Page 103 of Darling
Later, when we’ve left Périgord’s and are heading south toward Anton and Max’s place, he appears beside me, nudging me gently with his arm. “You’ve been ignoring me,” he says in slow French.
“Sorry. I’ve been so fucking busy, it feels like this semester has gone so quickly. Four weeks to go, and I am so behind.” This is a lie, I’m actually right on schedule with my project work, and I’ve more than enough for the final exhibition. Plenty enough to take back to Jacob for the show in LA. He’d made me promise to do my first showing there after graduation.
“It’s okay, Ash. You don’t have to explain.” He speaks in Belgian-accented English this time. “I just wanted to know you were okay. That it was… okay. That I didn’t hurt you or anything like that.”
I stop in the middle of the street and turn to him. “Fuck. No.” The others swerve around us, throwing us curious looks. I wait until they’re a little way ahead before going on. “No. I swear it was nothing like that. I just… fuck, I don’t know what my problem is.”
“It’s the older guy. He is your problem,” says Aksel. “He is my problem, too, actually.”
We’re both smiling at each other. He’s not wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, meaning it.
He shrugs and we walk on.
“You haven’t heard from him in how long?”
It’s not said in a shitty way, I don’t think. We’d been friends first; a few months ago, we’d been high at a party in a townhouse in Marais, and we’d spent the night talking about our exes. I hadn’t mentioned Christian’s name—I didn’t know if there were still Stephen Gardiners out there and I wasn’t taking the chance—but I had told Aksel he was older, had an important job, wasn’t out, and still loved his dead wife. He’d looked at me with the sort of look I imagine a first responder has at an earthquake site.
“Um, two years.”
“Have you looked him up? To see if he still has an important job?”
“No.” I’m fucking terrified to do that. I feel like he can’t be the UK Prime Minister; I’d have heard about that, right? Especially here in Europe. But it also doesn’t mean he isn’t. I think deep down I’m also scared he’s remarried, and that his kink for younger men was just that, a kink, and that he’s married another blonde English woman called Emily or Sarah and takes her to events now. So, no. I haven’t looked him up. Anyway, I don’t need to because I don’t need to know, because it makes no fucking difference. He isn’t coming back to me.
“And you still have the same number you had then?”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling dumber with each question.
“You could tell me his name, and I could look him up, rate your chances with him today.” He has a playful look on his face, and I’m almost tempted. I know he is no longer in DC because Amata has told me that, because Gael—they are still going strong—told her he isn’t working for him anymore. The new ambassador was some bald, old guy called Lord Cummington, which she thought was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. We’d laughed for a long time that night.
“Thanks, but no. It’s honestly better I don’t know.” Liar. I know his son is an actor now—I’m sure he hadn’t been before, but then I wondered if it was just something else Christian hadn’t bothered telling me about (I wasn’t important). I’d seen his face on the side of the Metro a few months ago, advertising some huge movie with a title I couldn’t pronounce. I thought I’d imagined it, or that it was just someone who looked a lot like him, until I saw the same poster on a thirty-foot advertising board outside the college a day later. He was going by Leo Williams, which I did remember was Christian’s wife’s name before she married him.
“It is a shit situation, I know,” Aksel offers. He’d had a bad break-up about a year ago with a guy from Spain. A guy who had gone off and gotten engaged to a girl a few months later.
“Yeah, good for the art, shit for the heart.”
Aksel makes a noise of agreement. We walk on a little more, coming to the section of Place du Petit Pont, which breaks off into Rue de la Bûcherie. The others are going straight; Max and Anton’s place is back across the river toward Parsons. I take a quick look at my watch and go to break right.
“I’m gonna head to Shakespeare before it closes, I’ll catch up.”
He gives me an amused look. “Again? You were there lastweek.”
“Yeah, I go every week.”
“It will be full of tourists.”
“My kinda people.” I grin. “I’ll see you soon.”
“You don’t want company?”
“At Shakespeareand Company?No. You’ll only ruin my vibe.”
I head off down the much quieter street towards possibly my favourite place in the whole of the city. It is, as Aksel says, a total tourist trap: always busy with Americans, which is honestly partly why I like the place. At its heart, it’s just a specialised thrift store, and I’ve yet to meet a thrift store I don’t love. It also reminds me a little of the queer bookstore in DC where I met Christian the first time. Not in layout or anything, just in vibes and smell; it has that same cocooned feeling you only get in bookstores, libraries, and churches. These kinds of places get me the closest to the feeling I used to have as a kid—before all the other feelings—when I used to feel safe and loved. Being in Christian’s arms used to give me that same feeling: comforted, safe, protected.
It’s about an hour before closing on a Friday night, so it’s not as busy as it could be. I weave my way through the tourists and regulars and head to the back and up the narrow stairs, taking the worn old steps two at a time. There’s a queer section on the ground floor, too, but this one has more of the rarer stuff, old editions of things no one has ever heard of. I’d picked up an autobiography of a Polish sculptor in this section a couple weeks back, which turned out to be one of the most interesting things I’d ever read.
There are only two other people in the section tonight, a middle-aged couple, who lift their heads and give me polite smiles as I move into the narrow stacks beside them. It doesn’tleave a lot of room. I’m reading the back of some science-fiction book about gay androids when I realise they’ve gone and I’m alone. I take out my phone and snap a few aesthetic photos for my Instagram account. I’m far more active on my OnlyFans, but then, I have to be. I don’t do nearly as much on there as I used to, but I still enjoy it, and it still pays the bills, and a jambon-buerre doesn’t pay for itself. I’m about to take a selfie when I catch movement behind me, someone rounding into the small, narrow space. I slip my phone into my bag and go back to scanning; doesn’t look like there’s anything new since I was in here last week. Sliding the book I’d been skimming back into place, I turn to head out and freeze. Every bit of blood drains from and rushestomy head simultaneously.