“Okay. So there it is. Out in the open.”
“And now we go back to the whole we just met routine. Good?”
He nodded.
“Where did you live?” I asked, shifting the talk back to Paris.
“In the Latin Quarter. Across the river from Notre Dame.”
“Me too.” I pictured the flat I’d lived in with a hip and trendy young French couple. The narrow staircase that wound up four flights. The cramped kitchen and even smaller bathroom. But it was Paris, and from the window in the second bedroom I had a view of the river and Notre Dame and farther beyond I could see Sacre-Coeur. A torch singer who lived across the street from me used to fling her windows open in the evenings, and she’d sing while cooking, songs about love gone awry. She had one of those voices like whiskey and honey, the best kind of voice for those songs. I half expected her to slink around her flat in a sexy, sequined red dress like a cabaret singer. “So you went to Paris for work. But this was before Made Here?”
“The company I worked for right out of business school had an office there. I thought I’d just visit it from time to time. But instead, they relocated me. So I spent a year in Paris, learning the ropes, and the firm did a lot of business with small suppliers who made handcrafted special goods. High-quality watches, and leather bags, and wallets and such. And I was able to observe some of the processes, the handiwork, the craftsmanship. It got me thinking I could do the same back in the States, but I had to capitalize on something that was on the cusp of being popular but that wouldn’t just be a trend. That’s when the cufflink idea came to me, so when I returned from Paris I connected with Wilco,” he said, referring to his former business partner. “He was the money guy. I was the idea guy. So he raised the capital and I started building the business. And voila. Four years later, here we are.”
I noted that he didn’t say anything bad about Wilco, when it would be so easy to disparage the man given the trouble he’d caused for Made Here. “Voila, indeed. So I take it you’re fluent?”
“Oui.”
“Moi aussi.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So then I can flirt with you in French and it’ll be like a secret language just between us,” he said to me in French.
Flirt. Secret. Us. What was he doing using words like that? Playing with my emotions? “Yeah, not so secret, Bryan. A few million people speak French.”
Then I turned to look out the window. We were passing through a beautiful town in Pennsylvania, rushing by farmhouses and stately white homes with impeccably trimmed green lawns and shrubs.
He peered out the window too, his body moving closer to mine, doing that thing he did where he migrated into my space. I could feel his chest against my arm as we watched the towns zoom by. Soon, he reached his arm across my back, his hand touching my shoulder. Technically, it was the sort of thing friends might do. But it didn’t feel like we were friends. It didn’t even feel like flirting. It felt like foreplay.
And I didn’t want to pretend anymore.
I didn’t want to be mean anymore.
I didn’t want to toss barbs at him anymore.
I wanted him to touch me, so I didn’t dare move. I didn’t risk a look or a glance. The moment was full of too much heat that I didn’t trust myself. I thought I was over him. I thought he’d earned the spot I’d tucked him in back in the far corner of my mind. I was wrong. I had been forcing him there for five years. Because now, with him by my side, inches away, looking out the window of a racing train, I knew all I’d done was white knuckle it through. I’d faked my way through every other relationship, when all I was doing was resisting him. He was the only one I’d ever wanted like this, and my body was on fire for him.
He leaned in to whisper to me, and I closed my eyes. I felt as if I might collapse into him. “The towns are so pretty, Kat. Don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I managed to say without melting into his arms.
“And sometimes, I think, they’re even prettier five years later. Just like you. You’re even prettier now, and you were beautiful then.”
I wanted to turn my face towards his and let him devour me in kisses, let his hands find their way underneath my shirt, and onto my skin. I could see kisses on my neck, lips on my belly, legs wrapped around him. It was almost too much to bear. I tried to shake the images – these pictures of him on me, in me, under me – but they’d staked out a home.
Somewhere, there was a modicum of restraint in me, because I didn’t answer him.
Soon, the train pulled into our stop. We both rose, and I noticed his cheeks were flushed. He looked at me, his eyes darker than usual, full of unsaid things.