by Erin McRae
Eliza couldn’t hide her surprise. “Backpacking? You? Nooooo.”
Harry grinned, his teeth white in the light from the little candle on the table. “A lot of things were different then.”
“Have you got any pictures?”
“Oh, somewhere, I’m sure. In my house – I’ll dig them out when we’re back in New York.”
Harry’s words were the first time either of them had mentioned anything that might happen when they returned and should have been the perfect opportunity to discuss that issue further. But what was there to say? Trying to come to a better understanding would only complicate and constrain.
“I’ll look forward to it,” she said.
“One night – our first night here, in fact, I had flown in later than the others, and I was supposed to meet Dennis in the city.”
“Dennis who?” Eliza interrupted.
“Oh! Dennis Chakraborty.”
“Wait, what? Surely not....” She trailed off.
Harry nodded at her to go on.
“...the one who has that late-late-late night show?” Eliza asked.
“The Really Late Show. Yes, that’s him. We’ve known each other forever. He and Meryl and Steven and I went to college together.”
“Steven, the....” Eliza trailed off again.
“Yes. The one who died.” Harry looked startled, as if he’d forgotten the fact, for a moment or a day or a week. But rather than cloud over with grief, his face brightened as he went on. “So I was supposed to meet Dennis, but I got lost because that’s what happened before smartphones –”
“I do remember life without smartphones,” Eliza interrupted him, her voice dry.
Harry chuckled, and ran his thumb over her knuckles. “And I got lost, which was how I ended up sitting in some tiny backstreet cafe eating pastries and being told French fairy tales by – God, I need to put that proprietor in a book someday.”
Eliza rested her chin on her free hand. “What fairytales?”
“Strange ones. At least strange to me, given that I was alone in an unfamiliar country and still wasn’t positive I hadn’t fallen off the edge of the map myself. She told me about Ys – you know the story?”
Eliza shook her head.
“It’s like Atlantis. A perfect and drowned city under what is now Douarnenez Bay. In Brittany. Filled with art and pleasure. They say that when Paris sinks, Ys will rise out of the ocean, intact and filled with its people, as if it never left.”
Eliza shivered. “Like Brigadoon?”
“If Brigadoon had vanished – and stayed vanished – when the devil opened the gates and let the sea in,” Harry said.
“...Naturally.”
“Well, what do you expect from a legend about an ancient king designed to cement France’s turn from the pagan faiths to Christianity?”
“Real guy, fake island?” Eliza asked.
Harry nodded. “Real guy. Fake island. As far as anyone can tell.”
Eliza laughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, if something like that could happen, I’m fairly sure we wouldn’t be able to solve it with science. When Paris sinks, we’ll know.”
“Then we’ll probably never know,” Eliza pointed out, charmed by the strange topic their flirtation had settled on.
Harry shrugged. “Don’t discount global warming.”
THEY EMERGED FROM THE restaurant to a world wreathed in white. Fog had rolled in off the river while they ate and shimmered now in the streetlamps and the lights of windows.
Eliza drew in a breath at the unexpected beauty of it. Beside her Harry made a humming sound of satisfaction. But then, in the distance, there was a low rumble of thunder.
“Perhaps we should hurry back?” He suggested.
Eliza knew they shouldn’t dawdle. But the beauty of Paris silent, muffled, draped in banners of white and gold at midnight, was extraordinary. With Harry’s hand warm in hers she couldn’t help but be overjoyed at the chance to see such a sight.
A few blocks from their hotel there was another ominous roll of thunder. Then the skies opened. What Eliza thought at first was the patter of rain was in fact tiny balls of ice. They stung as they hit her, and they were getting bigger. Harry grabbed her wrist and tugged her across the cobbled street into a deeply recessed doorway. There was a crash and then a roar.
The air turned sharply cold. Hailstones an inch across were now setting off car alarms up and down the street and probably through all of Paris. If they’d been stuck in the open they’d have been lucky to get away with bruises.
Harry turned his back to the storm and wrapped his arms around her. Perhaps he was trying to shield her from any hail that found its way into their little shelter; perhaps he just wanted to hold her. Either way, Eliza was glad for the solid warmth of him in a night whose peace had been so suddenly shattered. She rested her chin on his shoulder to watch the ice crash down. Nearby a car windshield splintered into spiderweb cracks.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Harry asked.
She could feel his hair, curled with the humidity, damp against her cheek. “I know Europe gets hail more than we do, but I’ve never seen it larger than peas.”
For more than a quarter of an hour they stood in the doorway watching the ice fall. Eventually, the hail tapered off and the clouds rolled away, leaving a velvet black sky in which a few stars, undaunted by light pollution, flickered faintly. People began to emerge onto the street to look at the sky and inspect the damage.
“We should get home,” Harry said when Eliza made no move to disentangle herself from him. As frightening as the hail had been, she didn’t want to leave the alcove. But Harry was right. They could hardly stay here.
Back at the hotel Eliza again went with Harry to his room.
The door had barely closed behind them when they began peeling each other out of their clothes, and it was with luck Eliza didn’t trip over her discarded dress or Harry’s trousers on their way to the bed. There was still ice melting in Harry’s hair, little chips and flakes of it. It made her overheated skin burn as Harry pressed her down onto the coverlet and then kissed his way down her body. He pressed his mouth to her when she opened her legs, and settled in, apparently determined to stay there for quite a while.
Harry lapped at her gently. Eliza drifted, only becoming aware of how badly the hail had frightened her as her breathing settled into pleasure. Harry must have noticed when she finally relaxed entirely, because it was then that he picked up the pace, pressing his tongue against her in small, hard circles. He grabbed her hips to yank her even closer. Then he snaked one of his hands up the center line of her, but instead of grabbing a breast he closed his fingers around the lace that held the key.
All of Eliza’s muscles contracted at once and she gasped sharply, which only encouraged him. She pulled one of her legs up and braced it against his shoulder, finding the exact angle she wanted. She tugged at his hair, making him redouble his efforts, and pried his hand from the key to put it where it belonged.
When she came, she came loudly, and his mouth didn’t stop until she finally wailed with exhaustion.
“Are you done?” Harry asked eventually, with a gentle kiss to her inner thigh.
Eliza lifted her head to stare at him in confusion. “I don’t fake them. And if I did, they wouldn’t sound like that.” She wondered if she should be offended that he thought she might.
“Not what I mean,” he said. “Can you come again?”
She frowned, still confused and out of breath. “I – why?”
Harry looked torn between concern and amusement. “Because I would like to get you off again.”
“Oh.” She levered herself up on her elbows to look at him. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” Harry looked more concerned now. “Has no one ever done this for you before?”
That was not a question Eliza wanted to answer, now or possibly ever. She pulled Harry’s hair again. She wanted him fully beside her; she
wanted to kiss him. He didn’t move except to let his eyes flutter closed.
“You like that?” she asked.
“Yes.” He seemed as if he could barely speak.
Eliza chuckled. “Come up here,” she said. “I need to kiss you.”
He obeyed, but only briefly, and that was fine. As he slid back down her body, he traced his fingertips across her breasts and stomach, then lowered his head between her legs again.
Eliza frowned at him curiously. In her experience, whenever men told her something was about her pleasure, they made her do all the work. As ever, Harry was strange, and different, and exactly, everything right.
As first she squirmed with oversensitivity, but Harry’s mouth was gentle and determined and soon she relaxed into a puddle of pleasure even more profound than before. It took her longer to come this time, clenching and spasming around two of Harry’s fingers thrust inside her.
“Good?” Harry sounded unbearably smug as he worked his fingers as she came down.
Eliza reached behind her, grabbed a pillow, and threw it at him. Harry laughed and finally withdrew his fingers. His hair was an absolute wreck, his cheeks and chest red with exertion. He crawled up the bed to kiss her, his erection hard and flushed against his stomach. Eliza closed her hand around him and gave an experimental stroke, and was rewarded with a gasp as Harry’s mouth fell open, warm and pliant, against her own.
HOURS LATER ELIZA WAS awoken by a thud, followed by a distinct squeak. Then there was a low moan. She blinked in the darkness as her sleep-fogged mind tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Her brain offered two options: Either a ghost of the hotel was being particularly restless, or....
The moan came again. Next to her, Harry squinted his eyes open.
“Is that...?” Eliza began, in horrified amusement, and couldn’t finish the sentence. Jonathan’s room was next to Harry’s. And if things were going as well between him and Malik as they were between herself and Harry...well.
“I’m afraid it is.” Harry sounded sleepily amused.
Again the squeak from next door, and a few more thuds that, now Eliza was listening for it, were definitely that of a headboard banging against a wall. She started to giggle. And then she gasped in alarm.
She grabbed Harry’s arm. “If we can hear them....”
“Betts.” Harry shook his head and gave her a reassuring smile. “They’re making too much noise to have heard us.”
Eliza stared at him. And not because of anything Jonathan and Malik may or may not have heard. “Betts?!”
“Elizabeth. Betts.”
“What’s wrong with Eliza?” she asked with a vague sense of encroaching horror that had nothing to do with her amorous and too-loud colleagues next door. There were so many shortenings of her name that she loathed. And endearments... well, that was how people owned each other.
“Nothing,” Harry said easily. He rolled onto his side to face her fully and ran a thumb down her cheek. “But it’s too many syllables when we’re quite so familiar.”
“Betts?” she asked again, more quietly this time. She needed to test it out.
“Yes? No? Maybe?” Harry asked. His thumb brushed the lace of her necklace, just gently, and pulled away.
Eliza considered it. Harry waited, eyes on her face, ever patient and calm for her to reach a decision.
“Never Betty,” she finally said. “Never Betsy. And never,” she said pointing at the wall from which the sounds emanated, “in front of them.”
“You have my word,” Harry said solemnly. There was yet another thud and moan from next door and he smiled. “Not, I think, that they’d notice anything we did in front of them now.”
Harry
WHEN HARRY’S ALARM went off the next morning it was so dark outside that he thought he’d set it wrong. A glance at the clock on the nightstand, however, said otherwise.
“What is it?” Eliza asked sleepily when Harry got up and pushed the curtains open.
Outside, the rain was coming down in torrents. Now that he was awake, he wasn’t sure how he had slept through the sound of it against the window. Below, the water was pooling in the streets. As Harry watched a woman waded out of a building, umbrella held futilely over her head. The water was well past her ankles.
“I think Paris flooded overnight,” he said.
The news, when Harry got the TV on, confirmed his suspicions. The ice from the sudden storm had all melted, and then record-breaking amounts of rain had fallen. Combined with a wetter than average month already, storm drains had backed up and the Seine had overflowed its banks.
“Does this mean we’re not going to the book fair today?” Eliza asked, sitting up next to Harry on the bed, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
“I hope not.” With Eliza in his bed, warm and soft and sleepy, Harry didn’t know how he was possibly going to drag himself away from her for a day of bookselling. Even assuming they could make their way to the venue through the rain and still-rising water.
Eliza reached for her phone on the nightstand. While Harry tried to justify staying put all day to himself, she typed furiously and then paused, apparently waiting for a response. It came, seconds later.
“Jonathan says all events today are cancelled,” she said, looking up.
“How does he know?”
“Bulletin just went out. He says he’ll...oh,” Eliza trailed off, color rising on her cheeks.
“What is it?” Harry asked, with some trepidation.
“He says he’ll see us later...assuming we aren’t already engaged for the rest of the day.” Eliza still looked a little embarrassed, but she gave Harry a smirk.
Harry barked a laugh. “As if he and Malik aren’t going to be engaged all day themselves. Now,” he said, turning to face Eliza on the bed. “What would you like to do first, on this glorious day of unexpected freedom?”
The first thing they did was fuck, because now they were both awake and with no demands on their time it was impossible not to touch other, and once they began it was impossible to not want to be as close as humanly possible. Closer.
After kissing for what seemed – and very well might have been – hours, Eliza pushed Harry back gently on the covers and rode him. Exquisitely, painfully, perfectly slowly, until Harry was out of his mind for her and Eliza was hardly more composed. Her hair was a mess, her lips were bitten red, sweat trailed a line between her breasts and her skin was flushed and pink.
She came like that, seated on Harry’s cock, and once her tremors had subsided Harry gave into the temptation to flip her. He held her down against the bed with one hand in her hair and the other holding her wrist. Eliza kissed him, hot and wet and open-mouthed, and he came with Eliza’s breath in his lungs and her name on his lips.
“I’VE NEVER FUCKED ANYONE the way I fuck you,” Harry blurted some time later. They had fallen asleep and woken up to find it even darker outside even though it was near mid-day. Eventually, they would have to find sustenance. Hopefully room service would be available despite the storm. “I’ve never wanted to.”
“Thank you?” Eliza cracked an eye open to look at him. They were tangled together on top of the sheets, and the rain still pounding against the window made the grey light shimmer ever so faintly over her skin. She looked like she was underwater.
“Possibly.” Harry skimmed a hand down Eliza’s side and watched as goosebumps broke out in its wake. “I know everyone says things like that when something is new and good and right.”
“But this is different,” Eliza said.
“This is different,” Harry confirmed. “I’m glad you’re here. I can’t believe you ever weren’t.”
“Tell me about Steven,” Eliza said.
Harry scoffed. Coming from anyone else, such a non sequitur might have felt terrible. But from Eliza, like everything else with her, it felt exactly right.
“You don’t want to hear about my dead lover,” he said.
“I do. And I didn’t know that.”
“I’m exaggerating. Mostly. But that’s how it feels.” Harry met Eliza’s eyes. They were grey, sea-bright even in the dark of the room. She could ask for Harry’s heart and he’d give it to her, on a platter but preferably, cradled in her cool white hands. She would, he knew, keep all of him safe. Even those parts of himself he had never known what to do with.
“Steven and I danced around each other the first year we were at college together. We were almost something, but then the summer before our sophomore year I started dating Meryl and we just never happened. Except then the four of us – Meryl, Steven, Dennis, and I – we took that backpacking trip across Europe.”
“This is when you wound up lost in Paris waiting for Dennis?”
“Yes, exactly. Meryl dumped me the week before we left, but of course we still all went together. I spent the first month drunk and with random people hopping in and out of my bed. I couldn’t understand why the rest of them cared so much about that, or why they thought it was something to talk about. And then finally...Steven and I. He thought I was beautiful. I wanted to make out and wake up with him next to me. It was not a good match. We never talked about why.”
“Mmm.” Eliza touched Harry’s hand, as if to make sure he knew she was listening to everything he said. Harry squeezed her fingers in return.
“By the time we got home,” he said, “it was like it had never happened. We both kept assuming it would make sense eventually. He really only ever dated women. And Mallory – his wife – they were the right match. Absolutely. And then he died.”
“Thirty years later.”
“More or less, yes.”
“So what happened in the meantime?”
Harry lifted one shoulder. “Nothing happened. But the relationship with Meryl and then the affair with Steven made me realize – I don’t know always how to be with other people the way they want to be with me. I crave familiarity. The family of friends. I don’t see strangers and want to devour them, but occasionally, I seem to see people I want to know forever.”