But there are little things that puzzle me, that I find I can’t explain away so easily. The way my heart expands each time she settles herself so sweetly into my lap. The way I want to hold her hand, not because it’s cute or to stop her walking into traffic, but because it’s grounding. The quiet togetherness when she’s working on her laptop and I’m at the piano. I find myself thinking about her when I’m at the studio, wondering what she’s doing, wanting to ask her opinion about that song or this arrangement.
That’s because you’re a bastard, Frederic. Focusing on her is easier than thinking about your fucking voice.
Is it true? It’s not unheard of, for me to like a woman. Even to love a woman. It fucking wrecked me when Marion and I ended. I loved her so much it was like part of my heart dying when we got the diagnosis from Giselle and I saw the relief in her eyes. Now I’d have to stop singing like Marion had hinted she’d wanted for the last two years of our relationship. My world had just fallen apart and she was glad.
I swallow a sigh. Though I was angry and hurt at the time, I understand now how hard it was for her to have me absent for months at a time. I used to ask her to come with me to Montreal or Moscow while I performed in shows but she always refused. Marion preferred her own space, her own things around her. It annoyed me, this stubbornness of hers, and when we finally broke up she tearfully told me that yes, she did prefer to be at home, but that I had never really meant it when I said I wanted her to go on tour with me. That I had never tried very hard to share my career with her, and all my hopes, my aspirations, and especially my doubts. I kept those to myself.
I was stunned at the time and angrily refuted it, but with a little distance I think maybe she was right. She wasn’t creative herself, so perhaps deep down I felt like she wouldn’t understand. Mainly, though, I think I was worried that if I confided my doubts and insecurities to her she’d realize I was fallible. I didn’t know until recently that that’s what I wanted to be in her eyes, but she knew. Oh, she knew.
But there’s no point dwelling on it. I’ll always love her, so it makes me happy that she’s now with someone who can be there properly for her. I’ve met her fiancé and he’s a good man. A physiotherapist.
I glance down at Evie and she’s smiling, a warm, blissed-out smile. Good. I don’t want her to be tangled up in painful memories like I am right now. I want her to enjoy her afterglow and the fact that she’s happy, not crying and ashamed. I notice that she’s nibbling on the edge of her forefinger, her eyes still closed. On impulse I say, “Put your finger in your mouth, baby.” And to my surprise she does, her pretty lips move rhythmically as she sucks it. Mon Dieu, she’s fucking cute. I could watch her do that all day. She’s a lot younger than the subs I’m usually attracted to, and I don’t just mean her age. She acts younger, when she’s happy at least, and she smiles at all the things I say to her after she’s come. Little girl. Let daddy take care of you. You just sit in my lap and be pretty. It’s adorable and it makes my dick hard at the same time. The thought of her crying while she sucks her finger or her thumb as I fuck her makes my balls tighten.
You’ve got the nastiest tastes, Frederic, I tell myself, watching her and smiling. But then, you always knew that. How wonderful it is that she likes your sweet cruelty, too.
In the warm silence, I come to a decision. I will keep Evie close to me and safe until I have to say goodbye. It will be hard, letting her go, but she’ll leave me with a smile on her face. I’ll become a distant memory to her as the years pass, but she’ll continue to blossom long after everything has ended for me.
She’ll be fucking beautiful, whatever she becomes.
Chapter Twelve
Evie
But I don’t want to go home. I glare at the Eurostar carriages that line the platform at Gare du Nord. The weeks in Paris have evaporated into nothing in the summer haze and now it’s time to return to England, the new university year, and for Frederic to begin rehearsals. I feel like throwing my handbag to the ground and having a good cry. Reality. It sucks.
In Paris I’ve been untroubled, joyous, existing entirely on kinky sex and good food and work. Who will I be once I return home? What if food tastes different and I can’t concentrate enough to write, or—horror—sex with Frederic becomes bland and stilted? What if I can’t slip into that blissful, childlike state after, where I feel small and cherished and cared for? Or he doesn’t tell me to suck my finger and be a good baby and all the rest of the weird, kinky things he says and does that I just eat up?
Frederic notices the look on my face as I glare at the train and hooks me into his side with his free arm. “What’s that pout for? Am I going to have to spend as much effort persuading you to go home as it took getting you here?”
He did have to persuade me, didn’t he, when I’d made up my mind so firmly not to go to Paris. I don’t want to be petulant about going back to England but I really do feel dreadful. Pushing my face into his shoulder I mutter, “Yes.”
“I know,” he murmurs into my hair, kissing the top of my head and wrapping his arms around me. “It’s been wonderful having you all to myself. I’ll miss Paris, too.”
A knot loosens in my chest hearing him say this, and because I don’t have to pretend with Frederic. He understands. Even so, going back to England is a reminder that time is passing, and I hate being reminded of that. At night I lie awake in Frederic’s bed while he sleeps next to me, playing “maybe.” Maybe we could have more time together if he gets another show in London. Maybe we could commute back and forth between London and Paris to see each other every other weekend. Maybe he’ll fall in love with London and want to stay.
I’ve even found myself imagining impossibilities. Maybe if I was older he’d see me as more than a short-term thing. I don’t feel the eighteen-year age gap between us when we’re alone together. It’s easy to forget about it, lying in his arms and talking sweet nonsense. It’s easy to ignore in a city like Paris, too. Europeans keep their noses out of each other’s business and nobody looks twice at us on the street. But when my mind pushes down the avenues of what if, I imagine what my friends would think, what my parents might think. It would, as my mother says, raise eyebrows, me being with Frederic.
But who cares what they think? What does Frederic think? No. That’s not it either. What do I think?
I’m being ridiculous, that’s what I think. It’s just temporary, this relationship, so I need to stop thinking in crazy circles and just enjoy this time we have together. Besides, it’s ice cream for breakfast with Frederic, remember? This sort of relationship can’t last, not in the long term.
I look up at Frederic and give him my bravest smile. As usual, being this close to him makes my heart flutter. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how beautiful his eyes are. “I’m all right. The end of summer, you know. Always makes me melancholy when the weather starts to turn.”
He looks down at me for a long time, still holding me, hesitating as if he wants to say something. If we were in his flat right now he’d pull me onto his lap and kiss me and talk to me until I really was smiling, not just pretending. I wonder if the fact that he can’t do that here is what’s making him uncertain. “D’accord, petite fille. Let’s go and find our seats.”
“Can I have the window again?”
Grinning, he kisses me. “Of course you can.”
As the train pulls out of Gare du Nord I mentally catalogue the coming weeks. Once university opens, Frederic and I have worked out that we can spend Wednesdays to Sundays together in London, and while he’s rehearsing during the day I’ll be able to work on the book, grade student essays and pick at my thesis. It’s reached that irritating, why-did-I-even-choose-this-stupid-topic stage so I need to pull back and rough out a plan of attack to reinspire myself. Frederic’s biography is slowly coming together and I have about a third of it written and some good notes for the rest.
I’ve even reworked and sent my short story to a different magazine, telling Frederic about it after the fact. He was so thrilled that he composed a short song in its honor, inspired by the themes I’d written about. “But that’s amazing,” I tell him when he’s played the composition for me, a bright, elastic piece that fit perfectly with my story. “You compose as beautifully as you sing. You should do something with it.”
He brushed off my words, his face closing. “Tinkering on the piano is like completing crossword puzzles. I just do it to pass the time.”
I’m not so sure about that. I’ve never seen someone fill in seven-down in the passionate, focused way he scribbles all over his sheet music, and the compositions he’s been banging out on the ebony and ivory are as stormy as a Gothic novel. This is one of the few things that Frederic seems unwilling to talk about, though, so I leave it alone.
We’ve emerged on the English side of the Channel Tunnel for only ten minutes when my phone rings. It’s Mona. Her c