Chapter Twelve
“So you didn’t have sex?” Laurent asked, my friend having dragged me away from our place of work to subject me to an inquisition that even the finest of torturers would have been proud of.
“I said so, didn’t I?” I wasn’t about to apologize for the waspishness that had crept into my tone. I also wasn’t about to admit that any abstention had come from Cillian either. What Laurent didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. I took a seat on a park bench—the park just down the street from where we worked, and far more scenic than hanging about in the smoking area.
Laurent twisted his body round to face me. “What is your definition of sex?” he asked. “Perhaps it is different in England than here.”
“You’ll be telling me next that sex in France doesn’t involve three sheep and a grandfather clock.”
Laurent flicked a hand at me. “Do not use humor to avoid answering the question. You were the one who came to me with the sad face and told me Cillian was returning to London today. If you didn’t want to talk about it, you would have stayed silent.”
“All we did was kiss,” I admitted. “Nothing else.”
“But the first time you were together, you were at it like badgers, yes?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that. And I think you mean rabbits.”
“Rabbits. Badgers. Squirrels. Hedgehogs. It is much the same.”
“Never work for the RSPCA.”
“And what happens now?” Laurent asked, his gaze sharp.
“Honestly?” When he nodded, I fixed my gaze on two children playing at the opposite side of the park. They were laughing as they ran around in what looked like a game of tag. I didn’t know what the French name for it was, and I suspected Laurent might blow a gasket if I chose this moment to ask him. “I expect he’ll try at first, but that it’ll tail off as he becomes embroiled in his work. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.” Admitting that felt like we’d failed already, but it was better to be realistic about the chances of it working.
“And what about when he breaks your heart again?”
Laurent getting straight to the crux of the matter had a lump forming in my throat that made it difficult to swallow. I took a deep breath in, filling my lungs full of fresh air and then releasing it in one smooth, controlled movement while I got myself together. All the while, Laurent’s dark eyes bored into me as he waited for an answer. “Then… I guess you get to tell me I told you so, and that I could have avoided it if I’d just gone along with your dastardly plans.”
“You think I am that poor a friend? That I would mock your trusting nature, and take delight in your poor fortune?”
I lifted my gaze from the loose thread I’d been plucking at on my trousers to find Laurent looking genuinely wounded. “No! Of course not. You’d be within your rights to say it, though. You were the one who tried to save me with the sacrifice of your lips.”
Those same lips quirked slightly. “Kissing you was not so terrible.”
“Glad to hear it. Although, you may want to work on your chat up lines. ‘Not so terrible’ isn’t exactly what every man dreams of hearing.”
“Chat up lines?”
“Your wooing technique,” I explained. Laurent’s English was so good that I frequently forgot it wasn’t his first language. In fact, I usually only remembered when we ate out and he chatted to people in rapid French that I didn’t have a hope in hell of keeping up with.
“Ah, wooing,” he said, looking thoughtful for a moment. “You may also want to remember that I was the one who urged you to give your Irishman another chance.”
“Cillian,” I said. “He has a name.”
“We will see. He has yet to earn one with me.”
Despite the seriousness of the conversation, I laughed. “My relief that you’re on my side grows and grows.”
Laurent smiled. “As it should.”
“And in answer to your earlier question,” I said. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he breaks my heart again. I never admitted to him he broke it in the first place.” I shrugged. “He may have worked it out, but we never discussed it.”
Laurent contemplated my words for a moment. “I think you broke his as well.”
“Yeah?”
“He followed you here, didn’t he?” I gave another shrug, my shoulders feeling tight. Laurent studied me for a moment. “If he breaks your heart again, you will be okay. We will get a place together—”
“I have a cat,” I interjected. “I forgot to tell you. Cillian’s fault. It only has one ear and half a tail.”
Laurent frowned, but didn’t let the news derail him. “We will get a place. You, me, and the ugly cat.”
“He’s not ugly. Quasimodo has just had a rough time. I need to take him to a vet and find out how old he is, and if he needs any injections or anything. I was going to ask if you’d accompany me and translate. I think the conversation might get a little more complex than telling the vet what my favorite lesson at school was and why.”
“We will visit the vétérinaire,” Laurent said with a nod. “Now, can I finish what I was saying?”
I waved a hand to tell him to continue. “Sorry.”
“We will live together. Me, you, and the unfortunate and not so aesthetically pleasing cat. You will stay busy…” He thought for a moment. “Nights at the theater.” Never having been a huge fan of the theater, I frowned at that, but let him continue without further interruption. “We will taste all the wines in France.” That sounded better. A way of drowning my sorrows cunningly disguised as something cultural. “We will get bikes and take long cycle rides.” Hopefully, before the wine rather than after. “You will have rebound sex with Henri.”
I wasn’t letting that one go without comment. “I think he might have something to say about that.”
Laurent shook his head. “I know my friend. He will be fine with it.”
“What else?” I asked, growing more invested in this wild after-Cillian fantasy the longer it went on.
“Hmm…” Laurent looked off into the distance, thinking hard. “We will buy an old car… Something classic… and we will restore it to its former glory so we can drive around in it on the weekends.”
“I didn’t know you had any mechanical knowledge.”
“I don’t. But how hard can it be? We will learn.”
I burst out laughing and after a few seconds, Laurent joined in. He reached over and grasped my shoulder. “Maybe the car is a little too far and we stick to the bikes. But my point is, we can do whatever takes our fancy. The world is our…”
“Oyster,” I finished for him before it ended up being some other sort of sea creature.
“What does that even mean?”
“Honestly, I have no idea.”
Laurent accepted that with a slight blink. “And all of this…” He waved his hands in an expansive gesture that was very European. “Is just a plan for if things don’t work out.”
“Yeah.” I thought about the last few minutes of conversation. “It’s almost going to be a letdown now if things work out. I don’t get to live with you, ride a bike, drink all the wine, and sleep with Henri, whether or not he wants me to.”
Laurent grinned. “We can still do some of that. Just not the living together or sleeping with Henri part.” He checked his watch. “We are late returning from lunch. If Jules catches us and questions our tardiness, you must look heartbroken, so I can say I was consoling you.”
“Sneaky,” I said. “I like it. Although, I should probably warn you that my acting skills aren’t that good.”
Cillian called me that evening, making it less than twenty-four hours since we’d last spoken. It was a promising start, but I wasn’t about to make too much of it. Anyone could manage one day.
“Hey,” he said, his voice soft.
“Hey yourself.” Despite the effort to keep my feet firmly on the ground, there was no keeping the smile out of my voice.
“This is my new number.”
“Did you buy the phone at the airport?” I was only half joking. I wouldn’t have put it past him to do exactly that.
“Amrita already had it for me when I showed my face in the office. Actually, she gave me two phones.”
“Two phones! Ah yes… That’s so much better than one. Now you can have two conversations at the same time.”
“This one,” Cillian continued without reacting to the slight bite in my voice, “is my personal one only. I’m going to be careful who I give this number to. Amrita has it obviously, and I’ve given it to my family. But so far, that’s it.”
“And the other phone?”
“The other is my work phone. It’s still got the old number. Anything work-related from now on will come through that number. Meaning, when I don’t want to be disturbed, I can switch it off. It’s off now.”
The pause that followed said he expected some sort of congratulations for finally joining the millions of people that had employed that technique ever since the invention of the mobile phone. “Amrita’s idea, I assume?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“I hope it works,” I said. And I meant it. Not just for the sake of our relationship, but for Cillian’s future mental health. He might handle long hours of work now. But what about when he was in his fifties? His sixties? A time came when everyone needed to slow down.
“It will,” Cillian said. “I’m going to switch it off at the same time every day.”
“What time?”
A pause that lasted longer than a beat. “I don’t know. I need to work that out.”
“Because there’s a vast difference,” I stated, “between switching it off at five and switching it off at nine.”
“I know that.”
“So what time?” I pressed. “You should make that decision now.”
“Five is too early.”
“Okay. So what time isn’t too early?” The long silence that followed already had me shaking my head. “Words mean nothing, Cillian. It’s actions that count.”
“You’re being very hard on me.”
“I am, but it’s for your own good.”
“Seven?” he suggested.
“You don’t need my permission. You’re a grown-ass man in your thirties.”
“I’m not asking for your permission. I’m asking for your opinion.” Cillian’s words were deliberately saccharine sweet. “If I can’t ask for my boyfriend’s opinion, then it makes you nothing but eye candy. And while, you might be the most attractive, handsomest eye candy that ever walked this earth, you’re too smart to be just that.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“Will it?” Cillian’s voice was husky with a whispered promise.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s just a shame you put the English Channel between us so you can’t collect.” Cillian’s answering groan had me laughing. “Well, you did.”
“I’m a fantastic swimmer.”
“I’m sure boners make excellent flotation devices.”
Cillian’s soft chuckle had me feeling better about everything. “What time?” I urged, determined to get an answer out of him. I doubted he would keep to any boundaries he set, but if he didn’t set any, he would be even less likely to adhere to them.
“Six thirty,” he said. “That’s reasonable.”
“And what time will you switch it back on?” Cillian’s groan said he hadn’t even considered that side of the equation. “What time do you get up?” I prompted. As his ex-boyfriend, it was a question I should already be able to answer. Or at least have an inkling, but I didn’t. We’d never spent a single night together. Even on that first night when we’d ended up in bed together only a few short hours after meeting, I’d taken the non-verbal hints and left before dawn broke.
“Five.”
“In the morning? Jeez! You’re headed for a heart attack if you don’t slow down. Why five?”
“I have a lot to get through during the day,” Cillian said defensively.
“You need to learn to delegate. And not just to Amrita. She can’t be the only person in the world you trust.”
“I trust you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not coming to work for you. I know nothing about advertising. Apart from that a barely clad muscular man strutting moodily down a street in black and white makes me buy male fragrance products in the hope it will make me as cool as them.”
“You and the rest of the world.”
“In reality, though, it just makes me smell nice while I trip over paving stones.”
“Seven,” Cillian suggested, dragging me back to what we’d previously discussed.
“For getting up or for switching your phone back on?”
“Switching my phone back on. I can’t lie in bed for two hours doing nothing.”
“If only you had someone to lie there with you.”
“Why didn’t we ever do that?” Cillian asked, his tone pleasingly wistful.
“Because you never invited me to stay. And although the invitation was there on the extremely rare occasions you stayed at my place, you never took me up on it.”
“I was a terrible boyfriend.”
“Yeah, we already established that. You’re working on being a better one.” Realizing how harsh my words sounded, like I’d placed all the blame firmly at his feet, I sought to do some damage control before Cillian changed his mind about me being worth it and hung up. “ We’re working on doing better. And for me, that means saying what’s on my mind, which is why it seems like I’m being hard on you. I haven’t learned how to do it nicely yet. I’ll get better at it. And… just for the record, I’m not trying to change you. I’m just…”
“Trying to make me work less so you can spend time with me.”
“Yeah.” I was relieved he got it. The last thing I wanted to do was come across as some sort of harridan he couldn’t wait to get away from.
“We’re going to work.”
“I hope so.”
“Tell me about your day,” Cillian said.
I did, leaving out the part about my heart to heart with Laurent, but detailing everything else. And then he told me about his day. The time flew by and it was surprisingly late before we finally said goodnight to each other and hung up.