Page 1 of The Expat Affair
Part One
“A Diamond Is Forever.”
—Frances Gerety of N.W. Ayer & Son for De Beers
Rayna
My eyes snap open on a jolt, and I blink into a room that’s as dark as a cave. For the first few blissful seconds, my body relaxes into a scene that feels all too familiar. The spicy scent of male on thousand-count sheets. The cushion of a criminally expensive mattress cradling my bones. A down-filled comforter skimming my naked skin like a lover.
And then I remember.
Not my bed. Not my home. Where the sheets were criminally soft but the bed cold and lonely, even though there were two people in it.
Correction: there werethreepeople, though you better believe I didn’t know it at the time.
Stop. Abort.This is not the time to be thinking such things, when you find yourself in another man’s bed and when there’sdefinitelyanother woman in your old one. Fourteen months and a whole ocean between me and the ashes of my old life, and that man can still muscle his way into my head when I least want him there. Despite everything that brought me here, to a new life on the other side of the planet, Barry still holds that power, dammit.
I shove him from my mind and swipe my limbs across the rumpled cotton, making an angel on the feather and foam. On the other side of the bedroom wall, water clatters onto slick marble tiles. Xander, owner of this fine bed and plush penthouse apartment, taking a shower.
Snippets of last night flash in my head, lighting up some of the darkness that’s lived there since the divorce. The bar, the restaurant, the fish washed down with a bottle of perfectly chilled Chablis, champagne bubbles tickling the back of my throat, making out with Xander on the freezing terrace, our bodies tangled under his thick duvet, the sky and the stars and the glittering lights stretching into the darkness like a carpet of diamonds. My head rolls on the pillow to face the far wall, where the tiniest strip of daylight pushes through the floor-to-ceiling drapes. The fabulous but freezing terrace on the other side of that wall of windows where I stood, pressed against the glass railing, staring out at the view.
I push up onto an elbow and blink around the dim bedroom, wondering how long Xander’s showers typically run. My gaze drifts to the open bedroom door, and a strip of lit-up runner in the hallway. Puffs of steam waft across the plush burgundy carpet like a nightclub fog machine. Apparently, pretty long.
“Does this hookup come with coffee? Oat milk if you’ve got some, and I wouldn’t say no to a croissant.”
This new Rayna, she’s cheeky. The kind of girl who wakes up the morning after a drunken one-night stand with no regrets. Zero. Not a single one.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand, and I roll onto a hip and pluck it from the charger. My roommate, Ingrid, the gorgeous, lanky blonde I met on craigslist when I answered her ad for a spare room. Ingrid works in the city center, at a shop that doesn’t open until late morning. In the few months we’ve lived under the same roof, I’ve never seen her conscious before ten.
I frown, swiping with a thumb to answer. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, seeing as I’m here and you’re there, I’m guessing nothing.” She yawns, loud and breathy into the phone. “I take it the date was a success.”
Ingrid knows all about the date because she was there, eatingbreakfast in the kitchen when the notification hit my phone that Xander had swiped right. She plucked my cell out of my hand to study his profile picture, a close-up of his face bathed in late-afternoon sun.
“Cute,” she said, handing my phone back. “If you don’t swipe right, I will. Though I’m not sure about that bio.73% gentleman. 27% rogue.What does that even mean?”
I took in Xander’s sharp jawline, wide-set eyes, crooked, close-lipped smile that made him look like he was holding on to a secret.
“I don’t know, but I’m intrigued.”
He was handsome enough that I swiped right, too. Almost immediately, another notification pinged my phone:It’s a match!And two seconds after that, a message.
Hello, Rayna with the red hair. How is your day so far?
Perhaps a bit overeager but friendly enough, and not the least bit icky. The perfect first message as far as I was concerned.
After that, the day was a blur of back and forth. First via Tinder, then on WhatsApp, then through comments on my Instagram.Nice wings,he left under a shot of me last summer in Nashville, standing against a wall with a painted mural of a butterfly.Next time you go to Music City, #ImIn.
I smile into the phone. “Yes, Ingrid. The date wentverywell.”
“Are you still there?” she says, her voice perkier now. “Are you with him right now?”
I wriggle higher on the pillow, listening to the water on the other side of the wall. I hadn’t heard him slip out of bed, hadn’t so much as stirred when the shower started up, which says a little something about the state I was in last night.
“No.” There’s a soft whirring and the wall to my left shifts, the blackout shades working on what I assume is a timer. They travelup a wall of steel-and-glass windows, letting in a mauve, early morning light. “He’s currently in the shower.”
Ingrid squeals, and the sound does something to me. My old life was filled with moments like these, early morning gossip fests about the night before, trading anecdotes about our lives and families and men. Since moving to Amsterdam, my address book has become a lot slimmer, but whoever said women in Amsterdam are notoriously difficult to befriend has never met Ingrid. From the moment I wheeled my suitcase into her apartment, she’s been nothing but friendly—and Lord knows I could use a friend.
