by Sage Rae
“The rest of the world seems to think so,” Charlotte spewed.
“Tell me you’ll work on my villa, Charlotte,” Peter said. He ducked forward, smacking his palms together. He acted like the kind of man who’d already thought he had won.
“I’m not the meek girl you left behind, Peter,” Charlotte said. Her voice was low, raspy. It almost didn’t belong to her. She felt it toiling down in her stomach, curling like a cat.
“I know that. And I wouldn’t have asked you if I thought you were,” Peter said. “I’m giving you an interesting project. A chance to really make your mark on the architecture world. I mean, think of it. Near-ancient mansion in the south of France, belonging to Peter Bramwell. If you don’t fuck this up—which I don’t think you will, knowing you—you could be as famous as any other architect the world-over, in a year’s time. What do you say?”
Charlotte’s brain spun. She felt in-tune with the shift of the earth, could almost feel them spinning far too fast around the sun. She was suddenly twenty-six years old. But in many ways, she was still that twelve year old. Once, she’d glanced up, mid-way through a chalk drawing, and watched as Peter Bramwell poured a bucket of water over her creation.
Jesus, she wouldn’t fuck with this guy again.
Charlotte reached into her purse, drawing out a small pack of cigarettes—the slim variety. She stuck one between her lips, lit it. In France, it wasn’t necessarily illegal to smoke indoors, but she generally didn’t. Thought it was rude. But in this case, she needed a jolt of nicotine through her veins. She needed to feel powerful over this horrendous excuse for a man.
“You know what I think, Peter?” she said. She snapped the lighter, making the end of the cigarette glow orange. She puffed the smoke toward his face. Peter hardly blinked. Perhaps he wasn’t truly human, she marveled. Perhaps he was just a monster, come to penetrate the walls of her dream.
“What’s that, Charlotte?” he asked.
“I wouldn't fucking work with you, in any capacity, if you were the last man on earth. And that, my friend, is for certain,” she said, her words sizzling. She jumped up from the chair, turned her slim frame toward the door and marched out, allowing cigarette smoke to spew from her lips. Every single muscle on her body was tight, anxious. And it wasn’t until she was outside, far down the block, with the Mediterranean breeze wafting around her ears and letting her curls toss, did she allow herself to exhale. She staggered forward. Her cigarette dropped to the ground, into the grass, and she gripped her knobby knees.
Peter Bramwell. Peter Bramwell had sauntered into the south of France, a devil in almost every respect. And he’d tried to tempt her back into his life. She wouldn’t fall into it. She was stronger, in every way better.
Yet of course, her body ached with regret, with a strange, horrific desire for him to rip her white dress from her body and put his lips around her tits, draw his tongue over and over her nipples until she cried for him to fuck her, to shove her agains the wall and make her cum.
When Charlotte arrived home, Manu was already back, stationed at his familiar plot on the leather couch. His pants were tossed to the side, and he wore only boxers, allowing his growing belly to fold over the top. He was still relatively healthy, not overweight exactly, but going in that direction. Charlotte sensed that when he was 35, rather than his current 28, his body might fight back and turn blobbish. And she, Charlotte, would probably be left with a roommate even less able to clean out the refrigerator and take out the trash.
Even less than now, which seemed remarkable. He didn’t do much. At the moment, as he strummed through the television stations with a bored thumb, a platter of cheese and bread sat perched at his side. The bread was half-nibbled, the crumbs forming little constellations on his thighs.
“Bon soir!” Manu called, his eyes still on the television. “Did you kill the meeting?” He spoke with a glimmer of sarcasm, as if he didn’t give a fuck if her interview went well or what. He obviously didn’t realize, or care, that that interview might have been the difference between them being able to afford rent and not.
But whatever, right?
“Oh, it was… It was okay,” Charlotte said. She stretched out beside him on the couch, drawing a pillow over her tits and letting her chin fall into its softness. Beside her, Manu popped another beer, guzzling it. She could hear the bubbles bursting in his throat.
“We’re going to be good, aren’t we, Manu?” she asked, pressing her lips together immediately after. It was a rarity that she allowed herself to seem so vulnerable in front of anyone, including her older brother (with whom she’d been living in that very apartment for the previous four or so years—since Peter had forced Manu out of his own goddamn company). And immediately, she forced herself out of it. For just now, Manu gave her a beady-eyed look, a fearful one, that alerted her that she had to be the sturdy one of the two. She couldn’t allow herself to falter.
But she didn’t cover it up with words. She simply allowed her question to float on between them, and then out the window, toward the Mediterranean Sea. She marveled that, assuredly, Peter Bramwell was staying at some high-end penthouse or apartment building, very close to where she and Manu hunkered together, counting pennies. How different their lives might have been, if not for his arrogance. How different their lives might have been, if only she and Manu had been enough for him, when it had mattered.
Charlotte- Age 21
Charlotte, age 21, scampered along the edge of the Parisian block, her black heels teetering on the edge of the curb. A car sliced past her, nearly cutting into her. She lifted her fist and shook it at the driver, saying some particularly dirty French words to him. Traffic in Paris was a bitch, even worse than the traffic she’d grown up with in New York.
Just now, she walked from her class at the Sorbonne. It was the last of the summer. Yet, typical to Parisian summer, a rain had begun to patter, making great rivers flow on either side of the cobblestone road. Just above her, the Eiffel Tower hovered, poking into the grey clouds. But inwardly, her stomach was warm and bubbly, anxious with the events of the day. With her vacation, came a much bigger occasion. Today, her brother, Manu, and his best friend—the electric Peter Bramwell, were arriving in Paris to visit her. To party. To celebrate the fact that their company, one of stock exchanges and some other bullshit Charlotte (an architect and an artist at heart) didn’t give a damn about, was moving up in scale—becoming one oft-discussed in Forbes and other high-ranking monetary magazines.
And regardless of whether she cared, it was obvious that her brother and his best friend, that dashing man, were going to be millionaires. They were yanking themselves out of their mid-level upper-class and into the upper echelon of living. And they were doing it on their terms.
As children, Charlotte had been a shadow behind Peter and Manu. She’d ridden her bike behind them, trying to leap over curbs and hustle up behind them, calling their names. “MANU! PETER! WAIT UP!” But always, they’d burned fast and wild, away from her. She’d landed flat on her ass several times, tearing her dress, in her efforts to try to find them again. Her mother, the eternally French Miriam, had scolded her after this, telling her not to ruin herself for the boys. “It’s a good lesson, mon cherie. Do your own thing. Not what anyone else wants you to do.”
But when Charlotte had been fifteen, Peter and Manu had run off to NYU together—just up town, yet a million lifetimes away from her. And gradually, they’d worked up the ranks at the university, becoming pillars at the business school, and ultimately creating their own stock exchanges company. The very one they currently manned, now. And while Charlotte had ached to follow them, she’d heard her mother’s voice in her ear, telling her to craft her own destiny. To the Sorbonne she flew, back to her French roots, and she soon found herself under a mountain of architecture drafts, learning about historical structures, and—yes, occasionally—on dates with boring Frenchman.
None of them “did it” for her the way Peter Bramwell had, back in early high
school. He was handsome, yes. But so were Frenchmen. There was something brash and cowboy-ish about him—something that made you certain he would take every goddamn risk to get what he wanted. That was alluring to any girl, certainly. But for Charlotte—who had a similar volatility in her, she knew—that was the end-all, the be-all, the reason to love freely and openly.
She was in love with Peter Bramwell, and she’d always been. In fact, she was still a virgin, perhaps because she’d never allowed herself to give herself totally over to any other person. How could she, possibly, when Peter was so clearly the one to love, the one to open her heart and legs to, for the first and only time…
And now that he was coming to visit her in Paris…she felt her opportunities were wide open, that her heart was more apt to flutter and her brain was afire, bouncing from one idea to the next.
Charlotte took a quick train back to her neighborhood, the trendy district near Belleville, and ducked out from the metro and into the rain. As she pushed her umbrella over her head, the wind caught it, bolting it upward. The noise shattered in her ear. She perched at the edge of the steps, trying to right her umbrella, when she heard someone call her name.
“CHARLOTTE! BONJOUR! HEY!”
Charlotte spun to the right, her eyes alight and meeting with Manu’s, on the other side of the road. As she moved, her feet slipped against the steps, causing her to crash to her knees. Immediately, she dropped the umbrella to the ground. It fled down the steps, all the way to the bottom, near the train. And she tumbled, as well, falling first one step, then another. She flailed, her hands hunting for the railing. But the rain was quick, and the metal was difficult to grip. She cried out.
Within seconds, she felt a firm hand on hers, gripping her. She gazed up, into the dark eyes of Peter Bramwell, the warm, excitable eyes of Peter Bramwell, who gazed down at her not as he used to, when they’d been children, but like a man encountering a woman—like a man who was hungry for her, aching for what she could give him. Aching for what their bodies could do together.
“Mademoiselle Charlotte, now, what the hell do you think you’re doing down there?” Peter asked. He reached for her other hand, then helped her to her feet.
Charlotte’s heels teetered on the edge of the steps, and she nearly tumbled again, having to grip him. Her hands tipped into his stomach, feeling the strength of his abdomen. Even in the year or so since she’d seen him, mid-way through the summer the previous year, it seemed he’d added even more muscle. He was, what, 24 years old? And he smelled, and looked, like a man.
“Don’t fall all over again, Charlotte. I didn’t run across the road just to have you slip out of my grip like that,” Peter said, chuckling. He drew his arm around her, guiding her up the steps. They walked into the now-pounding rain, finding Manu quivering, drenched, at the top of the staircase. “Don’t worry, mate. I got her.”
Mate? Charlotte remembered that the two of them had been living in London for the previous six or so weeks, running from business meeting to business meeting, collaborating with bigger businesses. She felt a wave of fear, knowing that Peter and Manu had had a world of experiences, all without her. Her mind flashed with images of the possible women Peter had slept with, of even the women he’d sat next to on the train. She ached with jealousy.
She hated that about herself. That she was so apt to feel jealous. It seemed that that meant she was a lesser woman. Her mother, certainly, hadn’t ever had a jealous thought. It wasn’t a French woman’s right to be jealous, as she was meant to have everything a man could possibly want. She was a stack above.
Or, she was meant to be.
Manu reached out and kissed his sister three times—right cheek, left cheek, then right cheek again, as was their way, from Montpellier. His eyes were warm upon her, just beneath his streaked-down hair, dripping with rain. “Let’s get a drink, if you all don’t mind,” he said, shivering. “Just another day in Paris, huh?”
They hustled into a nearby bar, huddling close together in a booth and ordering beer. Charlotte found herself in the booth alongside Peter, with her brother across from them. It felt natural, something that didn’t need to be planned. Even Manu didn’t seem to question it. He brought his elbows over the counter, smacked his palms together. Then, Manu said:
“We’ve really done it, sis. We met the million-dollar mark,” he said.
Charlotte’s jaw dropped. Her hand shot out toward Peter’s arm, gripping it. she felt at his hair, the coarseness of it. Her skin felt electric when she touched him. This was the only fact that her brain was currently spinning with. But instead, she knew she needed to speak about the million dollars—something she couldn’t give two shits about, if she was honest.
“That’s incredible. I mean, you guys are moving up so quickly…”
“We really are,” Manu said, nodding. “It’s all Peter’s business intellect. I crack the numbers, sure. But Peter’s at every meeting like a shark.”
“Come on, now,” Peter sighed, arching his thick eyebrow in a provocative way. “Just because they weren’t expecting such fucking American charisma, doesn’t mean I’m really that spectacular…”
“All right, all right. Bragging on yourself is pretty unfashionable in Europe. We’re a bit more humble around here,” Charlotte said, flashing a smile.
“Oh, so we have to play by different rules here? Let me remind you where you come from, Mademoiselle,” Peter teased. “You were a ragamuffin girl growing up in Greenwich Village, just like the rest of us. And don’t you forget it.”
After a few drinks, the three of them buzzed out of the bar. The rain had fallen off, but the grey clouds remained: thick and stoic above them. Charlotte’s fingers slipped along Peter’s as they walked, still sizzling the moment they touched. Peter didn’t seem to react. Perhaps he didn’t notice? The thought of this made Charlotte’s heart drop. She thought about the fact that all of life is perspective. That nobody could ever truly know what your experience was. How she longed for Peter to jump into her brain, to see how vulnerable she could make herself to him at this moment…
“I live over here,” Charlotte said, realizing she had to jump into action. She leafed through her pocket and drew out jangling keys, popping them into the keyhole. She marched them up the winding staircase, all the way to the top of the five-foot walk-up. And then, they entered her studio apartment, with its mattress that curved inward in the center, and its sloppy-looking couch.
“This isn’t going to work for us,” Peter said immediately, letting out a cackle.
“What do you mean?” Charlotte asked. She was surprised how quickly the tears sprung to her eyes. She thought, surely, that they’d met other women to stay with. That they had another party to attend, somewhere else across the city.
But in actuality, Peter strung his arms around Manu and around Charlotte, clinging them close to him. In his cowboy voice, he echoed out across the alleyways, across the blue and grey Parisian skyline. “WE’RE FUCKING MILLIONAIRES, babies. We aren’t going to stay in a place like this. Not fucking today. Not fucking ever.”
Not fucking ever. Charlotte packed a bag, flinging dresses and shirts and shoes into a suitcase while Manu and Peter drank the rest of the wine she had in her fridge. The night spread out before them, pumping adrenaline through their veins. “We’re going to stay in the most expensive hotel! We’re going to order champagne and pop the cork off the fucking roof! We’re going to fucking OWN Paris, Manu!” Peter cried, drawing his arm around his best friend’s shoulder.
In Charlotte’s eyes, she couldn’t imagine a better duo than Manu and Peter. It just fit, as she’d seen them tag-teaming life since they’d been around twelve or thirteen years old. She loved that things could work this way, like a novel writing itself into the future. Characters always affected other characters. Life bred more life.
And so, she assumed, it would always be.
Popping Bottles
Charlotte’s little closet-like apartment in Paris was a disheartening sight
indeed, especially after the few weeks Manu and Peter had had back in London: darting from million-dollar-bill parties to luxurious affairs at high-end restaurants, shaking hands with the upper-echelon of London’s elite and generally counting themselves amongst them (now that they’d signed the papers). But Charlotte was unlike any other girl he’d seen back in London, or New York, for that matter. She no longer seemed like the bright-eyed girl longing to keep up with him and Manu, back in the States. Rather: she was long-legged and occasionally too intelligent for her own good, her tongue quick to lash out with a snarky comment (although, he was incredibly aware that she was trying to impress him. This, in and of itself, was attractive to him, as well).
Now, Peter led Manu and Charlotte across Paris, toward the centre, where he strutted up the steps of a high-end hotel. Charlotte’s bag bucked up on the steps behind them, clunking. Manu cast his elbow into Peter’s, and he grunted: “I heard of a big party in the 17th, tonight, man. And these Parisian women, I mean. They’ll be all over us. I saw that we were written up in the top Paris newspaper today, Le Monde. You’ve heard of it, yeah? They’ll know our faces.”
“Fuck it, Manu. They’ll feel our money when we enter the room,” Peter grunted back. But in his heart, he felt sudden hesitation. Something told him that he wanted to hang back, sit alongside Charlotte that evening. He wanted to pepper her with questions, flirt with her the way he’d learned to flirt with some of the more elegant women of higher society, just to see how she’d react. Something behind those eyes was a bit too bright, a bit too sunshiny—as if, he dared to wonder, she was still a virgin.
For a moment, he half-considered asking Manu if she actually was a virgin. But he knew this was inappropriate. Plus it wasn’t likely that Manu knew the truth. It wasn’t like brothers and sisters discussed those sorts of things.
In the lobby, Peter slid his credit card across the counter, making eyes at the French receptionist. “We’ll have your biggest penthouse suite,” he said. “For three nights. And we’ll have it stocked with champagne and whiskey, s’il vous plait. As soon as you can make it ready for us.”
