by Harper Bliss
“Me?” I send her a smile. “I can barely stand the thought of going back to Sydney.”
“That’s settled then.” She smiles back unconvincingly.
“I miss my friends and I miss work, which is not unusual. I always get an itch to go back to work around mid-August. It has become my natural rhythm. But my life was pretty much in shambles when I met you. My relationship had blown up. I was ready to put my house on the market and move to another part of town. I don’t have children. What I do have, however, is a job I love. A position in which a lot of other people rely on me. That’s something I could never just walk away from.”
“I get that.”
“What could I possibly ever do in Paris that could give me equal satisfaction? I barely speak the language. And I need to work, need to do something. Preferably something like I’ve been doing for the past decade.”
“There are options. I have connections. We could figure something out.”
I knit my eyebrows together. “A weekly prime time spot on national television is not easy to come by. I worked my ass off for that spot. If I were to leave Australia, I would give up everything I worked for. And I’m not saying I’m not willing to sacrifice for love, for you and us, because I am, but it’s worth taking a moment to consider what it will do to me. As you might have noticed the past six weeks, I’m not exactly hausfrau material.”
Camille nods, then says, “If I understand correctly, because I don’t want to make assumptions, you would be willing to move to Paris for me, if you could find a fulfilling job?” She tilts her head, hope shimmering in her eyes.
I think about this for a while. Although it is the logical conclusion of everything I’ve just said—of all the thoughts that have been swirling in the back and then the front of my brain for days, even weeks—it does give me pause. “I guess that is what I’m saying.”
“We have international news agencies in Paris. Let me ask around if any jobs are opening up for someone of your caliber. This is a pretty worldly city, after all.”
“I did have an idea. Not for a job, but something that could earn me a working trip to Paris, but I may need your help.”
“Tell me.” I can see her perk up.
“I would love to interview Steph for my show. She is such an interesting woman.”
“Steph?” Camille whistles through her teeth. “She’s also an intensely private person.”
“It’s just an idea… but my instincts tell me she would make for excellent television.”
“Television in which an Australian audience would be interested?”
“No doubt. The entire world has been transfixed by Dominique’s presidency. This woman from a conservative party taking out the socialists and the far right in one fell swoop, right after coming out of the closet. To interview the woman she fell in love with would be the perfect blend of human interest and politics. You’ve seen my show. I’m hardly the kind of journalist who would interview the Kardashians.”
Camille chuckles. “I don’t think I would have fallen for you if you were.”
“French elitism at its worst.”
“All jokes aside, I can’t give you any guarantees about Steph. I will ask her, but I can’t blackmail her with the benefit it would have for us. That’s not something I’m willing to use a friend for.”
“I’m not asking you to do that at all. I could ask her myself. We kind of hit it off that night in Provence, don’t you think?” I narrow my eyes and grin at her.
“There aren’t many lesbians Steph doesn’t hit it off with, so don’t feel too flattered.”
“I love it when you’re jealous, babe.” With my feet still in her lap, I can’t resist tickling her with my big toe.
Camille swats away my toe matter-of-factly. “It would be great to see you before Christmas.” There’s a twinkle in her glance. “Let me summarize the tasks you have given me, apart from being a loving long-distance partner. I have to persuade the first lady to bare her soul to you on camera and I have to find you a worthy job. Talk about having a high-maintenance girlfriend. Maybe you don’t interview the Kardashians because you’re aspiring to be one.” She runs a finger lightly over the sole of my foot, tickling me to the extent that I have to withdraw it.
“I never claimed dating me would be easy.” I maneuver myself in such a way that within seconds I’m straddling her on the bench, which turns out to be a highly uncomfortable position.
“Now you tell me.” She pulls me close by the neck and kisses me hard on the lips. When we break from our kiss, she looks me in the eye and says, “Thank you for your willingness to consider moving here.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
My plane to Sydney leaves early in the morning and I don’t plan to catch any sleep before I have to leave for the airport. I can sleep on the plane—it will beat weeping after saying goodbye to Camille for the next few months. Last night, after a goodbye dinner with Ben and Flo during which she broke the news that she would be away for Christmas, Camille booked her ticket to visit me in Sydney for the holidays. I’m not sure I would be able to board the plane tomorrow morning without the certainty of that purchased ticket. And there’s still the possibility of me coming to Paris to interview Steph in the meantime. I called her up and asked. She’s thinking about it. Perhaps I’ll have a reply by the time I land.
But tonight, it’s all about Camille and me. About the physical connection we will miss for long months. We need to make more memories that will last us long enough to carry us through. I don’t even care if she wants to videotape us having sex. She can aim three different cameras at me if she so wishes. It doesn’t matter. All I want is to have her in my arms, her lips on mine, her soft skin against me, her warm hands all over me. I want to be so intoxicated with her that it will feel as if she’s still with me when I board the plane, when I walk into my empty house and pick up my life again.
“Are you all packed?” she asks, standing naked next to the bed I’m already lying in.
“Yep.” After one too many shopping sprees while Camille was at work, I’ve had to leave a few pieces of clothing behind that no longer fit into my suitcase. “Come here.” I reach out for her and she takes my hand. She kisses each of my knuckles slowly, almost reverently.
“It’s the last time I’ll be crawling into my bed with you for a while. I need to take a moment.”
Her sensitivity to this moment touches me. Not once during these six weeks together have I gotten the impression that Camille is any less in love with me than I am with her. Before I arrived here I wondered whether things would be different for her without the gloss of holiday and the Sydney sun shining upon us. But it turns out I shouldn’t have worried. She taught me the French term for it: coup de foudre. I can almost pronounce it without an Aussie accent.
When Camille finally does slip underneath the covers, I feel myself well up. I’ve gotten so used to having her close, to hearing her breath when I wake up in the middle of the night, and seeing her smile first thing in the morning.
“No cameras tonight?” I ask as I swallow a lump in my throat.
“No distractions,” she says. “Besides, I will have no trouble remembering tonight. No trouble at all.” She buries her face in my hair.
I wrap my arms around her more tightly, press myself to her. It’s a moment of supreme tenderness, before we let this night run away with us. We breathe in unison and even though there are no words spoken between us, we understand what this moment is about. We don’t have to say anything. We do enough talking on Skype. Sometimes deep, exploratory conversations that seem to come out of nowhere but, admittedly, mostly just chatting. Not every conversation can be about intentionally getting to know the other, and just chatting has taught me more about Camille than I ever believed it would.
No more words from now on. Words are for later. Now, we just stare into each other’s eyes and know how much this means to us, how much we love each other and, perhaps, catch a glimpse of our dreams for the future. As heart-re
nding as this moment is, it confirms one thing for me: Camille Rousseau is my future.
“I want you,” she says. The only words spoken in this bed of silence and tenderness and a love that dances in our eyes and ignites over and over again underneath our skin. I know she means it in more sense than one. I don’t just want her tonight in this bed, this gloriously hard king-sized bed which I have had to get used to, and which gives us enough room to sleep soundly, and enough proximity to come together at any moment of the night. I want her in my life. In my thoughts every second of the day.
To find this sort of companionship, this kinship, with another person is so rare, it doesn’t matter that I will need to make sacrifices. Because I know that in the end I will. And how can it even be called a sacrifice if this is what I’m getting in return?
Camille runs a finger over my arm and I follow its motion with my eyes. It skates back up and on its next stint downward glides gently over my chest, leaving my nipples hard and wanting. No matter how hungry I am for her, tonight cannot be a frenzy of taking what we’ll have to miss, an accumulation of climaxes to savor later. Tonight is all about etching those memories into our brain, slowly and securely, so we will always have them to fall back on when distance does a number on us and times are tough and the longing exceeds our sanity and threatens to drive us crazy.
I let my finger trace its own map of her body, moving my finger from one freckle to the next, touching her pale skin—a week in the southern sunshine hasn’t changed her complexion at all. I cup her breast, feeling its shape in my hand, her rigid nipple pressing into my palm. I brush my thumb over her nipple before leaning down and taking it into my mouth, sucking with an unfamiliar gentleness. I want this night to stand out so much, I’m willing to ignore the acute desire that is starting to make its presence known between my legs.
My desire is almost of no importance tonight. Perhaps because I know that, ultimately, it will get quenched in the most satisfying way, and then it will flare up again, when I’m on the plane, surrounded by strangers, and I won’t know what to do with myself, but the memory will warm me nonetheless.
I press her body down into the mattress and start kissing my way from one nipple to the other, determined to cover every last inch of her soft skin with gentle pecks, leaving invisible marks all over. Zoya was here. Zoya loves you. Marks she would only be able to see when she’s in a particular kind of mood. When our love is getting her down and she needs a dose of me. Because as much as I’m dreading my own anguish at being apart from her, I dread hers more. I love her and I want her to be as happy as possible at all times. Knowing that I’ll be her source of happiness and unhappiness at the same time is a crippling emotion.
I kiss her shoulders and neck, the sensitive spot just below her ear, and her cheeks as if it’s the first time I’ve ever planted my lips on them. Then I turn her around and kiss the back of her neck, along her spine, the delicious spot where her back curves into her buttocks. I drink in her skin, the tone of it, feel the texture on my fingertips, imprinting it all on my memory—and oh, the memories I’ve made on this trip. I lie on top of her, pressing my breasts into her back to envelop her body with mine, fold myself over her as though I want to wrap her up in me, take her with me on this long journey back.
When we face each other again, the stroking of our hands has become more insistent. The look in Camille’s eyes is different. There’s more desperation in them, but also more lust. Our lips meet, while our hands start groping more than stroking. I feel her hand venture between my legs, which I spread wider, while our lips remain locked. Our tongues keep dancing together. I bring my own hand between her legs as well, find them wide already, find her so wet that when my finger skates along her pussy lips, she moans into my mouth.
We break from our kiss and look each other in the eye. She blinks when she pushes her fingers inside of me. Her long, beautiful, glorious fingers. I do the same to her, convinced we can find some sort of rhythm, and that there’s enough lust crackling in the air between us, traveling through our bodies and where they touch, that we can pull this off. That we can effortlessly come by staring each other in the eye and fucking each other like this, sideways on the bed, facing each other—each other’s mirror image.
The covers have long been thrown off and from the corner of my eye I catch the minute but determined motion of Camille’s arm. I not only feel her fucking me, but I see it as well. Not only from the corner of my eye, but on her face as well. A face that lights up as the seconds tick away—as time flees us. She is warm and wet around my fingers, and her fingers thrust high up inside of me, making me gasp for air every time they do. My clit buzzes. Her hands so close to it, but it remains untouched, swelling, craving her touch.
I don’t speak, but I slide my fingers slowly out of her and bring them to her clit, hoping—knowing—that she will catch my drift, that she will do the same.
She thrusts up in me a few more times while I try to focus on her clit, which is not easy with her delicious fingers inside of me. Then she follows my example and slides out of me, finding my throbbing clit with a fingertip, and starts circling.
“Oh god,” I murmur, because with all this emotion between us, and all this intention behind the action of our fingers, I don’t stand a chance.
I see how Camille’s face contorts, and I etch the sight of it in my memory, way up there in the list of most arousing things I’ve ever witnessed, and then I can’t control myself any longer. My finger barely moves around her clit as I come, uttering a guttural groan from my throat, inwardly screaming her name, wanting to stay here with her forever, never wanting this moment of extreme bliss to end.
“Please, Zoya,” she says, her voice a pleading whimper.
I don’t care that I don’t get to enjoy much of the aftermath of my climax. Because in all of this, Camille is my priority. I want her to feel what I just felt, and I want her to look me in the eye when she does. I want her to see how I feel about her, read if off my face, where this all-encompassing love I feel for her is impossible to hide.
It doesn’t take long for her to start trembling underneath my touch, before she throws her arms around me with a sigh of desperation and says into my ear, “Don’t go. I’m not sure I can live without this anymore.”
The rest of the night passes in a haze of fingers touching, claiming, driving down deep. In a mess of tears and words spoken that we would, perhaps, never say in daylight.
I drift off somewhere in the middle of the night and wake up groggily to the jarring sound of my phone alarm. And then the time has come for me to go. To leave this bed, this house, this city and this woman for too long a time.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Charles de Gaulle airport is marred by the same kind of chaos as when I arrived in Paris six weeks ago. I remember the version of myself who stood trembling next to the baggage claim belt, so eager to see Camille that my body started shaking uncontrollably. That version of myself didn’t have room in her heart and brain to think about this moment, which was only six short weeks away. This dreaded moment of saying goodbye. But this will not be goodbye, or at least only a temporary one. It’s an until later. Until I Skype her as soon as I get home, when I’ll be so jet-lagged I’ll be calling her at all hours, and we can dance the time zone tango effectively for a while, until my body adjusts to Sydney time and I’ll have to spend my days with her asleep on the other side of the world.
After I’ve checked in we try to find a quiet spot to have one last coffee and talk, but half the population of France seems to be flying somewhere today, and the airport is so busy, we’re forced to huddle in a corner and have our last kiss while dozens of people scuttle past.
“We’ll always have last night,” Camille whispers in my ear.
“Find me a job soon. I’ll take anything to be with you. I’ll make tea at the BBC World News office. It doesn’t matter.”
“Shall I start shopping around that video we made in Sydney? That should get you work straightaway
.”
I think I’ll miss her sense of humor most of all. Who will tease me and push me off kilter for a split second, then make everything right again with a hint of smile or a quick kiss on the nose?
“It’s not really the kind of job I’m looking for. I’m getting on. Something a bit less physical would be better.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” She curls her arms around my neck. “I’ll see you at Christmas. Once September comes around, the Halloween decorations will start going up, and after that it’s straight into the Christmas trees. They’ll be up before we know it.”
“If I don’t see you before then.” I waggle my eyebrows.
“That would be a treat, but let’s not get our hopes up for that. It’s out of our hands. Let’s focus on what we can control.”
“I can just about control this kiss I’m about to give you.” I lean in and kiss her fully on the lips, tongue slipping in deep. Her lips seem softer than ever before, her embrace more loving, her skin warmer.
“Je t’aime, Zoya,” she says, her voice soft and shaky.
My French has improved beyond the understanding of those words. “Je t’aime aussi,” I reply.
A group of loud youngsters passes by and rudely pulls us from the romantic moment we were having.
“I suppose I’d better go through security.”
“You should. It could take a while. Although the thought of you missing your flight is very tempting.”
I toyed with the idea of delaying my flight back, but when I booked it I already cut if very fine before work starts again, hardly giving my body time to adjust to the time difference. Anyway, a few days extra wouldn’t have made this moment any easier.
“I’m going now, my love.” Instead of moving away from her, I increase the intensity of my embrace, pull her close to me, inhale her smell deeply one last time.
“It’s just time and distance keeping us apart,” she whispers in my ear. “They have nothing on our love for each other.”