Lost in France

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Marlow waited impatiently for her double espresso and gazed up at the drifting, lazy clouds. Maybe at the meeting I’m about to be late for, she thought, I’ll flip a table, toss my laptop into the trash, scream, “I’M OUT,” and run for the elevator.

Or maybe not.

Marlow turned her attention to the people near the coffee truck.

Stressed from work, wanting to just sit, stand still, be, over their lunch hour, they were instead facing the onslaught of downtown Toronto in late June.

She saw a puddle from the morning’s rainfall and pulled out her phone to shoot, through its ripples, passengers in the streetcar as it moved through frame, wishing they were elsewhere.

She put the video through a filter, called it “passing thoughts,” and posted it online.

These tiny videos were the last vestige of film school, but they made Marlow happy.

She checked her cell. Shit. She was really late.

Her coffee appeared. Marlow grabbed it and ran, tossing it back like a shooter, spilling some on her shirt.

Double shit but whatever. The caffeine had two minutes or less to hit her veins—all she had before her presentation to Victor Zane, CEO of the Renegade International Film Festival, or RIFF.

She’d been up until four implementing her midlevel boss’s changes and was operating on no sleep.

Her messy bun bobbed on her head and her boobs bounced. Quite the sight, no doubt.

She arrived at the film festival building and saw Victor on the bistro patio facing her, in a meeting with someone. She made the switch from woefully late to just in time. As long as he was later than she was, she was fine. But who was he meeting with? The back of their head was familiar.

The filmmaker community was a Kevin-Bacon-six-degrees game of who was where doing what with whom on what film. Marlow hated the rubbernecking, but working in the festival industry office, she needed to know everything about everyone all the time.

The back of that head. Soft curls, prematurely greying but a certain shade of silver …

Huh. The only person she could think of—no, it couldn’t be.

Now Victor and his coffee date were getting up.

The guy turned around. No no no no no. It was indeed her ex, looking extraordinarily good in a white T-shirt and jeans.

His torso was flat, not the doughy midriff he’d carried years ago, which he’d somehow also managed to pull off at the time. Infuriating.

Yves Barrat was a filmmaker from France. He was not supposed to be in Toronto, at her work, in her world. He was meant to be elsewhere. Anywhere elsewhere.

He saw her. He smiled. She smiled back—a reflex she instantly wished she could reverse. Too late. Yves shook Victor’s hand and walked over.

“Salut,” he said in his mellifluous French accent, as if they’d seen each other just yesterday. He kissed her on both cheeks. An electric shock passed directly from the top of her to the, er, bottom. That didn’t take long. Also infuriating.

“Salut,” she replied, aware she had coffee on her shirt. God. Her left eyebrow twitched. Caffeine, awkwardness, loins stirring—all three? “What are you doing here?”

“Meeting with financiers to finish my next film,” said Yves.

“Victor asked me in for an update. I hope he’ll program it.

Toronto has always been good to me.” He gave her another smile now, a twinkly version, a private joke between them.

“Victor said you are up for a new job … He is lucky TIFF hasn’t snapped you up. ”

The Renegade International Film Festival was second only to the Toronto International Film Festival and dropped on its heels in October. TIFF was Hollywood gala and red carpet, RIFF was emerging filmmakers and low-budget films, but the two institutions were rivals nonetheless.

“Nope,” she said, “still here.” Do not pull any low-status bullshit with your ex. Don’t do that to yourself.

“And what about your feature, your beautiful feature? I’ve never forgotten that script. It has stayed in my senses.”

Nice to have stayed in Yves’ senses and all, but Marlow crashed a little further. Yves’s filmmaking career was white hot. Hers, as coordinator of the industry office, was nonexistent.

On the bistro patio, a festival staffer was celebrating a birthday.

Her colleagues had gotten her a carrot muffin and put a sparkler on it.

Marlow was thirty-nine and had somehow found herself coordinating other people’s fine art instead of making her own.

She’d had back-to-back contracts at Renegade for years, turning her into a seeming full-timer with around the clock organizing, troubleshooting, Google sheeting, Slack meeting, hotel booking, accounting, the lot.

She was both near and very far from her perfect life.

And seeing Yves, in all his sexy French filmmaker glory, put a rather fine point on it.

Sure, she worked in the arts, but it was terrible pay, no job security or benefits.

And when looking at things from a more negative perspective, which she often found herself doing these days, her job was not creative.

It was creative-adjacent. Just enough to slowly squeeze the air out of you, a boa constrictor disguised as a career.

Fuck this.

“Haven’t made my feature either,” she said. “Too busy raising our kid.”

His chest contracted as if she’d punched him in the clavicle. Which she very much wanted to do.

“I’d love to see Sabine,” he ventured. “Perhaps you two are free for dinner?”

“No, not free,” said Marlow. “We have her high school graduation to celebrate.” He looked shocked. Good. He should be shocked.

“I didn’t know,” he said, looking at the ground. “The ceremony, it is today?”

“Last week. You missed it.”

Was she being cruel? Yes. Was it justified? Absolutely.

“Félicitations to Sabine,” he said, voice shaking a bit, lifting his chin to gaze at her again with those crushingly sensitive eyes. “What are the big plans?”

Truthfully, Marlow was a little light in the big-plans department. No whisking her daughter off for a tour of Europe, no five-star restaurant reservation, no cute Mini Cooper with a bow on its roof.

“We’re keeping it quiet, ordering in. But there are things lined up.” Lie. Sabine’s graduation had crept up on Marlow, given her recent workload for her boss, Oscar.

“Could I bring dessert? Add myself to the festivities?”

Rage shot through her. “No. You don’t just get to add yourself to Sabine’s life out of the blue.”

He ran his hand through his hair, and two muscles in his upper arm flexed as he did so. “I get that you don’t want me to come,” he said. “But would she?”

“Back off,” said Marlow. “She has her pick of universities. She’s out of her teenage funk, I think, I hope, and I don’t need you throwing it all off. When you’ve been absent for your kid’s entire life, you don’t get to attend her grad dinner just because you run into me by accident.”

She turned away, cutting off the possibility of any more discussion, threw open the festival office door, and headed inside. She did not need her parenting questioned. She did not need his curly locks and biceps. She needed to do this presentation, get dinner ordered, and get home.

And clearly, given her active loins situation, she also needed to get laid. But that would have to wait.

Juggling her open, full-to-bursting knapsack, Sabine tried to manage her wild brown curls, twisting and clipping them up again as she opened the door to Bubble Tea Town.

Books tumbled onto the floor, her hair did not get caught by the clip, and the door closed too fast, propelling her inside. Smooth.

She dumped her stuff on the table by the window and reclipped her hair.

She wished she had straight hair like Willa, who should have already arrived but was perpetually late.

They needed sustenance after two hours of recycling the contents of every binder they’d used in Grade 12—almost all of it useless.

Sabine turned to order, but Mrs. Nguyen wasn’t behind the counter, her tall son Desmond was, in a Raptors tank and jean shorts that were cuffed above the knee and slouched low.

He’d graduated last year and had just seen her act like a complete idiot. Perfect.

“Hey,” he said, tossing his head to the side to see her through his black bangs.

“Hey yourself,” she said. Seriously esoteric conversation.

“Last day of school, eh? Congrats. How’s it going?”

“Emptying our lockers.”

“The lockers no one’s used since September?”

“Exactly. How was first year?”

“Meh,” he said.

“Ringing endorsement.”

“It probably could be awesome if I was interested in what I signed up for.”

“Which was?”

“Economics. What a shitshow. Now I’m back, working part-time, figuring it out. Or not.”

Desmond was smart like Sabine. They’d been in Calculus Club together. She’d always been intimidated to talk to him, but here he was, for some reason, chatting like they were equals.

“Getting ready for prom tomorrow?” he asked. “Been hearing people talk about it.”

“Nah. Decided not to go.”

“Oh? How come?”

“Didn’t like my options,” she said. Not the full story but good enough.

“I hated my date last year, too. I could go for a redo.” He grinned. “Wanna?”

Was he serious? He seemed serious. Sabine reached into her pocket, dropped her wallet, lurched to grab it, and banged her head on the counter.

“God. What a klutz. I don’t think I—did you just ask me—?”

“To prom? Guess I did, yeah.”

“Why would you want to?” That sounded so dumb. “I mean—why would you want to go back to your old high school, for my prom, not yours?”

“It’s not like I was planning to ask you, but why not?

See our math trophies in the cabinet, dance, drink nonalcoholic punch …

Could be cool.” He looked at her, sincere and sensitive.

“I, like, thought I had it all figured out last year, and I didn’t.

So now I’m just doing whatever. For fun. But no pressure.”