Chapter 10
Cornelia
Ididn’t mean to have sex with Nate; it kind of just happened. I know things just don’t happen, but that’s how it felt.
It was late November, and I had already been living in Paris for a little over two months.
All my friends have come to visit me. West and Annabelle visited together once.
Annabelle came alone one more time, and once with Lucian and Laurie.
I don’t know how Annabelle missed me since she almost lived with me a third of the time I was in Paris.
She loves any excuse to go there—she adores the city.
A part of me is scared that when she graduates this year, she’ll move there permanently.
The only one who hadn’t come to visit me was Nate, but I didn’t mind.
He was taking his company public and had a lot of work to do.
Just because I’d come to Paris and left all my responsibilities behind didn’t mean my friends could do the same.
Finally, after launching his IPO and it being a success, he and Laurie had planned to visit me the last weekend of November. However, Laurie cancelled at the last minute because of something related to school.
Laurie suggested changing it to the weekend after the boys’ yearly trip to New Orleans for Lucian and West’s birthday, but Nate and his girlfriend had just ended their long-term relationship.
Now that he didn’t have work to hide behind, he needed an escape, which I know all too well. So he came to visit me alone.
We had a blast. We made our way up and down the city. But on the last night of his stay, we decided to go to Bambini and order a couple of truffle pizzas to go, then eat them in my flat.
We sat on the living room couch in the centre of the room, the windows wide open, offering a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower. We ate the pizzas and drank some wine. It was really nice; we put on some music and turned on the fake fireplace.
“I think I could live here,” I told Nate, looking out the window.
He looked at me, confused. “Aren’t you already living here?”
I turn to look at him. “I mean permanently,” I clarified.
“What about university, and your brother?”
“I’m sure there’s a decent enough uni here, and Anthony can come and visit me. As all of you.”
Nate thought for a second, pouring himself the remaining wine from the bottle. “You won’t stay here forever,” he said, as if it were a simple matter-of-fact.
I used to think there was no place I’d want to live other than London, at least not permanently. Living elsewhere for a few months? It sounded fun. But forever? I wasn’t so sure.
I lifted my nose in the air, feeling indignant. “I could.” While part of me agreed with him, I don’t like being contradicted.
“You won’t,” he countered, unfazed. “You complained twenty times today about how dirty the streets are.”
I had complained—for someone who appreciates clean and good-smelling things, the streets of Paris are certainly not it.
And I must admit, I’ve discarded a few pairs of shoes and some long jeans because they touched mysterious liquids on the pavement while I was walking.
I genuinely believe the streets in Paris could benefit from a thorough, city-wide scrub.
“You’re exaggerating. I didn’t complain that many times. And I can get past that.” Maybe.
“I’m pretty sure that was the exact number,” he replied, but didn’t press it. Instead, he pivoted to a new argument. “You own about fifteen London and I love London hoodies, and you wear them constantly, unironically.”
“I only have ten,” I corrected him. Well, I did. Now I have eleven. What can I say? They’re cute and cosy, and God forgive a girl for loving her home city. “And I could always get some Paris ones.”
He looked unimpressed with my arguments. “You’re a Londoner. You love London. And you’ve proclaimed a dozen times that it’s the greatest city in the world and that anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves.”
He got me there.
“And yet,” I countered, “I was born in Switzerland, so you could say I’m actually Swiss.
” Technically, being born in Switzerland doesn’t automatically get you nationality, but being born there and having lived there for five years as a minor does.
Which I did. Because of that, I have dual nationality.
His face grew serious. “You know as well as I do that being here is just an escape. You love London, and you would go back to it.”
I granted, “I do, but—”
The whole fucking city is like a big reminder of him.
Bond Street—where he kissed me for the first time after years of not kissing each other, and all the times we shopped there together, him carrying my bags.
The London Eye, looking over Elizabeth Tower—the spot where he told me he loved me for the first time and asked me to be his girlfriend. It was extremely cheeky, but I loved it. Except for the fighting part.
Regent Park and Hyde Park—every walk we took there, hand in hand.
Carlos Place—my favourite street in the whole city, now tainted by all the times we spent there.
And Wilton Crescent—which I can’t even let myself think about.
And that’s to name a few; I could go on for hours.
It’s so hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember. Especially when there’s hardly a place in the world that doesn’t remind you of him.
“TJ,” he finished the sentence for me.
I nodded.
“You haven’t mentioned him once the whole time I’ve been here,” he pointed out.
“Not really a fan of talking about him.”
He smiled, a hint of sadness in his eyes. “I can understand.”
“What happened between you and Amelie?” I probably—definitely—shouldn’t have asked, especially since he hadn’t asked me about what happened between me and TJ, but I couldn’t help myself. The part of my brain that filters everything I say was, at that moment, out of service.
“I’m also not a fan of talking about her.”
“How about you tell me yours and I tell you mine?” I surprised myself by saying it. What happened between TJ and me is my least favourite topic of conversation, but Nate had a look I recognised from the mirror, and the only word I could find to describe it was heartbroken.
It kind of felt like he was the only one of my friends who could truly understand how I felt.
He considered it for a second, then downed what was left of his wine and said, “Fine, but if we’re doing this, we’re going to need more wine.”
I smiled. “I think you just read my mind.”
He got up from the couch and headed to the cellar. A few minutes later, he returned with a new bottle of wine. He opened it, poured some into my empty glass, then his, and set the bottle on the table in front of us.
Nate took a few sips of wine. “The last couple of months, I had my mind on other…” He glanced around the room, as if searching for the right word, “things.” His eyes returned to me.
“I wasn’t exactly being a good boyfriend.
I was really busy, and it started to bother her.
We had a fight, and she broke up with me. ”
“What an arsehole,” I said, fired up. “Of course you were occupied. You were making your company public. It’s not like brushing your teeth. She should have been more understanding.”
He gave me a half-smile. “She’s not an arsehole. She put up with a lot. If I were in her shoes, I’d probably have done the same.”
Maybe I was being a little mean—after all, he knows her better than I do—but if you hurt my friends, you become my number one enemy. And if you really love someone, you stay for the good and the bad, and don’t leave when things get hard, especially when they’re transient.
“You’re entitled to your opinion,” I declared. “But to me, what she did was an arsehole move.”
“I agree to disagree,” Nate said.
“I’ll allow it this time.”
He rolled his eyes playfully. “Now it’s your turn. Why did you and TJ break up?”
“TJ and I?” I acted confused. “I was going to tell you about what happened with Robert.”
It’s not like he was going to let me dodge this. I knew I’d sort of promised to tell him what happened with TJ, and I planned to, at least the part that doesn’t make me want to crawl out of my skin. But I figured I could make him work for it a little longer.
“No,” he said resolutely. “You’re not getting out of this. It was one breakup story for another.”
I pouted. “I know, but poor me—I’ve had two relationships end in the last few months, so technically, I have two breakup stories.”
When I first arrived in Paris, I tried to dive into casual sex.
I wanted to sleep with a lot of men. It was my twisted way of getting revenge on TJ.
He was all of my firsts—technically not my first boyfriend, but my first real one—and it made me feel like I belonged to him, and I hated that feeling.
I tried to follow through, but I couldn’t.
Until the day I saw him again for the first time since our breakup.
Then I said, “fuck it,” and slept with a guy I met in a pub.
But when morning came, I felt awful, so I started dating him.
It lasted about a week and a half, and I ended it when I found him sitting in my bed, wearing his outside clothes.
What was he, an animal? Either way, I knew it wasn’t working.
I wanted to end it the second it started, and that seemed like a good enough excuse.
He scoffed. “You can’t call what happened with that guy a relationship; it lasted like a week. I’ve had colds that lasted longer.”
“It lasted around two weeks,” I corrected him.
“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes. “That wasn’t a real relationship, and I already know what happened.”
I took a deep gulp of the wine left in my glass, emptying it in one go, feeling the warmth of the wine burn down my throat. “He cheated on me,” I spat out, looking away from him.
Nate looked at me, shocked. “Who? Robert?”
I shook my head. “TJ cheated on me, and that’s why we broke up.”
“Fuck him,” he said, as though the offence was directed at him.
“She kind of already did,” I joked, forcing a smile.
He chuckled, but the anger still lingered in his eyes. “Who was she?”
I didn’t want to lie to him, but I didn’t want to tell him who it was. One thing is your boyfriend cheating on you with someone else, but cheating on you with your mother is humiliating, to say the least. Couldn’t he have just waited thirty years until I looked more like her?
Instead of answering him, I got up from the couch and turned the music up.
“Come on, I want to dance,” I said, signalling him to get up.
He looked at me with amusement but shook his head.
I kept dancing for a few more minutes, but I got bored with dancing alone, so I grabbed one of Nate’s arms, trying to pull him up.
I tugged hard, but instead of lifting him, I ended up bouncing off him and crashing into his lap.
We both burst out laughing, but our laughter was quickly interrupted by the sharp sound of glass shattering.
In unison, we both turned our heads towards the noise and saw the wine bottle and our glasses shattered on the floor, their red contents spilling out across the white rug. The table had tipped over with my tugging, everything crashing to the ground.
“Should we try to clean it?” Nate suggested.
I glanced at him, still sprawled across his lap, and shook my head. “No, it’s probably already ruined. I’ll get a new one next week.”
He looked up at me, and for a brief moment, I remembered thinking how handsome he looked.
His blond hair was perfectly swept back, his jaw sculpted, and his lips full.
His face had always been sharp, but that only added to his allure, giving him a distant, magnetic quality—something I always knew but was only then truly noticing.
Until this point, I had only ever had eyes for TJ.
Before I could even process what was happening, he leaned in and kissed me.
I kissed him back, the urgency in our movements clear, as if we both needed this.
He stood, lifting me effortlessly, and without breaking the kiss, carried me into the bedroom where he was staying.
Gently, he laid me on the bed, leaning over me as he kissed me deeply.
I began unbuttoning his crisp white shirt while he carefully removed my black dress, leaving me in nothing but black Agent Provocateur lingerie.
He was about to unbutton his trousers, but then he paused, his gaze locking with mine.
“Are you sure?” he asked, and I could see a rare flicker of fear in his eyes, as if he were afraid I might say no. Or maybe he just needed reassurance, a confirmation that we weren’t doing something wrong. That we weren’t horrible people for doing this.
“Yes,” I breathed, kissing him again.
And that was all the answer he needed.
I should have said no. I should have thought about TJ, but for the first time in months, I was doing something without him in mind. And it felt really good.
I woke up the next day filthy and stained—not because I was dirty, I’m always clean, but in my soul.
I turned in bed to find Nate lying awake beside me, looking at me, the guilt eating at him, the unspoken what have we done?
in his eyes. So I decided to say aloud the one thing I swore to myself I would never say, because I knew it would help alleviate Nate’s guilt and remind me why I shouldn’t have any.
I shifted my gaze to the ceiling. I didn’t want to see his reaction when I told him.
“Nate.”
“Yes?”
“When I told you TJ cheated on me with someone,” I paused and took a deep breath, “that someone was my mother.”