Chapter Nine #2
“Good… morning.” She blinked a few times. “Did we…?” she mumbled, putting a hand to her head, which he imagined hurt as much as his did.
“No, no, we didn’t,” he said quickly.
“Oh.” Her face fell. “You didn’t want to…?”
“No, I did want to,” he said hurriedly. “Very much. But you seemed so sad.”
She stared at him, and he could see the moment the memories of the night before filled in, because her eyes widened, and then she closed them and groaned. “Oh my God, I cried, didn’t I?”
“Only a little bit.” He gave her a small smile.
“I am so, so sorry.” She covered her face with her hands. “I’m absolutely mortified.”
“Shelby?” He waited until she looked at him, peeking out from between a few of her fingers. “You don’t need to apologize. It just seems like, well, maybe you’re not ready to move on.”
“But I am,” she said in a small voice. “I’m supposed to be getting over him.”
“Right.” It wasn’t as if she’d misled him, but he had hoped, after the hours of baring their souls to each other last night, that she might have seen this as something more.
Shelby groaned. “It sounds terrible, doesn’t it? I didn’t mean it like that, Russ. Just that, obviously, this can’t go anywhere. And you seem like a nice guy, and—”
“No, I get it,” he interrupted.
“I haven’t been single in more than a decade and I, just…” She wiped her tears away. “It’s just… I don’t really know who I am right now, you know? I was so sure I’d grow old with my husband, and instead, I’m out in Paris, acting like a complete loser.” She gave him a small smile.
“You didn’t act like a loser,” he assured her. “So this husband of yours…”
“Soon to be ex-husband,” she said quickly. “The divorce will be final next week.”
“Right. But this guy…”
“Brandon,” she filled in.
“Brandon.” He realized he hated knowing the man’s name. It made it too easy to think of her with someone else. “So this Brandon guy, he’s got to be a real idiot.”
She smiled slightly. “Now you sound like my friends. But I think it’s more complicated than that, you know?
I mean, we both wanted to start a family, and I couldn’t get pregnant, and it just drove this big wedge between us.
After a while, I think Brandon just didn’t want to be around me at all anymore.
It caught me off guard when he told me he wanted a divorce, but I should have seen it coming. ”
“Okay, now I know the guy’s an idiot,” Russ said. “You were going through a rough patch, and he jumped ship? That’s not what you’re supposed to do in a marriage.”
Shelby squinted at him like she was trying to read him. “Have you ever been married?”
“Well, I’m basically married to Benji.” From her confused look, he realized she had no idea what he was talking about.
“My business partner. We own the bar together. What I mean is that the two of us are like an old married couple, you know? Bickering about finances and responsibilities and who owes who what.”
She cracked a small smile. “Sounds very romantic.”
He laughed. “Yeah, it’s a regular Jackson Quick song. Truth is, I was so focused on the bar in my thirties that a whole decade passed by without me looking up. And the older I get, the harder it is for me to imagine any life for myself other than this one.”
“Is this not what you want? To be running a bar in Paris and going home with drunk American girls?”
When she put it that way, he sounded pathetic, didn’t he? “For the record, I can’t remember the last girl I took home.”
“That tends to happen when you drink a whole bottle of Jack,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
He laughed. “I mean it. This isn’t something I do. Ever. Not anymore, anyhow.”
She squirmed uncomfortably. “Do you wish you hadn’t taken me home?”
“No,” he said instantly. “I just need you to know that this isn’t something I make a habit of.”
“Yeah, well, me neither. I haven’t been with anyone but my husband since…” She trailed off and looked away.
“I know,” Russ said, and he did. He knew that Shelby was new at being single, new at being made to feel attractive after so long.
And he also knew, in that moment, despite the many ways in which they were both broken, that he wanted to be the one making her feel that way for as long as possible, even if their time would be up in a few short days.
“What do you say to breakfast? There’s a little café around the corner… ”
She looked at him for a long time, and he could see her trying to figure him out. The thing was, he wasn’t very complicated. This wasn’t complicated. So before she could further confuse herself, he leaned forward and kissed her, long and deep. When he finally pulled back, she looked dazed.
“I hope that was okay,” he said. “I know I was just supposed to be a fling, so maybe you want to get out of here before—”
“Actually…” She cut him off. “Could you maybe kiss me like that again?”
“That could be arranged,” he said, and this time, when his lips met hers and she tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling him toward her, he could feel the moment things shifted and she finally took a real step out of her past and moved a little closer to the future.