Page 7 of Into the Dark
“Yes, well, I am very pale. It’s a curse in the summer.” I turn to look out the passenger-side window. He used to talk about how pale I was too… It feels odd to discuss it with another man, though maybe I’m reading too much into it. “Je suis sur qu’il n’est pas rare des de voir femmes à vélo en France?” I muse quietly. Women on bikes can’t be that rare, surely…
He laughs quietly. “Peut être mais elles ne te ressemblent pas d’habitude,” he says. Maybe. But they don’t normally look like you.
I’m not sure what he means by that, so I just gaze down into the shopping bag for something to do with my eyes. It feels like he’s flirting. Is that what I want? Why don’t I know? Am I flirting back? Should I? He’s driving slowly, too slowly, as well. It’s the way my dad drives. I wonder if it’s on purpose.
After fifteen minutes of small talk that alternates between French and English, we pull up at the bottom of the small gravel driveway leading up to our house. There are no rosebushes and no Union Jack flags outside, but Laurent finds the house easily all the same. He gets out first and walks around to the back of the car to pop open the trunk. I climb out and go to meet him.
“Merci,” I say and take the bike. As I do, his fingers graze over mine, and a weird flutter of something washes over me: uncertainty, panic, possibility.
“De rein,” he says. No problem.
“My mother was convinced I’d be run off the road by some crazy French driver, so she’ll be very grateful to you.”
He smiles. “I only drive crazy in Paris. People expect it there.” He’s taken off his glasses now and has them hooked them into the collar of his shirt, which is open at the neck. His eyes really are startlingly blue. Azure and clear like the water at the beach at Le Rus de Lis I swam in yesterday. “Alex, forgive me. I’m not sure if this is inappropriate…but I will ask anyway.” He shrugs again. “Would you like to have dinner with me? Tonight. At my home.” He turns his head toward his yellow house up the slope from ours. It’s a rambling thing, vine-covered and slightly crumbling on one side. But its view of the valley is enviable.
As the words linger in the space between Laurent and me, I get an image of him. I see his face and eyes, his mouth hovering close to mine. The sound of his voice telling me he loves me. The image transforms. To the look on his face when I told him he disgusts me. That I can’t love him. I feel the tears well up behind my eyes, hot and heavy, and I’m thankful I have on Tash’s oversized sunglasses.
“Dinner would be nice,” I hear myself say. “I’d like that.” Nice. Nice is what I need. He’s gone. He’s gone because I can’t love him, and so why not have dinner with my perfectly nice French neighbor? Dinner would be nice. “Yes, I’d like to have dinner with you.”
Why the hell did I agree to have dinner with him?
But I remember why. Because I hoped Laurent would make me forget about him. For one night at least. But there have been too many questions, too many lingering looks. I made the (naïve and stupid) mistake of telling him I’d had a recent breakup, and something in the way I said it clearly piqued his curiosity.
“You want to talk about it?” he asked with a sympathetic note to his voice.
I almost laughed. I haven’t talked about it with anyone. Not Tash or Rob or Nick. No one knows. Only Jake and me. How on earth could I tell this virtual stranger?
“Nothing to talk about really,” I lied, sipping my wine.
The wine has been good at least. French, of course. Almost savory with the taste of summer and hot blackberries. Laurent was quite proud of his wine cellar when he showed me around before dinner. It was impressive: a large, cool space beneath the old house where the air smelled ancient.
“So, I have been meaning to say all night that I’m very impressed by your French.”
“Well, thank you. But really, it’s all about to crumble. One more of these.” I hold up the glass.
“Ah, but we must open another bottle soon. A Frenchman never wastes good wine or good company.” He smiles charmingly.
“Your English is exceptionally good. Have you lived there?”
“In the States, for a year. Film Studies,” he says, and I nod. “Now that you have had more wine, are you perhaps ready to tell me about this ‘nothing to tell’?”
I take a deep breath. “There really is nothing to tell. We barely knew each other.” The words burn the back of my throat as they come out as though they’re angry at being used in vain. You know who I am when I’m with you.
Laurent smiles again, his eyes glittering in the dim candlelight. He really is quite handsome. “If you say so, Alex,” he says, his accent rolling over my name sensually, highlighting the “I” and lingering on the “X.”
“I do.”
“I promise you I am not trying to pry. Your heartache is your own.” He shrugs, nonchalant.
“So what do you do, Laurent, for a living?” I ask. “When you aren’t chauffeuring English women around the French countryside, that is.” A subject change is definitely more than overdue, and it does seem strange we haven’t covered this one yet. Even so, we haven’t been stuck for conversation. It’s flowed well in fact. We’ve spoken about France and the weather, the landscape out here and how it’s changed so much in the past five years. We’ve spoken about London and the weather there too, even moved onto films and music. But not once have our occupations come up.
He runs a hand through his hair, disheveling the longish length a little. It was smoothed back when I first met him, making him look suave and polished. He looks a little rougher now, his shirt open at the collar, sleeves rolled up, and his cheeks flushed with wine. “I’m a producer. Television mainly, but I’ve done some small films. Terrible small films.”
“Humble and French. How unusual,” I giggle.
“Ah, but I am not being humble—they were awful,” he says, and we both laugh before he lifts his wine again. “What about you, Alixx? What do you do?”
“I’m a doctor. Nothing quite as exciting as the French television industry, I’m afraid.”
