Chapter 16
Sixteen
“Only version of forever I’ve ever wanted.”
The next morning tasted like pride and secondhand celebration. Adam had made it. Stanford. Full ride. The future chemical engineer of the Kings, god help us all.
I came into work glowing. Not in the metaphorical “good lighting, decent outfit, good sex” way: I mean humming-under-my-breath, swinging-my-bag, secretly-wanting-to-hug-Kevin-the-Cactus kind of glowing.
Tom caringly asked if I was high, with cannabis being legal across Canada.
Mia just handed me a croissant with divine pistachio filling and said, “Eating burgers does you good, my friend”.
Then came Paul.
He passed my desk without slowing, just the brush of his fingertips against my shoulder as he leaned close enough for my skin to react like he’d whispered something indecent. But he didn’t say anything. He just dropped a yellow Post-it on my keyboard, with tiny, slanted letters scribbled on it:
Check your inbox in 5. Bring headphones.—PChinaski ?
Five minutes. Right, sure, no problem. I answered three emails, re-sent Tom’s ferry deck plan, and pretended not to stare at the clock in the corner of my screen like a lunatic. I opened my inbox after an impressive seven minutes of masterful restraint.
Subject: the fantasy.
From: Paul Andersen pch_sounds@
To: Alicia King [email protected]
Body:
Je t’aime… moi non plus. (I love you… Me neither).
Imagine this:
A flat just above the Seine. Fourth floor. Too small for two people to live in without touching all the time, and maybe that’s the point.
Mornings smell like burnt coffee and old paper. You pad barefoot to the tiny balcony, my shirt half-buttoned around your thighs. The city hasn’t fully woken up yet. Neither have we.
The floorboards creak when I come up behind you.
I slide my arms around your waist, cup your breasts, and bury my face low in your shoulder.
You smell like heat and sleep and whatever sin we committed the night before.
The whole room is filled with the smell of sex.
I make you come to me, on the balcony, facing the Seine, the street, and the pedestrians.
You like it that way—that’s what Paris does to us, I guess.
“Stay in bed,” I whisper later. “You’re the only religion I believe in.”
We end up back in bed, of course. Sheets kicked off. Skin on skin. You laughing against my mouth like you’re not already breathless.
It rains around noon. A slow, indulgent kind of Paris rain. The kind that makes you read books you’ve already underlined and drink apple cider from plastic cups, and somehow it seems fabulous.
And when the city lights come on, flickering gold across your back as you straddle me on the old leather couch, your hair damp and your hands on my chest, you ask me if I could live like this forever.
I don’t say it, but this is the only version of forever I’ve ever wanted.
P
My headphones trembled in my fingers because the song was there too.
“Je t’aime… moi non plus.” I didn’t fully understand the words, but the song was meant to be felt, not deciphered: Gainsbourg, Birkin, a breathy ache of a song that sounded like an orgasm and a tragedy all wrapped in silk and cigarettes.
I didn’t know what to say. I hit reply before I left the building, overwhelmed by a mix of emotions so raw and intense, I would cry my heart out on Tom’s shoulder.
Subject: RE: the fantasy.
From: Alicia King [email protected]
To: Paul Andersen pch_sounds@
Body:
At work? Are you trying to destroy me to bits with your poetry at work now? Do you know what effect your words have on me? I just got caught blushing at my desk by Tom. He thinks I’m having a medical event.
But two can play this game. I’m now mentally shopping for the right Paris morning robe. Something satin. Something to slide off easily.
You’re impossible.
PS. This forever place of yours, and how you described it, it’s heaven.
A.
Ten minutes later, another Post-it landed. This time, Paul didn’t say a word, just passed by, his fingertips grazing my wrist for half a heartbeat.
“Slide off easily.” Now who’s impossible? You know you can straddle me with whatever you please, and I’ll take care of the rest.
I swallowed a laugh and pressed my palm flat to my chest, like I could stop my own heart from jumping out. My skin was still tingling where he’d touched me. My index finger was grazing my thumb. Later, around noon, he caught me by the printer.
“You’re the devil,” I whispered.
He leaned in, crowding my space, his mouth a few inches from my ear.
“You read the last line?”
“Of your fantasy?”
“Of my confession.”
I had read it: This is the only version of forever I ever wanted.
And somewhere deep in my chest, something both exploded and healed: he’s back.
All of him: the softness, the passion, and most of all: the promise.
This wasn’t a fling, and he’d just written it, in bold, breathless, Paris-colored words.
I floated through the rest of the day; it was one of the good ones.
It was a weekday, but it felt like a Saturday in Paris. After listening to Jane Birkin’s slow, orgasmic breaths for the fifth time, my heart was beating like a drum, and my body was on the verge of explosion. I surprised myself when I texted Paul:
Me:
Tonight. I’ll come over. I have a surprise for you.
Paul?:
What did I turn you into? Not a big fan of surprises today. But if it involves this scarred goddess version of you, I might become religious.
Me:
Say your prayers
I replied, with eyes closed.
I read our back and forth several times, still shocked that the girl who started work here with soaked feet and emergency Birkenstocks now wouldn’t stop tracing the edge of the garter belt bag she buried deep in her closet.
And so, I chose the gold set again: the bra and panties that made me feel like more than flesh and scar.
And this time… the garter belt too, coupled with sheer black stockings.
Over it, I wore my long black coat. No shirt.
No pants. Just silk on skin and something heady curling behind my ribs.
By the time I buzzed his apartment, I was shaking.
Paul opened the door barefoot, in low-slung joggers and a black long-sleeve, his eyes looked different, sleepless? Stressed? I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The apartment smelled like aftershave and basil and wine.. Then his mouth lifted in a cocky, slightly disbelieving smile.
“Well,” he said, eyes dragging down the length of me like a fuse had just been lit. “Look at you, a bit warm for a long coat, isn’t it?”
I shrugged off the coat slowly, and the silence that followed was its own kind of music.
He stared, slowly stepping back so I could walk past him. One hand came down, fingertips brushing my bare thigh just above the stocking clasp. The other traced the edge of the bra and slipped slowly inside to feel my nipples, featherlight, eyes now dark and unreadable.
“You wore this for me,” he said, his voice low.
“I wore this for us,” I answered.
He exhaled slowly, like he’d been holding his breath for hours.
“I don’t think you understand how hard it is to look at you like this and not completely lose it.”
I looked up at him through my lashes. “Then lose it.”
His mouth was on mine before I could take another breath, just at the edge of losing control.
His hands went to my thighs, lifting me in one fluid motion.
I gasped against his mouth as he walked us to the bed.
When he laid me down, he just stood there for a moment, taking me in, like I was something to be memorized, not just stripped.
“Take this off?” I whispered, tugging on his shirt.
He peeled it off in one smooth move. The soft gold light caught the lines of his stomach, the faint curve of his tattoo. And that’s when I did it. I pulled him down by the waistband of his joggers and straddled him, slowly, skin against skin.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“I know,” I whispered back. “That’s because I keep thinking about your confession and how much I love… loved every word of it.”
He reached up to cup my face, and I watched his eyes flicker: not just with hunger, but awe. The look he gave me: god. That look. Like I was holy and about to ruin him in the same breath. And just like that, my scars stopped screaming. They didn’t matter, just like his guitar chords many days ago.
“I wasn’t in the best mood today, but you, Alicia, you make me believe I’m better than I am.”
And then I did, I made him better all evening and through the night, like we only had this one day. Je t’aime.
The morning after felt lazy and blissful.
We didn’t rush, but we didn’t talk much either.
He woke up before me, like most of the time, and disappeared into the kitchen early.
He made coffee shirtless, his hair still wild from the night before, and when I padded barefoot to meet him in one of his shirts, he looked at me with a kind of Paul-ish sadness in his eyes, like maybe the night was all too much.
No tender kiss on my neck, as usual in the mornings, no teasing, no accidental-on-purpose brushing past me.
“Hey,” I said, squeezing past him to steal a sip from his mug. “You look… thoughtful.”
He smirked faintly. “That’s just me hungover on you, sex, and Gainsbourg.”
But the smile didn’t reach all the way. There was more to it. He leaned against the counter, fingers curled around his cup like it was the only thing keeping him steady.
I tilted my head. “What’s going on?”,
“I need to go to Portland,” he said.
I blinked. “Okay… You sound serious. Everything okay with your mom? When?”
“Soon. In two or three days, maybe.” He didn’t look at me. “Yeah, it’s my mom. I’ve been putting it off for too long.”
Right, his mom: the mysterious, blurry figure in our conversations—no pictures, no stories, just vague mentions and tension you could cut with a knife.
“How is she doing?” I asked carefully.
“She’s been… off, on those meds,” he said, waving one hand vaguely. “She says she wants to talk, and that’s always serious. I’ve been running some errands for her before, but I don’t know what she means now, so I have to go.”
“What about your brother and dad? Are they with her? Will they meet you?”
“I don’t know what to expect when I get there. We haven’t been close lately.”
I hesitated, but had to ask. “Do you want company?”
He looked at me then, like he’d gotten hit by lightning. His eyes slightly surprised, like there was something behind them I couldn’t name.
“God, no. I mean, thank you. Oregon is not that glorious, I promise you.”
I nodded slowly, trying not to let the ache show on my face. “Can I help in any way? Book the ferry? Drive you to the ferry dock?”
He laughed under his breath. “Girl, I’ll be fine. Remember, we work at Tommo, ferry discounts, and a half-decent app.”
Something twisted in my stomach like a rotten apple. “I get it,” I said, offering a small smile. “Just… let me know when you’re leaving, okay?”
He stepped forward, pressed a kiss to my temple. “Of course.”
But I felt the shift, the faint crackle in the air, like a wire had been gently, almost imperceptibly, cut. Too bad I’d already fallen head over heels for this man.