not ever. Life is short and I want him in it. “Why didn’t you come to me then?”
“I had to prove to myself I’d become a better person. I had to sort myself out. And even that wouldn’t have been enough to make up for what I did.”
A tidal wave of emotions—anger, regret, hope—crashes over me and I cry out, “We could have figured this out together.”
Zach places his palm on my cheek and I lean against him, not even trying to hide the tears welling up in my eyes. “I wanted to be there for you, Lenor, bring you strength instead of burdening you with my own issues. It took me years to get to the point where I thought I was ready, but then… then it was too late.”
“Last April, at my engagement party,” I continue, my voice all robotic, “you came to see me in the Hamptons.”
“I did. I managed to gather my courage and turn up at your house. That’s when I found out you had moved on. For good.”
“Who told you?”
“Your mother.”
My mother, once again meddling in my life. “Still, you could have tried to talk to me.”
“I chose not to. It was the most difficult choice I’ve ever made. It wasn’t about getting you back. I wanted to apologize for the things I said, I did… I wanted to come clean.” His fingers start playing with a wisp of my hair. “But you’d finally turned the page on us and I’d only have been stirring some old shit. That might have helped me, for sure, but not you. That’s why I’m so grateful—to God, the Universe, hell, even to Josh for screwing it up with you. Having you here with me in the place I love the most… I had given up on that dream.”
Happiness fills me through and through. I inhale the feeling, each breath building it up until it knocks out the lump in my throat. I let out a strangled sound and tears streak dow
n my cheeks. My sight blurs and I shut my eyes. I feel his lips on mine. A brush. A caress. A blessing. His fingers trace an imaginary line down from my hair to my jawline, my neck, the side of my breast, and all the way down to the curve of my tummy. His touch there feels unexpected. The small circles he draws over the material of my dress unlocks my remaining fears.
I kiss Zach back. If there’s one time for a true French kiss, it’s now. I give it my all. There are words I can’t say yet. They’re carefully tucked inside my heart. I want him to guess them through a flick of my tongue, the touch of my fingers on each side of his face, and each of my whispers.
* * *
I’ve been dozing for hours now but my eyes are fixed to the canopy of the poster bed above me. Outside the night clouds must have parted away because the moonlight starts spreading its silvery hues over our bedroom, over his naked body.
He lays on his front, one arm crossed underneath him, his face hidden in the crook of his elbow, the other one stretched over my stomach, his hand curled around my waist. He hasn’t let go of me since we made love. Now with the moonlight as my stalking ally, I indulge in the sight of him. His broad shoulders. His muscular back. His rock-hard butt. I can never have enough of him. My thirst for him can never be quenched, my hunger for him never satiated.
Dear Lord, I sound like Hannibal Lecter.
Unease spreads from my head down across my body. Five years of my life have been erased. Josh has been erased. I’m back to how the eighteen-year-old me felt for Zachary Murdoch. Times ten. Because the man lying next to me isn’t the immature, selfish boy he was back then. He’s a good man, a man who has worked for what he wants, a man who fights for his friends, a man who I can rely on.
Have I fallen too fast?
Slowly I wiggle out of his hold and roll to the edge of the bed to sit up. On my tip-toes, I cross the small room towards the open window, praying the old wooden floor won’t creak and wake him up. I place one hand against the railing, the other starts fiddling with the pearl necklace Zach has wanted me to keep on even after he undressed me entirely.
The mistral has died down and there’s only a salty breeze to caress my naked body, every part of my naked body. There’s no vis-à-vis so, hopefully, I’m not flashing my lady’s parts to any unfortunate neighbor. But the other guests have left in the late afternoon anyway and we’re the only one staying tonight. Beneath the window, the waves of the Mediterranean come crashing against the cliff. The rocks at the bottom of it are so white they shimmer through the now moonlit night.
La Calanque is exactly like Zach described it when he cooked lunch for me, after my first night at Le Duke. Everything and more. And it’s ours, at least for a little while.
I hear some shuffling behind me but don’t turn back. I let him come to me. When he does, it’s the most satisfying feeling in the world. His hand circles around my waist, then slides to my front. He pulls me back against him and I feel him harden against me. His other hand lifts my hair and moves it over my shoulder so that he can nuzzle his mouth along the line of my neck. Delicious tickles rush down my spine to settle and warm up the space between my thighs.
“I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“I’m glad you did,” he mumbles. It’s the sexiest mumble in the all history of mumbles.
When he stops worshipping my neck, I’m very close to begging him to get back to it, to my neck or anywhere his mouth takes him, as long as it’s to me. But I let him nestle his jaw against my cheekbone, his faint stubble teasing my skin.
I can’t hold the next words inside me. “I didn’t know.”
“What didn’t you know?”
“That it—this—could be so good.”
“And by this, you mean…?”
“Making love. I thought I knew, but I didn’t.”
“Knew what?”
“That it could make me forget everything, but each second you are inside me. To live for that very second as if it’s the last one and then leap to the next because I know that next second will give me even more... of you.”
He grows harder against me and I feel like a warrior. His hold on me tightens and his thumbs start tracing circles on both sides of my belly-button.
“Duchess, the truth is, I had no idea either.”
“Don’t—don’t say things you don’t mean. I wasn’t fishing for compliments.”
“I’m telling the truth. Sex has never done that for me. It has never made me happy. Deliriously, peacefully happy.”
I sigh, but the respite doesn’t last. Zach tilts my hips backwards, making my upper-body bend forward. He makes sure that my hands are holding the railing. Then, with one of his arms wrapped around my stomach, the other stretched between my thighs from behind, he lifts my right leg and parts it sideways.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to experience that delirious, peaceful happiness once again.”
He sinks inside me and my groan matches his. He stays still first, but when he starts moving, my sight becomes blurry, the light of the moon fractioning into a gazillion spotlights. Zach makes love to me from behind. He fills me. He makes me scream. He makes me moan. He makes me beg for more and he gives more to me. I give everything to him.
The Mediterranean and the moon are our only witnesses and I hope they enjoy the show.
We kiss and make love for the next three days hidden in la Calanque de Semara. We talk and cry and laugh. We take pictures. Fractions of our bodies. Fractions of our hearts. We eat Maguy’s Bouillabaisse and drink Jean-Claude’s Bandol wines. I can still taste their hints of vanilla and cinnamon when we start our drive back to Paris.
Back to reality.
Chapter 21
ZACH
East Hampton ~ 25th August, five years earlier.
It’s the first time I’m setting foot in what used to be my parents’ country club. Technically it still is, but my mother hasn’t dared show her face here yet.
I pretty much grew up here. The first time I nailed a girl—the day of my fifteenth birthday—was in the women’s changing room. Risky, but rewarding. It’d been with a waitress, one on a summer job. She was a couple of years older than me, with enough notches on her headboard to veer the experience from awkward to enjoyable. So enjoyable that we repeated it a couple of times a day all summer.
Nelly—the waitress—and Duchess have been my longest relationships to date, although I haven’t practiced any of the moves Nelly introduced me to with Lenor yet.
I reach the terrace overlooking the tennis courts set against each other like dominos. Strategically placed vines shade the deck tables and chairs dotted around from the harsh sun. This summer has been hot, weather-wise… and Lenor-wise.
I can hear the dull thud of tennis balls bouncing on the grass courts and of rackets hitting them back and forth. I lean over the railing, out of the shade, and blink. I grab my Ray-Bans from the back pocket of my jeans and slide them on.
Lenor is playing doubles. Her and her dad against that English loser and another man, probably that English loser’s father. Duchess may be the reserved type in everyday life, but put her on a tennis court and she’s a warrior. Freddie is finding this out at his own expense. She’s just aced him. Unfortunately for that dickhead the ball bounces straight into his stomach at speed. Pity it missed his tiny balls, but I enjoy his yelp of pain. In Lenor’s own words: What a wuss! I let out a satisfied chuckle.
“You really don’t like that boy.”
My hands tighten around the railing. The comment has come from behind me. It’s followed by a soft exhalation of air and it’s not long before my nostrils detect the aroma of cigarettes.
Louise is sitting at a table in the rear corner of the terrace. Her legs are crossed, opening a gap in her wraparound dress right up to the top of her thigh. I bet Louise Carrington has had many dicks stirring since she stepped out at the country club.
“No, I don’t,” I snap back.
I’m a lot like Switzerland. I don’t usually get invo
lved in other people’s shit. But I don’t like how this lady treats Lenor. Louise gestures for me to take a seat at her table. A quick scan of the area around us and I realize that we’re alone.
A tall glass stands on the table in front of her. “I’d offer you a Vodka Martini but I’m sure you’ll stick to my daughter’s clean-living policy.”
I sit down, keeping my back stiff against the rear of the chair, and don’t reply. Out of politeness, I remove my glasses. Louise doesn’t look awkward at all. I also know how to pull a damn good poker face and that’s all she’s getting from me right now. She sips her drink and I have to tear my gaze away from her lips lapping gently at the rim of the glass.
I’m not a fool. The woman is hitting on me. She’s not a fool either, and she knows whatever there is between her daughter and me, it’s not platonic. Although she probably thinks we’re at it like rabbits. Not true.
She brings the cocktail stick with olives to her mouth, gently parts her lips and pulls one of them off. She momentarily holds it between her pearly white teeth, before swallowing it with a flick of her tongue.
She’s putting on quite a show. For my eyes only. She peers at me with her bedroom eyes and I’ve got to keep reminding myself I’m not ogling at a stripper giving me a lap dance. Louise has never done ‘demure’, but I’ve never really been at the receiving end of her interest either.
A smile curves at a corner of her mouth as if she can see through me as well as I can see through her. Still, she breaks eye contact and I can’t help taking that as a victory.
A short-lived victory.
“So what’s happening between you and Eleanor?”
“You’ve already asked me that question.”
She flutters her fingers in the air and rolls her eyes. “Yes, you told me. We’re good friends. We don’t need to go out to have fun. Blah-blah-blah…” The punch line is one more sip of her martini and then, “Cut the crap. Are the two of you having sex?”
Her question makes me flinch and I lean forward to get back my composure. “I appreciate your interest, Louise, but if you’re that interested in knowing what’s going on between Lenor and me, you should ask your daughter yourself.”
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