Chapter Two

My first few weeks in Paris were a godsend in not giving me time to think. There were new work colleagues to get to know, most of them thankfully speaking proficient enough English that I didn’t have to fall back on my GCSE French. I’m sure they were grateful I wasn’t asking them where the train station was, or telling them how many brothers or sisters I had, and what I liked to do at the weekend.

There was my little flat on Rue Fizeau to make feel like home, Jules apologizing more than once for how cramped the accommodation he’d sorted out for me was. He’d only stopped when I’d explained that London was much the same with living spaces, and that if I had room to swing a cat, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. That, and I’d have to get a cat. Although, there was a mangy-looking ginger stray with one ear missing and only half a tail that hung about outside the building that I was tempted to try it with.

The local area where I lived needed exploration, Jules just as apologetic about my flat not being more central. I didn’t mind. It meant the neighborhood was quieter, the brasserie on the corner of my street always having empty tables available whenever I went in, which I doubted would have been the case smack bang in the middle of the Latin Quarter.

Gradually, though, I’d settled in, growing accustomed to the different methods used here in my data analysis job. I’d added enough knick-knacks, cushions, and plants to my flat that it felt like home. And I was slowly adjusting to the cultural differences between Paris and London, of which there were many. Settling in had meant I’d run out of excuses to spend time outside work with my new colleagues, which was how I’d found myself in a cocktail bar tonight when I was more of a beer man, sipping something shocking pink, and sandwiched between Genevieve and Laurent.

“You have sad eyes,” Laurent said once our colleagues had dragged Genevieve onto the dancefloor and we were left alone. “Like a man who has suffered recent heartbreak.” It was too close to the mark not to pack a punch. “May I ask what her name is?”

I eyed Laurent over the rim of my glass, the pink concoction surprisingly tasty once I’d gotten used to how sweet it was. I had my suspicions, although I couldn’t put my finger on why, that if not gay, Laurent was at least bisexual. Maybe it was his gaze lingering overlong on a few passing men. Even if he wasn’t, I had no intention of starting my time in Paris with a monumental lie that would only get more difficult to keep as time passed. “It’s a him, not a her,” I said quietly.

“Ah!” His lips curved up at one corner as he held his glass, Laurent’s cocktail a green color that made me think of cartoon toxic waste, toward mine. “Men are bastards. Are they not?”

I clinked my glass against his. Not because I believed in the sentiment—Cillian hadn’t been a bastard; he just hadn’t been present in our relationship—but because I appreciated the show of solidarity.

“This man,” Laurent asked carefully with his head tipped to one side, “he dumped you and broke your heart?”

I shook my head. “I dumped him.”

Laurent’s eyebrows rose so high they disappeared beneath his fringe. “But he is the reason you came here, no?” At my nod, he made a noise of consideration and studied me, his dark eyes solemn. “And how did he react to you dumping him?”

I bit back on the honest answer of ‘since my phone can no longer take calls from him, I don’t know.’ I’d only returned to my flat to pack, during which I’d stationed a friend at the window in case of any surprise visits. There hadn’t been one. He hadn’t turned up at my workplace either. Within ten days I’d been gone from both, my place of employment happy to waive a proper notice period when they were making cutbacks, anyway. Paying another three weeks’ worth of rent in London had seemed like a small price to pay for getting out of there before Cillian could track me down and demand answers. Or even worse, before I realized he hadn’t bothered. “I doubt he noticed,” I said, the cryptic comment triggering another dramatic rise of Laurent’s eyebrows.

“Tell me about him,” he said. And to my surprise, I did, the two of us working our way through a disconcerting number of cocktails while I purged myself of everything Cillian. Laurent grimaced in all the right places and proved himself to be the good listener my ex-lover had never been. After a few attempts at coaxing us back into the group, the rest of our colleagues gave up, leaving us to our deep and meaningful conversation while they danced and had fun.

By the time I’d run out of things to say, neither of us was sober. It was just us now, everyone else having moved on to somewhere that stayed open later. It seemed like the natural order of things after baring my soul and making a new friend to lean forward and press my lips to Laurent’s. After all, he was extremely handsome, and I was far too drunk to give more than a fleeting thought to the complications when we worked together.

It took longer than it should have to work out that there was only one person involved in the kiss, that while Laurent might not have pushed me off, he was only humoring me. “No,” he said when I pulled back, my cheeks burning with mortification.

“No?”

He shook his head with a slight smile. “I have a policy not to get involved with people who are still in love with someone else.”

The words stung like someone had taken a branding iron and burned them into my skin. “I’m not still in love with him.”

“You are,” Laurent said, his words gentle and without censure. “But that’s okay. These things take time. You did the right thing by leaving.”

“Did I?” Sober, I would never have admitted to having doubts about the decision I’d made. But, in my drunken state, all my barriers had crumbled.

Laurent held his mostly empty cocktail glass up in a toast. “You did. Cillian King sounds like a prize…” He thought for a minute. “Fils de pute!”

“Fils de pute?” I questioned, no doubt butchering the pronunciation. I couldn’t avoid hearing French everywhere and was learning it, but I wasn’t the world’s best student, and I assumed Laurent’s words weren’t in any phrase book.

“Son of a bitch,” he translated.

“Ah. Not really. He just…” I drained the last remnants of my drink, a wave of tiredness hitting me. “He didn’t want the same things I did. I wanted a life partner, someone to come home to, and he wanted…” I frowned at the question I’d never really asked myself before. What had Cillian wanted? “I don’t know. A convenient fuck, I guess. Someone who’d turn up at his workplace looking for him and he could do between appointments. I’m over it.”

Laurent’s gaze was too searching to hold for more than a few seconds before I had to look away. “You’re not, and that’s fine,” he said. “But you will be once I’m finished with you. It’s going to be my job to introduce you to the delights of Paris. We will paint the town red and you will discover that French men are superior in every single way to your English man.”

“He’s Irish,” I said absently. “Not English.”

Laurent waved the statement away like it was all the same thing to him. “Whatever. In a couple of months’ time, you’ll look back and wonder what you ever saw in him.”

“I hope so,” I said. And I meant it. I hoped a day would come where I could look back at my time with Cillian with a wry smile, rather than feeling like something too big for the space it occupied resided in my chest. And I prayed that day would come sooner rather than later.

Two months later

Laurent lounged in my newly acquired beanbag chair, long legs stretched out in front of him, and his ankles crossed. We’d become firm friends, Laurent keeping his promise to show me the sights of Paris and teasing me mercilessly about the night I’d tried to “force myself on him,” as he liked to phrase it. He’d been exactly what I needed during the last couple of months. Someone to distract me. Someone who knew the reason I’d come here, but who steadfastly refused to let me dwell on it. And inch by slow inch, I’d relegated Cillian to the back of my mind, the times I thought about him growing fewer and fewer with each passing week. Which I supposed was what getting over someone was all about. They didn’t cease to exist. You just made new connections and learned not to associate every single thing, whether it be a scent, a taste, or a remembered anecdote, with them.

“Don’t take this as an invitation,” Laurent said, waving a hand over his reclined state.

“You wish,” I shot back.

“Henri wishes,” he said with a slow smile.

Henri was a friend of Laurent’s. One who’d made it clear from our very first introduction that he’d like to get to know me better. So far, charming and handsome as he was, I’d resisted the urge to return his interest.

“You should go out to dinner with him,” Laurent said. “Just the two of you. He’s a gentleman. He won’t try to come home with you on the first date.”

“Maybe that’s what I want.”

Laurent laughed. “You! You’re a romantic.”

I considered his words for a moment. I’d gone home with Cillian on the first night I’d met him. Was that the point at which things had started to go wrong? Had I given him the completely wrong impression of me by letting my attraction take the reins? It was an interesting thought, even if it had me thinking about Cillian again.

Laurent leaned forward and snapped his fingers in front of my face to bring me back to the present. “Seriously though, Henri likes you. Are you going to put him out of his misery and go out with him?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “He’s a nice guy, but…” A knock at the door had me frowning as I got up to answer it. It was probably my next-door neighbor. If the day ended in a Y, Adeline Girard found something to complain about. I could probably sit in the dark in silence and she’d tell me I was thinking too loudly. No doubt she’d taken exception to me and Laurent being too raucous. People weren’t supposed to laugh. They had to be just as miserable as her.

I steeled myself before I opened the door, ready to paste a smile on my face and apologize for crimes I hadn’t committed, experience proving that penitence and agreeing with her was the quickest way to get her to go away. Laurent and I could go out. We hadn’t planned on it, but it was better than spending the rest of the night whispering.

It wasn’t Adeline Girard.

A simple noise complaint seemed like a dream come true as I took in the man on my doorstep who couldn’t be here, but who very much was.

Still tall.

Still achingly handsome.

Still the physical embodiment of sex appeal wrapped up in an expensively clad package.

My breath froze in my chest, and it was all I could do to keep breathing as I stared at him.

“Hello Finn,” he said, his Irish accent coming through strong. “I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time to call.”

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