“That’s your assessment? ‘A dud of an oven’?”
He shrugs and juts out his bottom lip. “The thing’s been broken before.”
“Chad, this is a kind offer, but this is getting us nowhere.” I scratch at my forehead. “You don’t have to waste any more of your time here.”
“No wait.” He makes a calming motion with one hand, his thick bicep tightening against the short sleeves of his white undershirt. “Let me unplug it and plug it back in again. Maybe that’ll help.”
“Just please don’t blow the place up.”
He gives me a deadpan look.
“I’m serious,” I say in a high-pitched tone. “You don’t know what you’re doing here.”
“Conner and I practically installed these things when you first got them.” He reaches for one of the three screwdrivers resting next to his discarded dress shirt.
“Maybe that’s why it doesn’t work,” I say under my breath through a joshing smile.
“You’re just a regular Jerry Seinfeld, now aren’t you?” He stretches an arm blindly behind the ovens and fumbles for the plug.
“Please don’t go and electrocute yourself.”
“Ah, ahhh!” he screams, jumping back and rapidly shaking his hand. “Shit!”
“Omigod!” I run up to him and try to catch sight of his moving hand. But I can’t get a look he’s dancing about so wildly.
“Ow, ow,” he moans loudly. “Shiiiit!”
“Omigod, you’re going to kill yourself. Did you get shocked? Chad? Omigod!”
He abruptly stops dancing about and flips his head back a little to shake the hair out of his face. “Fooled ya,” he says with a hearty laugh.
“Why, you!” I shriek, slapping his arm. “That is a horribly mean trick!”
He keeps laughing, curling his head lower, his shoulder tucked in, gently trying to shield himself from my slapping.
“So, so mean!”
“But so funny,” he says through laughter.
I grab the drying towel from the counter nearby and begin to lightly hit him with it, telling him that he has got to stop acting like he’s a child.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” I gasp, but I’m unable to hide my half-smile at the dirty trick. It did totally catch me off guard—the greatest reward for childish pranks.
Chad’s hand suddenly darts out, and he pokes a finger in my stomach, causing me to yelp. He does it again, but this time with both hands, tickling me so that I’m gasping and laughing and shrieking.
“Aww, did I scare Sophie?” he says in a childlike voice. He continues to tickle me, and I can feel tears spring to my eyes.
“Stop,” I laugh out.
“Poor Sophie got all scared,” he keeps up with the small voice, now looping one arm around my waist. The tickling slightly lets up, but it’s still aggressive enough to send me into a tear-filled bout of laughter.
“Stoooop,” I wheeze.
“Sophie actually cares about me, huh?”
I involuntarily shove my body back against him, stuck in a fit of uncontrollable tickling. My head plunges against his chest.
“Stooop.” I gasp for breath, stammering pleas for him to let up.
“Sophie cares about me. Huh? Huh? She actually cares about me…” Chad’s voice begins to trail once I spin around and our eyes lock.
And the tickling stops, suddenly.
He blinks slowly. He gently rests a hand on my right hip.
I abruptly pull myself up and out of his grasp. I force a fast swallow and wipe at my tears. I begin to straighten out my apron, my hair.
“Sorry,” he says lowly.
“I—I—I think we should go.” I give a hard tug to the hem of my apron and clear my throat, flustered.
“Sophie.” He approaches me, a hand outstretched.
I back up and point at the oven. “I’ll wait for the repairman, thank you. I really think we should go.”
“I’m sorry for scaring you.” He looks at me with a warm and authentically apologetic face. “And I’m sorry for tickling you. That was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I blurt out. I pull my hair into a high ponytail. “Forget about it. Just forget about it.”
***
There are some experiences you just can’t forget or escape. Secrets. Dirty little secrets. You cannot bury secrets deep inside and imagine they will go away with the passing of time. No matter how hard you try—neglecting to revisit them, denying they ever happened, or refusing to ask yourself why you’ve chosen to keep them secret to begin with—secrets refuse to disappear.
In fact, it’s time, that thing you hope will make you forget those secrets ever existed to begin with, that can do the very opposite and bring those secrets to light. And when it does, when those secrets are pushed forward, bursting through the recesses of your mind, there’s no level of preparedness you can muster for what’s about to unfold.
I’d tried to put some of the events of that first summer abroad in Paris behind me. I’d tucked some away as memories, others as secrets. I’d avoided the truth of what happened there by simply telling my friends that aside from a romantic tryst with Henri and enjoying the Parisian dating scene, Sophie Wharton was still as single, loveless, and unattached as ever. Nothing exciting to report.
I’d thought that would work, at least for the time being. At least until I could find out why I’d done what I’d done, and why I’d chosen to keep it all a secret.
I suppose I thought I could take my experiences as lessons learned and move on, forget anything ever happened. The past is the past.
But now, I find myself here, in bed, unable to sleep, the memories I’ve kept secret flooding back in a suffocating kind of way. I’m tossing and turning over a certain someone who has no knowledge whatsoever about professional-grade ovens, nor any better knowledge about relationships and sex. All right, so he knows quite a bit about the latter (I should know), but that’s beside the point… Right?
The past is, truly, the past, isn’t it?
There’s no going back?
Even if I wanted to…
Which I don’t!
I know I don’t…
Right?
Chapter Twenty-One
Two Years Ago, Summer in Paris
It was in late June, in Paris, in the circular room number thirteen of Musée National du Moyen ge, when I found myself with the most unlikely of company. And, to my sheer and utter surprise, the company was actually quite pleasant.
“So the acquisition’s done?” I inquired curiously, drawing my eyes from the series of fifteenth-century Flemish tapestries to the man standing beside me.
“Point-of-sale details made,” Chad Harris said smoothly. “All that’s left is the exchange.”
“The big payoff.” I wiggled my eyebrows comically.
“Somethin’ like that.” He gave me a playful smirk before returning his attention to the tapestry series, The Lady and the Unicorn.
“Of course, my paintings are nothing like this.” He nodded his head to the tapestry of a lady with a mirror in hand, a unicorn kneeling before her, taking in his own mirrored reflection. “Now this is a turn-of-the-century masterpiece!” He whistled lowly. “You know, Sophie, that this collection of tapestries is considered one of the greatest series of European art in the Middle Ages?”
“Stiff competition, then.” I darted my eyes to him quickly, a playful smirk of my own coating my lips.
“Eh, I love painting as a hobby, and it’s a major bonus to be able to sell some stuff.” He took a step closer to the tapestry, his eyes still locked interestedly on its fine wool and silk detail. He slipped both hands into his front pants pockets. “Art and procurement don’t go hand-in-hand for many people. I’m fortunate, and it’s fun. But this is inspiring! This is the real thing.”
I took a step forward, too, and looked more closely at the medieval piece. It was beautiful—intricate and riveting.
Chad pointed a finger at the tapestry next
to it and explained, “You know, these five pieces are supposed to depict the five senses: taste, sight, sound, smell, and touch.” He pointed at the one before us and said, before moving to another one, “And this one here, see with the mirrors?” I nodded. “This represents sight.”
“Got it.”
He proceeded to explain the rest of the sensory-depicting tapestries, his words pouring forth with excitement and passion and almost childlike wonder. Who would have thought that frat boy Chad Harris would have felt just as at home at France’s National Museum of the Middle Ages as U Dub’s Pi Kappa Alpha house?
“And this one!” He motioned with an enthusiastic finger at an enigmatic tapestry. This time the lady in the series was standing before a tent; “Á Mon Seul Désir” was written atop. “This one,” Chad exclaimed, “is the sixth one.”
“The…sixth…sense?” I drew out, clueless.
“Sort of, maybe.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw, scruffy with a couple day’s worth of dirty-blonde hair. “No one’s absolutely certain what the ‘sixth sense’ means,” he said, making air quotes.
“As with all art.”
A charming grin took over his face as he nodded. “Yeah, exactly.”
“Well,” I said, stepping nearer the large tapestry of the lady putting a necklace into a chest. “What do you think it means?”
He drew closer to the tapestry, taking a cross-armed stance a few inches from my side. “Some think,” he said, “that what’s written up there means ‘sole desire’ or ‘according to desire.’ Some think it has to do with passion, with love, with love’s desires.”
He glanced at me, clearing his throat in an awkward and loud way before continuing. “One interpretation is that by putting the necklace into the chest she’s asserting her free will. She’s reflecting on vanity, maybe, and choosing, by way of free will, to lock away what’s tempting.”
He took a half-step closer to the art in question. “But some think that this sixth sense is understanding, perhaps love. Of course…” He turned towards me. “She could always be taking the necklace out of the chest. There’s no creation of movement in this piece, so she could—”
“Very well be asserting her free will by taking what’s tempting,” I interrupted, eyes trained hard on the necklace.
“Exactly.” His voice was low and breathy.
Abruptly, as the silence of the room became deafening, I turned from the tapestry and looked at Chad, my eyes locking with his coffee-browns.
“That’s what they think,” I said, infusing comedy into the conversation that had taken an unusually serious turn. “What do you think it means?”
He shrugged casually and said, his tone just as casual, “I think, as with all art, it means whatever the artist wants it to mean and whatever the consumer wants it to mean.”
“So cheesy, so artistic,” I brushed off with an eye roll.
“Hey, who’s the artist here?” He had an impish look about him.
“Fair enough.”
“I think,” he said, brow knit in contemplation, “the woman could be afraid.”
“Afraid?” I snickered. “Of what?”
“Of free will? Of love?” He shrugged. “She’s stuck between safety and risk. She has the necklace and doesn’t know if she should continue to take it out or return it.”
“Hmm, well, I’m familiar with the art of baking, but tapestries…” I stole a glance at my watch, taking note at how fast the morning had whipped by.
While we’d been at the museum for hours already, we’d been having so much fun touring it seemed like it was only minutes ago that Chad and I agreed to meet at the Latin Quarter museum a hop, skip, and a jump from my flat.
“Now that you’ve given me the Art History 101 lesson,” I told him, spinning on my heels, “it’s my turn to wow you with my knowledge of medieval European history.”
“Like I said, my day is open.” He pulled one hand free from his pants pocket and waved it around.
“Did you know,” I said, taking the lead out of the room, “that not only is this Middle Ages museum housed in an actual fifteenth-century medieval building, but that it has Gallo-Roman baths from AD 200? It’s fascinating! I swear, everywhere you turn there’s something around the corner that’s steeped in amazing history. I love Paris. Absolutely love it!”
“It does seem to suit you,” he said with a grin as we moved down a hallway.
***
I never expected to see Chad Harris, of all people, in Paris that summer. But when he unexpectedly arrived for the sale of one of his paintings—a sweet deal his wealthy and well-connected father had helped set in motion—and when he’d called me up and offered to meet and hang out, I surprised myself when I pounced on the opportunity.
I think my exact words were, “Oh, yes! Please! That sounds awesome!”
I’d been homesick having already spent several weeks in the City of Light solo, and it would still be another week before Claire and Conner would arrive for her surprise proposal. The idea of getting to spend some time with an old friend—an American and native English-speaking one at that—seemed as appealing as an early evening session at Studio Tulaa or an afternoon of shopping with one of my girlfriends.
I should have known, though, that it would be only a matter of time before Paris would work her charm on two unsuspecting Americans abroad.
“So what’s it like here, Sophie?” Chad asked as we strolled the narrow and sloping cobblestoned rue Mouffetard, home to Paris’s Marché Mouffetard, a bustling market that, while feeling very medieval and European in style, was redolent of Seattle’s Pike Place Market with aromatic fromageries and fish stalls.
“Honestly?” I said. “Right here? Right now? I kind of feel like I’m back home in Seattle.” I laughed.
Chad said he caught my drift, but pressed for more.
“Oh,” I said breezily, “it’s as wonderful as all the books and films make it out to be. I mean, it’s Paris.”
“Romantic city, huh?” He flashed me a sly grin as I halted in front of a fromagerie I’d been frequenting recently. Their selection of cheeses was to die for, reasonably priced, and, seeing how I was with art-lover Chad, worth a quick stop.
“Oh, please,” I shrugged off. “Romance? Me? Who are we kidding?”
“You’re not getting lucky in the City of Love?”
I cast him an icy gaze before saying, “So not talking about that with you. Now come on.” I ushered him nearer the aromatic shop. “Here’s something you might appreciate.”
“Stinky cheese?” He crinkled his nose as we drew nearer the busy shop.
“Look.” I pointed up at the façade, indicating the intricate murals. “Neat, huh?”
Chad gawked, head tilted back, as boisterous market purveyors and clamoring customers pushed and shoved about, knocking his wide shoulders slightly to the left and right.
Still staring up at the masterful artwork, commenting on how brilliant the design and technique were, I actually caught myself feeling something akin to kind-heartedness, maybe even affability, for Chad. I knew it wasn’t just the effect of an open-air market and artisanal food stalls—they always get me in a euphoric mood. I knew it wasn’t the murals—art can be evocative, but not so much when enjoyed with thick aromas of ammonia-heavy cheeses like Brie de Meaux and Epoisses. There could be only one reason why I was enjoying the company of Chad, and that was because I was a twinge homesick. His familiar face was quite welcome.
“So if you aren’t getting hot and heavy with some beret-wearing schmuck,” Chad said as we sauntered along the narrow street, “what are you doing with yourself, with your time?”
I gave him a playful punch in his thick arm.
“I’m going to classes, baking classes,” I said in an obvious tone. “You know it’s not like I’m on some long-term summer vacation here, skirting responsibility, running away from work, living in the lap of Parisian luxury.”
“I see nothing wrong with that if you are,” he said coyly.
<
br /> “The classes are going really well.” I stopped in front of a stand overflowing with a rainbow-colored medley of flowers. “It’s nothing like U Dub, cramming for history exams and sweating bullets over writing the perfect term paper.” I bent down at the piles of wrapped dried lavender and breathed in deeply. Absolute heaven!
“We did that in college?” He laughed in mirth. “So what is it? Like, learning how to crack an egg?”
“Nooo,” I said, rolling my eyes. I bent down to breathe in the scent of some tuberoses. “Like learning how to make the proper French croissant, or the proper madeleine, or learning how to keep your soufflés from collapsing. Oh!” I practically shouted. “Or how to make the cream for the macarons absolutely delectable—not too pungent, not too sweet, yet not too subtle. That is the challenge.”
I picked up one of the bouquets of lavender and fanned it about my nose as a mixed look of pleasure and bemusement covered Chad’s face.
“I’m serious. It’s hard work, the school.” I returned the lavender to its pile as soon as the wrinkled, grey-haired woman behind the stall gave me a suspicious gaze—a gaze that said I was to look and smell, not touch.
I flashed Chad a quick grin and said, “But the classes are fun. I’m so glad I decided to do this.”
“Yeah,” he said in a muttering kind of way, then he said something else I couldn’t quite make out as I moved a pace forward along the flower stall.
I stopped to admire an assortment of roses in a small oak barrel, and Chad began to chuckle under his breath, wagging his head slightly.
“Aren’t these gorgeous?” I gestured to the roses. “I mean, flowers somehow even smell and look better in Paris than they do in Seattle!”
“Gorgeous, indeed,” he said. “Here.” He plucked a peach-colored rose from the barrel and asked the grey-haired woman in horribly accented French how much it cost.
“Maybe you can put it in your hair or hold it or…” he said to me as he looked down at the rose he’d just bought. “A little vase in your apartment or something?”
When Girlfriends Find Love Page 16
