“Mon dieu, you are driving me crazy,” he says against my mouth, plunging inside me again and again. “Laney. Laney. Laney . . .”
The sound of my name coming from his lips does something to me, and I start to cry, silent tears that slip from my eyes and dampen my hair. I sniffle and try to wipe my eyes. Gabriel stiffens and stops thrusting.
“What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?”
I shake my head.
“What is it then? Do you regret giving me your virginity?”
“No,” I sniffle. “It’s stupid . . .”
“Tell me, please.”
“When you say my name, it makes my heart hurt with happiness,” I cry, fresh tears filling my eyes. “I love you. I love you more than I thought I ever could love someone, and I just want to stay here, in your arms, listening to you say my name over and over.”
He smiles and moves inside me again. I wrap my arms around him and pull him down so his full weight is on me, his cheek against my cheek, his lips on my ear.
“Je t’aime aussi, Laney.”
I feel him grow inside me, bigger, thicker. One last thrust and he orgasms, his body jerking against mine.
He rolls onto his back, pulls me onto his chest, and I rest my head on his shoulder. He kisses the space between my eyes, murmuring, “Laney.”
Gabriel absently runs his fingers through my hair, and I use my finger to draw figure eights on his naked shoulder. We stay like that for a long time. Finally, Gabriel reaches down and pulls the feather cover over us.
“Bonne nuit, ma fleur,” he yawns, kissing my forehead. “Je t’aime.”
I fall asleep watching the trees outside Gabriel’s window swaying in the breeze, their branches making coral-patterned shadows on the wall and listening to the steady thump of Gabriel’s heartbeat in my ear. La-ney. La-ney. La-ney.
Chapter 29
Laney’s Life Playlist
“Dog Days Are Over” by Florence and the Machine
“Good Morning” by Mandisa
“Money” by The Flying Lizards
TEXT FROM VIVIA PERPETUA DE CAUMONT:
Jesus, Mary, and Shia LaBeouf screaming, “Just do it!” Have you done the bow-chicka-wow-wow with your Frenchman yet? What are you waiting for? Just. DO. It!
“I can’t even right now.” Rigby squeals. “Gabaney finally smooshed! You have to tell us every little detail.”
“Spill it,” Rachelle says. “I have a novel to write.”
“Sorry, Rachelle,” I grin, slipping my sunglasses off my head and onto my nose. “Some things just aren’t fit for print.”
“Ooo!” Rachelle coos. “Now I have to know. Give me a reference here. If it were a scene in a novel, would the novel be a sweet romance or erotica?”
“Yeah,” Rigby teases. “Was it Fifty Shades of Gabriel?”
“Eww!” I wrinkle my nose as if I have just smelled a rotten wheel of Camembert. “That is so gross.”
Rigby laughs.
We are sunning ourselves at Paris Plage, a pop-up beach on the banks of the Seine. Each summer, the city imports sand and palm trees to create a fantastic faux beach for city-bound vacationers. There is even an ice cream stand and a volleyball net. We are lying on our backs with our arms behind our heads and our legs dangling over the ledge. I am wearing a tee that says, “My brain is 80% lyrics” with a pair of high-waist shorts and my fave cat’s-eye sunglasses.
I haven’t spent more than a few minutes with my friends, not since I left them at the café in Oberkampf to go home with Gabriel and let him take my—you know. Since then, I have spent every free minute with Gabriel, painting in the park, riding bikes along the river, reading books at La Belle Hortense, making—you know—in his apartment. Rigby threatened a hunger strike unless I promised to spend time with her today.
“Maybe she’s lying,” Rachelle says. “Maybe it didn’t really happen.”
“You mean, like they went back to his place and made s’mores and watched Disney flicks?” Rigby asks.
“Sure,” Rachelle says. “The original Netflix and chill”
They laugh.
I know they don’t mean anything with their razzing, so I just let them have their laugh. Besides, I don’t really want to share the intimate details of the most important moment in my adult life with—anyone. I feel like I am at summer camp and have captured a lightning bug in a jar. I just want to keep it to myself and enjoy the glow. You know what I mean?
“I almost forgot,” Rachelle says, jumping up and pulling a champagne bottle and paper cups from the basket attached to her rented bike. “I brought some bubbly to celebrate your night of . . .”
“Bedknobs and Broomsticks?” Rigby giggles.
“Free Willy?” Rachelle counters.
“Holes?”
“James and the Giant Peach?”
“Whale Rider?”
This perverted game of making innocent children’s movie titles sound like bad pornos continues even though Rigby is gasping for breath and Rachelle is holding her sides. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Up! Big. Once Upon a Mattress. They have totally ruined Disney for me. I will never be able to listen the Little Mermaid soundtrack again. Like, ever. Sebastian the Crab singing, “Darling, it’s better down where it’s wetter. Take it from me.” No. Just, no. I am about to press my hands over my ears and hum to drown them out when Rachelle slaps my arm.
“The B . . . B . . . Biscuit Eater!” she says, howling.
“Okay, now you are just making titles up,” I say, rubbing my arm. “Disney did not make a movie titled The Biscuit Eater.”
“Yes, they did!”
“What’s it about?”
“Beats me,” Rachelle says, popping the cork out of the bottle of champagne, pours some of the bubbly liquid into a paper cup, and hands it to me. “It’s a wicked old movie. I saw it a long, long time ago. I just remember it has something to do with a boy and a dog.”
I take the paper cup and frown skeptically.
“You don’t believe me?” Rachelle asks, pouring champagne into another cup and handing it to Rigby. “Google it! The little redheaded kid from that TV show Family Affair starred in it. Johnny . . . Weissmuller.”
“Johnny Weissmuller wasn’t in Family Affair!” I say, smiling. “He was that Olympic swimmer who starred in the old-school Tarzan movies. You mean Johnny Whitaker.”
“That’s so random,” Rigby says, chuckling. “How did you even know that name?”
I shrug. “My preschool teacher’s name was Mrs. Beasley, and I totally loved her. When my mom told me Mrs. Beasley was also the name of a little girl’s doll on an old TV show, I made her call the cable company and add TV Land to our lineup.”
“Mister French was it,” Rachelle says. “Wasn’t he?”
I nod my head. “Shyeah, he was like, way, way cooler than Alice from Brady Bunch or Mrs. Garrett on The Facts of Life.”
“Totally.”
We sip our champagne and watch flat-bottomed boats glide down the river, leaving ripples that shimmer like quicksilver in the summer sun. The yogi who teaches my Sunrise Salutations class back in Boulder starts each lesson off by asking us to check in with our bodies and spirits. She says we should make it a habit to read the barometer of our well-being. Today, listening to the bells of Notre Dame tolling in the distance, feeling the warmth of the summer sun and my new friendships, my barometer is fixed to Joyful. I don’t want the needle of my well-being barometer to spin in a different direction.
Rigby nudges me with her shoulder, and a small golden wave of champagne curls over the lip of the cup and splashes onto my thigh, evaporating on my hot skin.
“Whatcha thinking, Lane?”
I smile and shrug.
“If you won’t tell us about your nuit d’amour, at least tell us what you are thinking,” Rigby says. “You look all lit up inside.”
“I feel all lit up inside!” I point my toes and lift my legs, fluttering them up and down with excitement. “My spirit is filled with a million effervescen
t, buoyant golden bubbles. I am drunk on life and love, and I don’t ever want to sober up.”
Rigby puts her arm around my shoulders and squeezes. “I am so glad, Lane. You’re the sweetest person I have ever met. You deserve to be all bubbly and fluttery and in love.”
I drop my head to her shoulder and sigh.
“It looks like we all have something to celebrate.” Rachelle pours more champagne into each of our glasses. “To us!”
“To us!” I laugh, tapping the bottom of my paper cup first to Rachelle’s cup, then Rigby’s. “Wait! What are we celebrating?”
“You’re in love with Monsieur Tall, Dark, and Hot, Matthias asked Rigby to marry him, and I have been offered an amazing part-time teaching position at a college that will still allow me time to write.” She grins. “Life is Chinese takeout and we’ve just been given extra fortune cookies, my friends!”
“Wait!” I shake my head back and forth and make the noise a cartoon character makes when they shake their head. “Rigby, you’re engaged?”
Rigby grins and holds up her hand. An engagement ring with a ginormous diamond is sparkling on her ring finger.
“Oh my god!” I say, grabbing her hand. “He must have stolen one of the Silmarils because that is the biggest, most brilliant stone I have ever seen.”
“Way to work in a Tolkien reference.”
We bump fists.
“I am crazy happy for you and Matthias,” I say, hugging her. “You two were destined to be together, like Aragorn and Arwen. Beren and Lùthien.”
“Frodo and Samwise,” she says.
We sigh.
“Congrats on the job, Dr. Phil,” I say, turning to Rachelle. “You’re going to be an amazing professor. When do you leave?”
“Next week,” she says, her lips turning down in a frown. “I need to be back before the new term begins.”
I stare across the river. Rigby is getting married. Rachelle is leaving Paris to take an important, grown-up job. In two months, I am going to have to pack my daisy suitcase and roll it back to Boulder. Adieu, independence. Adieu, Paris dreams. Adieu, Gabriel. Some of the golden bubbles floating inside me lose their buoyancy and sink, sink, sink to the bottom of my soul.
“What is it?” Rigby asks.
“What is what?”
“Come on, Lane,” she says, narrowing her gaze. “You’re not the only one who can read people. You went from looking lit-up to burnt-out in, like, three seconds. What’s eating you, Gilbert Grape?”
“I came to Paris believing the universe would reveal the path I am supposed to take next, but I have been here four months, and I still don’t know what I am supposed to be doing with my life.” I take a deep breath, hold it in for three seconds, and let it out. “Am I really destined to spend my life living in my parents’ house, taking gigs as Luna the Unicorn just so I can hustle together enough scratch for gas money?”
“What are you talking about?” Rachelle says. “The universe has shown you the path you are supposed to take.”
“It has?”
She nods her head.
I look at Rigby. She nods her head, too.
“I give. What’s my path?”
“You’re already on it.” Rachelle says. “You’ve only been in France for four months, and you have made friends, fallen in love, improved your art, and made a few big sales at the gallery. I think the universe redirected you here for a reason.”
“I can’t stay in Paris.”
“Why not?” Rachelle lies back down, looking at me over the rims of her Ray-Bans. “Give me one good reason why you can’t stay in Paris after your internship ends?”
“I am broke.”
“Bah!” Rachelle waves her hand. “Didn’t you tell me Renoir was so poor when he started painting that he nearly starved?”
“Yes, but—”
“—and didn’t you tell me Van Gogh had to trade his paintings for supplies?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t forget Pissaro!” Rigby shouts. “His wealthy father disowned him after Pissaro eloped with a housemaid. He spent the rest of his life in poverty.”
“So what are you both saying? That I should stay in Paris and trade my paintings for day-old baguettes? What if I end up like Pissaro, impoverished and shivering in the cold, mean streets, ruing the day I ever left the warmth and security of my parent’s home?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Where would I live?”
“You could stay with me,” Rigby says, throwing her arm around my shoulder. “Think of me as your Bazille.”
The wealthy, amiable Frederic Bazille often provided food, shelter, and the use of his studio to his more impoverished artist pals. Rigby offering to be my Bazille is the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me.
“Thanks, Rigby, but . . .”
“But what?”
“My mom and dad would go intercontinental ballistic if I told them I was going to stay in Paris and sponge off my friend.”
“Cut the cord, Lane,” Rigby says.
“Snip. Snip.” Rachelle makes a V with her fingers and mimics a cutting motion. “Snip. Snip. Snip.”
“Okay, okay,” I laugh, pushing Rachelle’s scissor fingers away. “Let’s say I take you up on your generous offer, Rigby. I would still need money for food and art supplies. What would I do to earn my bread?”
“Hmm.” Rigby taps her lips with her finger. “Let me think about this. Think. Think. How could Laney make enough money to support herself in Paris? Come to think of it, how am I going to earn money? I refuse to be Matthias’s dependent spouse.”
“I know!” Rachelle sits up so fast she knocks her paper cup over, the champagne soaking into the sand. “Why don’t you two start a tour company?”
“Who two?” Rigby asks.
“You and Laney.”
Rigby looks at me and I shrug.
“A tour company?”
Rachelle nods.
“What kind of a tour company?” I ask.
“You know how you two are always swapping art factoids? ‘Did you know Renoir stubbed his toe on this corner? Yes, but did you know Degas bought his bread from that boulangerie?’”
I nod my head.
“Well, what if you guided tourists around Paris and showed them all of the places where artists worked and lived and . . .”
“Bought their bread?”
“Exactly!”
Rigby pushes her sunglasses onto her head and stares at me from behind her long Twiggy lashes. “What do you think, Lane?”
“I don’t know,” I say, pushing my sunglasses onto my head. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a brilliant idea!”
“Me too!”
“Serious?”
I nod my head.
“So you are going to stay in Paris. You are going to cut the cord?”
I make a scissoring motion with my fingers.
“Snip. Snip!”
We laugh.
Rachelle stands, brushes the sand from the backs of her legs, and shoves the empty champagne bottle back into her basket. “My work here is done, and now I must return to the bookstore. I have the evening shift.”
We thank Rachelle for her brilliant idea and hug her good-bye, promising to meet up for dinner her last night in Paris.
* * *
An hour later, I am walking beside Rigby as we push our bikes through place des Vosges on our way back to the gallery when I think of my own brilliant idea.
“Rigby!” I stop walking and look down at my beautiful, one-ofa kind Wilde Ride bike with its black-and-white striped paint job and Parisian black-and-white seat. Rigby stops walking and looks over her shoulder at me. “We are going to have to cover a lot of ground on our art tours, aren’t we? From Montmartre to the Tuileries to the Louvre.”
Rigby nods her head.
“Instead of a walking art tour, why don’t we make it a biking art tour?”
“That is a brilliant idea.”
“We
could order the bikes custom from Theo and ask him to paint the bodies like an impressionist painting, like Morisot’s Summer Day or Monet’s Water Lilies.”
“Do you think Theo would do that for us?”
“Of course! I’ll e-mail him as soon as we are back at the gallery and ask him if he will make us twenty-four bikes. That should be enough, shouldn’t it?”
“Definitely.” She laughs. “But where are we going to store all of those bikes?”
“We will find a place,” I say, feeling my confidence surge.
“We are going to have so much fun, and I just know it’s going to be a huge success!”
We start pushing our bikes again and are almost through the park when reality creeps up and smacks me across the face. I stop walking. Rigby stops too. She looks at my face and frowns.
“What’s the matter?”
“Twenty-four custom bikes with baskets and bells are going to cost a lot. Way more than I have in my bank account.”
“How much do you have?”
I frown as I try to remember the last time I checked the balance on my checking account.
“Don’t you know?”
I shake my head.
“Laney! You’ve withdrawn money from your account, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you look at the receipt?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I crumple them up and throw them away without looking. Who needs the pressure? I know I am riding downhill toward the valley of poverty, so I am closing my eyes, lifting my feet, and just going, baby!”
“That’s insane.”
“I set a weekly budget before coming here, and I have been sticking to it, so I should have money left over.”
Then again, I did splurge on pastels from La Maison du Pastel and a new bra and matching panties from a chichi lingerie shop in the Opera District. Then there was that birthday gift for Gunthar and an Exodus comic signed by the illustrator for Gabriel. I might be closer to the valley than I thought.
“Here,” Rigby says, handing me her iPhone. “Check your balance.”
“That’s okay,” I say, swallowing the thick, guilty lump in my throat. “I’ll check the next time I take money out.”
Owning It Page 21
