Chapter Thirteen #3
“What if I only want to know what it’s like?” she asked. “What if we don’t do it, and I never know what it’s like?”
They weren’t even touching, but Edie might as well be licking her neck while her hand squeezed Cosima’s naked hip because this—this almost—was the most erotic thing that had ever happened to her.
“I want to.” Edie blinked, slow, before closing her eyes, and Cosima’s gaze dropped to her mouth, then her neck, where she could see her pulse at the hollow of her throat.
“It’s just that I’ve made this mistake before, at the end of a long day like this, or when something complicated is happening in my life, to seek out …
an escape. Someone who pulls me out of my head and puts me back inside my body. I don’t want to do that to you.”
Cosima wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t hurt. “I will say that I am very badly disappointed.” The declaration came out a bit more snappish than she’d meant it to.
Edie made an almost inaudible sound that fed whatever hot wolfishness was caged at the base of Cosima’s spine, begging her to take this woman’s clothes off on a train.
Because Edie liked it when Cosima snapped at her.
She liked being bossed, argued with, and taken seriously.
She liked to feel competent, to be helpful, to be part of something exclusive and amazing.
Like this. Edie liked everything about this adventure. She didn’t want to make a mistake and mess it up for her.
For a long moment, they didn’t say anything.
Cosima thought about Edie screaming on the stairs as lightning flashed outside, her giant green raincoat, how she teased Morag.
The first days Edie was at the inn, even before she met her, Cosima had been aware of her.
She sang in the shower in the bathroom down the hall and squeezed her toothpaste carefully up from the seam at the bottom—probably a habit taught by a mother who had to pay attention to how much toothpaste her kids were using.
Cosima didn’t just want to kiss her. She wanted to taste her lemon shortbread and her cheese. She wanted to know how she would decorate the lounge. She wanted to notice when Edie needed another bar of soap or tube of toothpaste and add them to a market list.
And that meant Edie was right to pull away.
Cosima wanted a great deal that wasn’t fair to ask for. A great deal more than she had any right to, considering their circumstances.
She shifted in her seat, allowing the breath of distance between them to widen a few inches, and reached for Edie’s hand. She was gratified when Edie’s fingers wrapped around hers.
This woman wanted legacy and roots. She wanted to make something good.
Even if she agreed to take Cosima’s money (doubtful) and move to Los Angeles (extremely unlikely), what would she do there, plant herself in the shadow of Cosima’s secondhand fame?
A life like that—a life in many ways like Duncan’s—would not be soil in which Edie could thrive.
Cosima hadn’t. She’d spent the years since college nurturing the legacy of a mother who had never asked what she wanted. That was what she’d run away from—the impossibility of growing into her own life when all of her resources went to Captain Astra and her empire of projects.
It wasn’t fair of Cosima to imply to Edie that all she wanted was to practice kissing. But it also wasn’t fair to her.
Edie’s shoulder pressed into Cosima’s upper arm as she reached abruptly overhead to press the call button. “Dinner,” she said, without looking at Cosima. “I’m still hungry. Sorry.”
By the time they had trays of food in front of them, the train had emerged from beneath the water and was rocketing through the dark countryside, the windows streaked with rain.
Cosima tried to remember if she’d seen this view before, what it looked like in the sunlight, but she couldn’t.
The last time she’d been to France was after a visit to Duncan’s relatives in Scotland.
Her mother was doing reshoots on location in Egypt for a film she’d directed and starred in.
It had dragged on, the budget bloated, investors nervous, and Phoebe was spiky with them both, plagued by migraines.
Duncan had taken Cosima away. She remembered, in France, a clear stream they’d visited.
He’d rolled up his trouser legs and guided her into the water, the rocks slippery with moss, tiny creatures darting across the surface of the water when they crouched down and kept still.
“I’ve never been to France.” Edie broke a cold pita roll in half and piled a bite of the bread with falafel and hummus. “Probably that goes without saying, but I wanted to tell you I’m glad to be here.” She put her knife down. Her hair slipped from behind her ear to frame the curve of her cheek.
“I’m glad to be here with you,” Cosima replied.
It would be their last tender moment before shoving through the crowds and waiting in ground transportation lines with other grumpy, tired travelers.
It helped that they didn’t have luggage to contend with, but the prospect of another hour in clothes she’d put on at seven that morning made Cosima want to scream, and, what’s more, it was colder in Paris.
Lincolnshire, in southern England with a large run of coast, had been feeling springlike, especially during the day, with flushes of the early season colors of white and purple blending with pale green.
Paris was dark, bitter, smelly, and loud.
“What are you doing?” Cosima watched Edie step up behind the man in front of them in the Sixt queue, moving directly in front of Cosima.
“Getting ready to rent the car,” Edie said.
“I’m renting the car.”
Edie looked over her shoulder. “You’re tired. I’ll rent it and drive us to Rouen.”
“You will not.” The ice in her tone caught the attention of a kid sitting on top of a piece of rolling luggage, holding an American Girl doll and wearing an Elsa dress. Cosima lowered her voice to a hiss. “You’ve never driven in Paris traffic, and certainly not on France’s highways.”
Edie rolled her eyes. “In Wisconsin, they hand you a permit the summer after your freshman year of high school after you take a computer test that a goldfish could ace. Then you bomb around on county roads until you think you can pass the practical. I learned to drive shuttling my littler brothers to Boy Scouts day camp, dodging horse and carriages from the Amish community, long-haul truckers, and farm equipment. I’m not scared of a highway in a country with less people than Ohio at ten o’clock at night.
You can lean the seat back, and I’ll play something soothing while you finish your nap. ”
Cosima shook her head. “My father was a Formula One race car driver.”
“I’m sorry, did you learn to drive when you were three? If so, I’m happy to step aside.”
“My point is that I inherited a driving style both immaculate and aggressive that is faster than a Midwestern farm tractor and will get us to Rouen before the sun is already coming up.”
Edie put her hand over her mouth. “Immaculate and aggressive, princess?”
“That’s what I said.”
“How about this? We agreed to arbitrate our impossible disagreements, so we’ll let the attendant decide. Whatever this guy in the orange blazer says when we get up there goes.”
“Fine.” Cosima could’ve stomped her foot, but the kid sitting on the luggage was shooting her daggers.
The minute the man in front of them was done, they both raced to the counter, Cosima immediately spilling out her request in what she hoped was adequate French. “J’ai besoin de louer une voiture, quelle qu’elle soit, pour une durée indéterminée.”
The man raised his eyebrow and started typing. “Oui.”
Edie leaned forward, the high counter hitting her at sternum height. “Excuse my friend. She ate bad cheese on the train. I need to rent a car.”
He stopped typing. “Who’s the driver?” He spoke English with a strong Caribbean accent.
“I am,” Edie said, at the same time Cosima replied, “Moi.”
He stared at them both, his hands hovering over the keyboard. “Who is renting this car?” He looked on the counter at the stack of passports, driver’s licenses, and credit cards they had both provided.
“We want you to decide,” Edie said, breathlessly. “She and I have a deal, and you have to settle it.”
He raised his eyebrows again, looking first at Edie, then at Cosima, who held her breath. He began typing again. “I pick this short American. All I have left is the Fiat 500. The tall American will hit her chin with her knees if she tries to drive it.”
“Yesssss!” Edie actually pumped her fist. “How do you like that, Legs?”
Cosima tried to give Edie an imperious look, but she couldn’t help it—she started laughing.
They laughed the whole time Edie ground the gears of the cramped car on the way out of Paris while Cosima tried and failed to get her phone to pair with the onboard navigation, and when they finally found the road to Rouen and the lights of the city had faded behind them, Cosima did, in fact, fall asleep, the heater blasting, listening to Edie’s husky voice singing along with the radio.
Her most fun in Paris yet.