Chapter XLIV. Azimuth Rising. #2
He did not complain about the separation. At least not that I could recall. He did not belabor the distance. But then again, I was bogged down with mom duties. Perhaps he had, and I hadn’t registered it. Perhaps I had forgotten.
“Is that all?”
She nods.
“Thank you,” I say, and then continue to the bathroom.
It haunts me during the car ride home. élodie’s words.
Her need to bring it up. To apologize. To describe his state of mind during their shoot.
Which clearly could not have been his state of mind a near year later at the Venice Film Festival when he slipped up and transgressed.
And then again. And again. And possibly, again.
And as I remove my shoes and pull off my fake lashes in the back seat of the Navigator, Francois still abuzz beside me, I wonder what it was that had clicked over for him.
What made him give in to those impulses that week.
Was it the attention? His star on the rise?
The idea that with a certain level of celebrity the regular rules did not apply? Celebrity made people messy.
Or was it something else? Was there something I’d not been giving him?
We arrive at the house in Rustic Canyon and are dropped off with little fanfare.
I hobble up the driveway beside my husband, who has placed his Saint Laurent suit jacket over my shoulders, sheltering me from the cold.
His arm draped loosely around my waist. My eight-hundred-dollar shoes in my hands.
My lashes in my purse. The driver watching us from the road.
I imagine what we must look like to him.
Our architectural house in our upscale neighborhood.
Our landscaped garden and designer clothes.
Multiculti, cosmopolitan, successful, artsy, chic.
A variation on wealth and privilege that, if I thought about it long enough, would make my own stomach turn.
How far we’d come. How quickly we’d become comfortable with it all.
From the outside, I imagine this life might look perfect. Beautiful, flawless. On the surface, perhaps it was.
But inside, it had begun to consume me.
He is wearing the shirt I bought him in London. Black, silk, expensive. Black wool trousers. His hair is neatly coiffed, full, thick, dark. No stubble on his chin. Just cheekbones for days, and that sharp jaw, and the twin moles on his cheek, and I remember why I fell for him.
We are in the executive suite at the boutique hotel near Saint-Sulpice. The third Tuesday of the month. He watches me take off my coat from across the room. A sly smile playing over his lips. We have been here before.
“You’re late,” he says.
“Am I?”
He nods, slow.
“Take off your dress.”
I don’t own many dresses. They’re not practical for my job. And in a boys’ club, I don’t want to stand out any more than I have to. So, pants. But for our Tuesday rendezvous, it has always been dresses and skirts.
I am wearing a full-length slip beneath. Because I know he likes it. Because something about silk against my skin feels both chaste and illicit. And French.
He makes his way across to me. Pushes me up against the wall. One hand flat against the paneling, the other cradling my face. His thumb runs over my cheek, my lips, forces its way into my mouth. His body presses up against mine, wool trousers scratchy against silk. He is already hard.
I reach down to unfasten his pants and he does not stop me. My hand stealing inside the opening. Finding him. Familiar. For a moment he lets me have my way. And then he spins me toward the wall. Grabbing my hip with one hand, lifting my slip with the other.
At the moment of entry, I brace myself. Hands splayed against the paneling. But something glitches.
Again.
I gasp, and in an instant, I am on the other side of the room, watching him.
Watching. Us.
His hands sliding over my hips, smooth on silk, up to my torso, cupping my breasts. His pelvis moving against my ass. He leans in to nuzzle the side of my face and I watch myself angle my head toward his.
“Ma belle,” he says, in between breaths. “I’ve missed you.”
I don’t know what to make of it. His words. The image of us. Me, both a part of it and witness to it.
“Is this real?” I hear myself say. “Us? Now?”
For a second, he stills. His lips at my throat. And then, “Does it feel real?”
It resonates like a test. Like if I say the wrong thing the spell will break, and I will be alone across the room watching him with someone else.
But if I don’t, the other me, the one who observes and critiques and analyzes, will quietly disappear.
She will exit the suite, leaving me alone with my husband.
“Does it feel real?” he repeats. His body against mine. His breath in my ear. His dick. And in that moment, I know that I am back in my body. The sensation of him is so clear, it can’t be anything but.
I awaken to find him asleep on his side, facing the wall of windows.
His back to me. And without speaking, I curl myself around him.
My mouth at his neck, the subtle hints of bergamot, citrus, and cedar.
My hand reaching into his pajama pants. He stirs almost immediately.
And I am grateful for the three years I have on him.
The fact that it perhaps buys us some time.
His body responds like a twentysomething’s.
He is not quite fully awake when I climb atop him, his hands finding my hips.
His lids at half-mast. I watch as he slowly registers, speechless.
Relishing the moment. Falling into my rhythm.
Innate, familiar. His hands make their way up over my sides, my torso, my breasts.
Lifting off my silk camisole. His breath slowly quickening, audible.
I like this position. The illusion of being in control.
The feel of him, deep and deliberate. His solidness firmly beneath me.
Capable, warm. His face from this vantage point, his voyeuristic thrill.
His elegant nose and even brow and mercurial eyes.
And I am reminded of all the times it was good.
All the times it was great. His sixth-floor walk-up in Montmartre, and my shoebox apartment near Jardin du Luxembourg, and our first shared space in the eleventh, and our place on the Avenue Trudaine.
The ways we crisscrossed Paris, making love and art and babies, until it all came to a crashing halt.
But I am determined to move beyond that.
His breathing intensifies as I fold myself over him, taking his lower lip between my teeth, the taste of mint and alcohol, my hands in his curls.
His dick, deep. He groans, and I slow, knowing he is close, not wanting him to get ahead of me.
I pull away, just slightly, holding his gaze, drinking him in.
His hunger, his beauty. All of him. This dance we do, seeking that seemingly elusive moment, until we are right on the edge. Until we spill over, together.
For a minute, neither of us speaks. The room filled with the sounds of our respective breaths, the pool filter, the frogs, the night.
The moment delicate. His torso beneath mine, rising and falling, slick with sweat.
The hairs on his chest tickling my skin.
His arms embracing me, his hands in my hair.
“You came back,” he says, eventually. His voice scratchy. One too many Clase Azul Reposados.
I don’t know how to respond.
There has been sex since the reveal of the affair.
Occasionally, decent. But never sex I initiated.
Always, it was him. And I would go along with it.
Because I’d convinced myself it was a way to move forward, to move through.
Willing myself to respond. Trying to trick myself into believing that I was with anyone but him, because the thought of him was far too painful.
But there, in his arms, feeling his warmth and inhaling his scent, even as he is slipping out of me, I realize that moving through was the only true way to get to the other side.
I came back, I think. But it is a thought I keep to myself.
Two days later, Fran goes to Europe for press junkets and premieres in London, Paris, and Rome. And for the first time in a long while, I do not worry about what he will or will not do. I do not doubt his commitment to me or to our family. I do not wonder if he’ll come back.