by Alix Nichols
I peer into his eyes.
“Let me handle it,” he says. “Where and at what time tomorrow were you supposed to meet him?”
“What will you do?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“He doesn’t want money—I’ve already offered.” I wring my hands. “He wants… sexual favors every time he’s in France.”
Raphael’s body tenses against mine.
“I wasn’t going to pay him,” he says. “That’s a short-term solution.”
“Then what? Beat him up?”
He smirks. “For starters.”
“And after that?”
“Impress upon him that if he makes his move, I’ll unleash a pack of top-notch lawyers who’ll eat him alive. It’s illegal to post nudes without a person’s consent.”
“I know that, but what if he posts the video anyway?” I sigh. “He isn’t a reasonable person.”
Raphael shrugs. “OK, let’s say he’s a suicidal nutcase and he posts it. So what?”
“What do you mean, so what?”
“Your little sex tape will join millions of other sex tapes the Internet is teeming with. Who cares?”
I chew my lip. “You don’t?”
He shakes his head.
“Will you watch it if he posts it?”
“Absolutely not.” He gives me a stern look. “What kind of douchebag do you think I am?”
Clearly, not the kind Xavier turned out to be.
“It might ruin my academic career,” I say.
He quirks an eyebrow. “Really? You’re concerned about your academic career? Is that why you’re quitting it?”
I look down, flushing.
“Why don’t you tell me what it is you’re really worried about?” he asks.
“He’s going to send the video to my parents.”
“He can’t force them to watch it.”
“He can trick them into watching it.”
Raphael encases my face with his hands. “You have to come clean before they get it.”
“I just did.”
“And?”
“It was too much for them—the gang bang, the video, Lily…”
“They didn’t know about her?”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure they’ll want to see me again.”
“Of course they will. They’re religious people—they’ll find it in themselves to forgive you.”
I shake my head again and let out a sob.
He draws back and stares me in the eye. “Mia?”
“I hate myself for how much I’ve hurt and disappointed them,” I say. “And it breaks my heart that they’ll stop loving me.”
“They won’t,” he says.
“You don’t know them! You have no idea how high their moral standards are. Things like virtue and uprightness mean everything to them.”
He lowers his brows. “Oh come on.”
I draw away, march to the door, and open it wide. “Please go. You’re making this whole thing harder than it already is.”
Not to mention that I’m about to lose it again, and I don’t want to lose it in front of him.
“Mia, please.”
“Just go.”
He walks out.
I grab a pillow from the bed, press it to my face, and wail into it.
Chapter 34
Barely five minutes into my crying jag, Raphael knocks on my door again.
“Did you forget something?” I ask as I open it.
He steps inside. “You’re right about me not knowing your parents. Maybe they are the kind of people who’d stop loving you.”
I stare at him, a little woozy from the crying.
“But I won’t, Mia.” He draws closer and wipes my cheeks with the pads of his fingers. “I won’t stop loving you.”
The enormity of his words stuns me.
My mouth falls open, and I eye him as if he just confessed to being an android sent from the future to save the human race.
“You look slightly surprised,” he says with a soft chuckle.
“Last weekend on Ninossos,” I say once I find my bearings, “you were talking about our new arrangement. And now you… love me?”
He nods.
“You haven’t loved anyone before,” I say. “How do you know what that feels like?”
“I love my brothers,” he counters. “I love my mother. I even loved my good-for-nothing father. How’s that for a yardstick?”
“It’s different. They’re your family.”
He smiles. “Not that different, actually. Just like with them, I want to give you everything. I want to give you me.”
I snort at his total lack of false modesty.
“Gee, that sounded pompous,” he says. “Let me try again. I want to put an end to ‘Mia versus the world’ and replace it with ‘Mia and Raphael versus the world.’ ”
It’s scary how much I like the sound of it.
“I’ve lost my appetite for food,” he says. “Seriously. That has never happened before. I can’t focus on work, I think about you all the time. It’s like paragliding. There’s this crazy lightness and joy in every bone and muscle of my body.”
My head begins to spin as I soak up his words, and I’m getting drowsier by the second.
“What do these symptoms tell you, Doctor Stoll?”
“I’m not a doctor yet,” I say, feeling incongruously playful. “Even if I stay and get my PhD, I won’t be a medical doctor. So I’m afraid I can’t diagnose you.”
“Then assess my state from an objective historical perspective.”
“Hmm.” I bunch my eyebrows. “I’d say your condition has aggravated since our office fling. But… won’t you miss being with other women?”
“No,” he says without a moment’s hesitation.
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am of how much I need you in my life.” He looks the most sober I’ve ever seen him. “You see, I used to think I was just like Papa, even though Seb kept telling me I wasn’t. But he was right. I’m not.”
“What are you saying?”
“My womanizing… I’ve figured it out. I didn’t do it because I couldn’t help it, or because I was insecure. I did it because…” He hesitates. “You’re going to laugh.”
“Try me.”
“Without admitting it to myself, I was looking for a… soulmate.”
That word is so incongruous coming from Raphael that I can’t help smiling.
“Ludicrous but true.” His mouth curls up. “When you fled to Martinique… er, correction—when you dumped me and fled to Martinique, I had three one-night stands in two weeks.”
My smile fades a little. “That’s a lot.”
“It was pathetic. I felt pathetic. So I went to Nepal for a month. Officially, it was to visit Maman, but in truth, I was hoping for some kind of miraculous healing.”
I hang on his every word.
He shrugs. “At the end of that month, I still missed you so much my chest hurt.”
So did mine.
“After I returned to Paris,” he continues, “I met a woman. She was pretty, kind, and smart.”
I give him a quizzical look.
“It lasted a week.” He stares at me.
I stare back.
Raphael encases my face with his hands. “You’re the only woman with whom the longer it lasts, the longer I want it to last. Please, say you’ll stay.”
I open my mouth then close it again.
God, it’s tempting to say yes.
“I’m not offering marriage, OK?” He runs his hands over my face and through my cropped hair. “I won’t do that unless I’m one hundred percent sure I can be a family man beyond reproach. Just so you know before you decide.”
“I’ll stay,” I whisper.
“What?”
“I’ll stay,” I say louder.
I’m neck-deep in shit, and yet I grin as a crazy lightness and joy fill every bone and muscle of my body.
Chapter 35
“I’ll call you again tomorrow morning,” Raphael says.
“Not before ten, please.” I blow a kiss to my phone screen.
We hang up.
“Was that Raphael?” Pàpa asks, sitting down across the table from me.
I nod.
He shakes his head. “I still can’t believe you hid your pregnancy from us and then hid Lily for six months. Six months, Mia!”
“Don’t be too hard on her,” Màma calls from the blanket on the floor where she’s spent the past two hours fawning over Lily’s every smile and sound.
What I still can’t believe is their reaction.
Màma called me yesterday night, moments after Raphael had left my hotel room to fly to Paris and confront Gaspard. He’d offered to deliver my note while he was at it, but when I called Delphine, she refused to delegate her task. “He’ll be all Raphael’s after I’m done with him,” she promised.
Lily and I were supposed to go back to Paris this morning, but that’s not what happened.
On the phone, Màma told me Pàpa was on his way to bring the two of us home. They’d called all the hotels in and around Estheim—which hadn’t taken long seeing as there are only three of them—and found out where I was staying. My parents wanted to finish the conversation. Besides, they couldn’t bear the idea of me not staying at their house.
As we drove there, my hands shook and my chest felt as if I’d gotten trapped between two jostling elephants. I was on tenterhooks about our impending talk and Raphael’s confrontation with Gaspard. Mine went a lot better than his, judging by the brief account he just gave me.
After Delphine handed the creep my letter, which made him green in the face, Raphael took over and tried to reason with him. When that didn’t work, he threatened him and ended up hitting him right there in the diner. A fistfight ensued. The owner called the cops, and the two were taken to the police station.
That’s what I managed to pull out of him over the phone, and I’m hoping to hear more tomorrow night when Lily and I get back to Paris.
As for my parents, we ended up talking all night, and both of them responded to my revelations with remarkable equanimity. That and an immediate grandparental devotion to Lily. It started with “she’s so sweet” the moment we walked in the door, then quickly escalated to “little angel,” and reached “the most adorable, smartest, and prettiest little girl in the world” three hours later.
Pàpa leans in. “Does Eva know about Lily?”
I nod. “She’s helped me a lot.”
“Does she know about the video?”
I nod again.
“Good,” he says. “She’s level-headed, our Evie. I’m glad you trusted at least one family member enough to share your secrets.”
“Pàpa, please—” I begin.
“We may have been too strict and too uptight as parents, but I thought…” He shakes his head, his expression pained. “Don’t you know how much we love you? How could you doubt we’d take your news with anything but forgiveness?”
I turn to Màma for support, hoping she’ll ask him to drop the subject. Except she doesn’t this time. She picks up Lily and joins Pàpa and me around the table.
“Your dad isn’t blaming you, herzele,” she says.
“Of course not,” Pàpa says. “I’m blaming myself.”
Màma touches my hand. “We just want to understand why you chose not to lean on us when you were in trouble. We need to know what we did wrong as parents.” She pauses before adding. “And I need to know where I failed as a shepherd.”
“You did nothing wrong,” I say. “Nothing at all. It’s just…”
Màma’s eyes bore into mine. “What?”
“There was this woman, Suzelle… She came here asking for your help years ago.”
“How do you know that?” Pàpa asks.
“I overheard your conversations.” I stare at my hands. “You said you’d think about it, and when she returned, you refused to help her. You reported her to the police instead.”
My parents say nothing.
“So I figured your kindness was reserved for those who deserved it, and your forgiveness didn’t stretch to… impure women.”
I look up.
Both of them are shaking their heads, looking at me with a mixture of regret and sympathy.
“We were going to help Suzelle in every way we could,” Màma says. “We’d prepared money, made arrangements for her lodgings, and secured a small job until she’d found her bearings.”
I knit my brows, perplexed.
“Just to be thorough, I asked an old buddy from the vice squad about her,” Pàpa says.
Màma smiles. “Cop habits die hard.”
Pàpa’s mouth compresses into a hard line. “Some of her story checked out. Suzelle wanted to escape from her pimp’s clutches, all right, and she did want to quit her profession. Only it wasn’t to get a second chance.”
“Then why?” I ask.
“She wanted to start her own procuress business.” Pàpa smirks. “When my buddy did a bit of digging, we learned that Suzelle had already recruited two teenage girls from the housing project on the other side of the river.”
I put my hand over my mouth, dazed.
Pàpa nods and taps his hand on the table as if to say, so that’s that.
“I’m going to make your favorite truffle ravioli. Would you like me to cook something apart for Lily?”
“We’re good,” I say. “I brought everything she needs.”
“Did I tell you she’s the most wonderful thing in the world?” Màma asks as Lily digs her little fingers into her grandmother’s cheek.
Thank God I cut her nails last night.
“At least a dozen times,” I say.
Pàpa’s gives me a conflicted look as if he’s on the fence about something.
“What is it?” I ask.
“There’s no pressure, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but will you bring your Raphael here sometime?”
“Only if you’d like to,” Màma adds quickly. “And if he’s up for it.”
“I’d love to,” I say. “And so would he.”
The expression of relief on their faces is priceless.
Pàpa goes to the kitchen, refusing my offer to help him with the cooking, as always.
“He thinks you and I jinx his dishes just by touching the ingredients,” Màma says before taking Lily to the garden to show her Pàpa’s beautiful apples.
I wrap one of Màma’s shawls around my shoulders, sit on the porch, and watch them.
For the first time in years I can breathe even if my future is far from being unicorns and rainbows. Gaspard will likely post the video. Genevieve will continue badmouthing me to Raphael and to everyone in their circle. Raphael may discover he isn’t made for long-term relationships, after all.
Which is why I still haven’t told him he’s Lily’s dad. I hate the idea he might think Genevieve had a point and I’m using our baby to tie him to me.
There’s also the little matter of my upcoming defense, which I might fail, seeing how little I worked lately.
I’m aware of all that, yet I’m not worried. And that’s because whatever force hurtles me over the edge, and however high the cliff, I know I won’t splinter and burst to pieces.
There’s enough love around me—and in my heart—to cushion my fall.
Epilogue
It’s three days before Christmas, and Lily has a cold.
She’s all stuffed up, but the bright side of her congested nose—at least from my perspective—is that when she closes her eyes after my lullaby, I know for sure she’s asleep.
Because she snores.
And that’s my cue to tiptoe out of her room.
It’s been three months since Raphael knocked on my door and everything accelerated.
In October, Gaspard posted the video on the Internet and emailed it to Màma’s official address despite Raphael’s vigorous warnings.
She deleted the mail with
out opening.
As for the World Wide Web, I can only hope my sex tape will drown in the noise until we’ve forced Gaspard to withdraw it. Raphael has sued him on my behalf. The case is still pending, but it’s clear we’ll win. First, because what Gaspard did was against the law. Second, because Raphael hired two hotshot attorneys while Gaspard was unable to afford any.
For once, there’s fairness in the unfairness of life.
In November, I defended my thesis and earned the right to be called “doctor of philosophy.”
Hello, everyone, I’m Mia Stoll, PhD.
In the days that followed, I landed the maître de conférences job.
Two weeks ago, Lily and I moved in with Raphael. Before we did that, he’d had to make a few… er, a gazillion adjustments to his lifestyle, as well as to his open-concept loft.
He says it was no trouble at all.
I have my doubts, but I like to think he says that because having us here makes him forget the inconveniences.
He and Genevieve had a falling out shortly after the weekend on Ninossos. He won’t give me the details, but I suspect she trashed me again and he decided he’d had enough. Three days after Lily and I moved to Raphael’s place, Genevieve’s daddy bought her an apartment in Hollywood, where she’ll try her luck as a producer for one of the studios.
I would’ve given her a “free tip” to specialize in evil witch biopics if we were on speaking terms.
Quietly, I enter the living room and head to the couch where Raphael sits, reading.
I’m about to confess that he’s Lily’s dad.
Actually, “confirm” would be a better word because I’m sure he knows. We’ve never talked about it, but some time ago I stopped lying about her age, and he took to calling her “my little flammkuche.”
He must know.
“Of course I do,” he says after I fess up. “But I wanted to hear it from you, once you were ready.”
“Thank you for your patience.”
“You’re welcome,” he says. “Actually, I didn’t mind your silence so much. It allowed me to get used to the idea and readjust my priorities.”
