5. Primrose
PRIMROSE
A breeze barely ruffles the bangs I’m trying to grow out as I drink my first café of the day. Despite being seated in the shade of the black parasol, I’m bloody boiling.
I press my water glass to my heated cheek. Cheeks that have been pretty much nuclear since last night when that… that good-looking clit tease pushed me into the brightly lit trash-smelling alley, knickerless!
Dammit! I said I wasn’t going to think about it anymore. I’d already spent the night alternately feeling sick, then rage-y, plotting his demise while trying to divine his marital status.
He wore no ring, but that pale slice of skin on his ring finger set alarm bells ringing. It could be the result of a recent divorce. But it’s more likely he left his wedding band in the console of his car.
I feel like I could disappear from shame because it’s the only reasonable explanation for his behavior. The way he suddenly developed an issue with eye contact and how he thrust me away as though worried I might burst into flames—it had to be guilt.
And I hope he’s feeling guilty. I hope he’s feeling at least as bad as I feel right now.
What might’ve been the hottest moment of my life, my future nursing home glory story, my moment of breaking free from the past, has left me feeling lower than I ever thought possible.
I feel wretched that he might’ve made me the other woman, no matter how unwittingly.
I’m sad and disappointed and hurt on behalf of a woman I’ll never know.
The hottest moment of my life had the worst kind of outcome.
And that’s on him.
Probably.
There is another possibility. Another reason he might’ve shoved me out the door. And that’s good sex is something only other people have. In other words, I repel the opposite sex.
Enough, I think, as I tear a piece off my pain au chocolat and shove it into my mouth. I need to move on—forget last night. All of it in its entirety.
I have bigger things going on in my life right now. Like how I’m almost thirty and I’m still fucking up. That I’m on the lowest rung of my career ladder and playing catch-up thanks to finding myself on the wrong path at university.
In my head, David Attenborough’s voice begins to narrate my existential crisis.
And here we have an overthinker in her natural habitat… losing her ever-loving shit over the meaning of life and a man she’ll never see again.
Hopefully.
Because I don’t want to go to jail for murder.
Good thing for him we didn’t exchange names.
“I have to taste you.”
I hate how my blood turns hot at the auditory reminder.
His voice was so deep, and so full of need, and his eyes so darkly dilated.
I have never in my life experienced a moment like that.
I was so turned on—I felt like my skin was on fire, my whole being literally burning with need.
So you’d think I might’ve noticed the cool air swimming around my legs when the door creaked open behind me.
You know, just before he changed his mind, and he pushed me out into the night.
“Argh!” I exclaim through gritted teeth. Brain, cease and desist!
“Daddy, why is that lady making funny noises?” a child questions from a nearby table.
“Hush!”
My head whips around, and I paint on a smile. A family: mum, dad, and a little girl. American tourists by their accents.
“I’m just… enjoying these pastries so very much!
” Whipping up my breakfast, I bite off a huge chunk.
“Mmm, delish!” And then I scream. Inwardly, at least. I also try not to die as I inhale a bit of flaky pastry.
I take a sip of my now-cold coffee and, because I’m having such a good time, I slide a few euros under my cup and turn back to the apartment.
Despite my earlier words, my brain works itself into a frenzy. I shouldn’t have kissed him, especially after he was so dismissive earlier in the evening. Why did I let him? I don’t have low self-esteem, and I don’t have a thing for unsuitable or unavailable men.
I wasn’t trying to prove anything to myself—or to him!
Frigid.
My phone buzzes, saving me from that spiral. I pull it from my purse and try to ignore the flicker of anger I still feel that Sabine was too chicken to deliver it herself, leaving it with the concierge instead. But my mood takes an upward leap when I see a text from Emmy.
She’s on her way! Thank the Lord, because she’ll help me make sense of this. She’ll let me word vomit all over her before she delivers her no-nonsense brand of sense. Or she might she’ll just hit me on the head.
I spend the rest of my short walk back thinking that Parisiennes have the right idea in their mass summer exodus.
Same goes for my brother. He wouldn’t be caught dead in the city during this month despite Paris being his wife’s favorite place in the world.
But that works for me because it means their apartment on the swanky Champ-de-Mars is empty.
And I have plans for me and Emmy. We’ll eat ice cream while walking along the canals and chatter through French language movies that are played in the public parks after dark.
We’ll watch the Bastille Day fireworks from ringside seats and eat cheese and drink bubbles as we giggle over nothing. Summer goals!
Thirty minutes and I’m just cooling off in the air con when the intercom goes.
“Hello? I mean, oui, bonjour,” I say, pressing the button.
“Prim, it’s me.”
My heart does a happy dance at the sound of Emmy’s voice. “Emmeeee!” I squeal. “I’ll buzz you in!” By the time the ancient elevator has reached the penthouse, I’m in the hallway, jittery with excitement. “Hello, stranger!”
She lifts her hand but doesn’t quite make it to a wave as I rush at her, all outstretched arms and mile-wide smile. I’m just bursting with happiness at the sight of her.
“God, I’ve missed you.” I hug her tight. It feels like I haven’t seen her in an age.
“I’m sweaty,” she protests on a chuckle.
“Don’t care.” I squeeze her extra tight one last time before spinning away to hide the telltale sting of my eyes. “Well, don’t stand there on ceremony.” This I shoot over my shoulder, already in the apartment. “Come in.”
“Prim.”
“I’ll put the kettle on. No, let’s open a bottle of fizz. It’s five o’clock somewhere in the world, right?”
“Raiding your brother’s drinks cabinet again?”
Her wry tone makes my heart smile. “Only if you promise not to vomit in his wastepaper basket.”
“That was you!”
“Not the way I remember it.” We were fifteen and I was terrified of being caught, not that Leif is an ogre or anything, but because “drunk teenager” didn’t fit into my family’s expected ole for me, Emmy took the blame and my siblings teased her mercilessly all summer.
In the kitchen, I pull open the door to the huge glass-fronted temperature-controlled wine cellar thing. “Actually, you might need something stronger when I tell you what I got caught up in last night.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it.”
“No biggie.” Not now that we can pop this cork and get down to the business of celebrating her arrival. Before moving on to dissecting the best and worst experience of my life.
I swing around brandishing a bottle champagne—not one of Whit’s fantastically expensive bottles, but something I picked up myself. A Laurent-Perrier. “You’re here now, and that’s all that… matters.”
It takes me a moment to work out what’s wrong with this picture. Emmy’s expression, obviously. And the fact that she hasn’t any luggage. She doesn’t even have a backpack. My heart plummets, and I know what’s coming before she even opens her mouth.
“Prim.” My name an apology of my name as her eyes turn instantly watery. I’d been so busy yammering away to hide my own emotions, I hadn’t noticed.
“What is it?”
“I can’t stay.”
“Is it that family again? Honestly, Em, they ask too much of you.” My words are terse because all I can think is she’s about to do it again.
She’s going to bloody well drop me again when I need her here.
“There are other jobs, you know. Leif probably knows loads of families in need of a nanny back in London.”
“Not one that pays me like this one.” She gives her head a tiny, sorrowful shake. “But it’s not the family. It’s my family. My dad. He had a heart attack.”
“Don’t worry. It’s all in hand.”
The entrance to the Gare du Nord station is utter chaos, people bumping into each other without apology, crying children, and wheeled luggage being used like battering rams.
Emmy tightens her hand on her own case, pulling it from the back of the taxi she’d left waiting outside the apartment building earlier. “Yes, but—”
“But nothing.” I take her shoulders in my hands.
“Go. Be with your family. I’ll look after things here.
” As she glances at the doors to the station, all I can think is poor Em.
The news of her dad is bad enough, but this additional job stress seems desperately unfair.
The family she works for must be such entitled arseholes.
Worse, they’re entitled arseholes I’ve offered to stay with for the weekend.
You know, to look after their arsehole offspring.
It’s not as if I have anything else planned.
The reasons she’s asked me to cover for her aren’t entirely clear, but this isn’t the time to ask heaps of questions. I just know Emmy is fearing for her job at a time when she needs to be home. And the bottom line is, if I can’t be in Paris with my bestie, the least I can do is help her out.
I mean, how hard can two days nannying be?
“I feel terrible asking you to do this, but it’ll only be until—”
“Monday,” I finish for her. “Honestly, it’s fine.”
“It’s just until they can get someone from an agency.”
Because heaven forbid the rich look after their own kids.
“Sylvie is so sweet,” she says.
Well, she’d better be.
“And she knows you’re my best friend, so she’s really excited to meet you.”
“Fab. That means she’ll be well behaved for me.”
“And Felix is… spirited.”
“Emmy, you know I know that’s code for ‘a little shit’. I do have four of my own brothers, remember?”