Owning It

by Leah Marie Brown

  “Gabriel?”

  “Oui?”

  “Will you forgive?”

  “Alexandre?”

  I shake my head. “Me. I was wrong not to trust you. I am sorry. Will you forgive me?”

  “Desolée, ma fleur.” He sighs and shakes his head. “It is not possible for me to forgive you.”

  I gasp because it literally feels like Julia just jabbed one of her pointy heeled booties into my heart. I was so busy worrying that Gabriel would commit some unforgivable act and break my heart, it never occurred to me that I would be the one seeking forgiveness.

  “I get it,” I say, pulling my hand free from Gabriel’s grasp and standing. “I was, like, a total suspicious jerk. Why would you forgive me?”

  I need to go. I need to leave right now, because I am devastated. The inside of my heart probably looks like a post-nuclear apocalyptic scene, all scorched walls and withered ventricles, a hollow shell of the organ it used to be. If I don’t leave right now, I am afraid I might do something humiliating, like drop to the ground, curl up in the fetal position, and wail that I am a zombie, one of the living dead moving through this world without a heart, without a love.

  “Adieu, Gabriel.”

  I turn away and am about to follow the path back out of the park when Gabriel grabs my arm.

  “Unless . . .”

  I turn around.

  “Unless?”

  He pulls me onto his lap and wraps his arms around my waist. “I will forgive you if you also apologize for what you said earlier.”

  I scrunch my nose, squint my eyes, and try to recall anything I said during our conversation that might have been hurtful, but my dyslexic mind is still racing to process everything that has happened since Gabriel led us to this bench. “What did I say?”

  “You said you were not beautiful or smart or sophisticated or sexy.” He tilts my chin up so I look at him. “That upsets me more than your jealousy and mistrust, because I think you are belle comme un cœur.”

  Pretty like a heart.

  “I have only scratched your surface, ma fleur, but already I see that your beauty extends down deep to your heart. You are a beautiful soul, and I love you.”

  “You love me?”

  He kisses me sweetly, slowly, tenderly. It is the kind of kiss that washes away the ashes in my post-apocalyptic heart. A kiss that feels as warm and welcoming as the first rays of sun after a sudden, nearly devastating nuclear winter.

  I feel it. The tender sprouts of my love for Gabriel have taken root and are growing stronger every minute I spend with him.

  Chapter 28

  Laney’s Life Playlist

  “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz

  “Crazy in Love” by Daniela Andrade (cover)

  To: Delaney Brooks

  From: Dr. Elisabet L. Brooks

  Subj: Your Future

  I am sorry I wasn’t home when you called. Your dad said you are enjoying your time in Paris and that you have made a lot of new friends. He also mentioned you have a boyfriend. I am very happy for you, Laney, but have you thought about what you will do after this latest diversion?

  You only have a few months left on your internship. Now might be a good time to start submitting applications and searching for a studio apartment. It might be time to stop dreaming and start planning. Remember what Alan Lakein said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

  Love,

  Mom

  To: Dr. Elisabet L. Brooks

  From: Delaney Brooks

  Subj: Re: Your Future

  Remember what Gloria Steinem said, “Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”

  “Laney,” Rigby says, “you should go up there and sing. Let these Frenchies hear your mad vocals.”

  It’s a Friday night, and we are on the terrace of an old-style bistro in the Oberkampf district listening to one of the impromptu jam sessions that have made the area a hot and happening scene with hot and hip Parisians. The lively Oberkampf attracts Bobos and artists and glorious gays and is now my favorite place in all Paris. The sultry summer air is pulsating with bass and the vibes emitted by creative people.

  “Mad vocals?” Gabriel looks at me, eyes wide. “You are a singer?”

  I shrug.

  “Don’t be so modest,” Rigby admonishes. “Laney was in a super popular band back in Boulder.”

  “We have been together for months, and this is the first I am hearing of this?” Gabriel asks. “You sing?”

  “Un peu.”

  “A little?” Rigby laughs. “Are you kidding me? You sing a lot.”

  “She is true,” Giorgio says. “Laney, she sings to the woman who bakes her favorite croissants, the man who changes the lightbulbs in the lamps around the place, the homeless woman—”

  “Is this true?” Gabriel interrupts. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a singer?”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “Yes, it is,” Rigby argues. “Two of Laney’s songs are at the top of iTunes Cool Children’s Songs chart.”

  “Shut up!” I say, slapping Rigby playfully on the arm. “They are not.”

  “Yes, they are!” She frowns. “Laney, haven’t you even checked to see how your songs are doing?”

  I shake my head.

  I look around the table, first at Giorgio, then at Gunthar, Rachelle, Rigby, Rigby’s fiancé (who is sweet, btw), and finally Gabriel. I am waiting for one of them to burst out laughing or yell, “Psych! We are punkin’ you, Lane!” But they don’t.

  “Come on,” Rigby says, grabbing my hand and jumping up. “You are going to sing.”

  She leads me through the crowd and to the corner of the makeshift stage, and waits until the musicians finish performing a cool French electropop song.

  “Excuse me,” she says to the guy on the keyboards. “My friend is the lead singer of a popular band in America and wants to know if she could sing with you.”

  I am about to correct her for continuing to describe my band as popular, because, really, we were popular-ish—in Colorado—when the keyboardist breaks into a huge smile and says, “Bien sûr!”

  “Good luck,” Rigby says, squeezing my hand.

  She leaves me to join our group, who have managed to carve a place for themselves in the crowd at the front of the stage. The keyboardist pulls a microphone from a hard plastic case at his feet.

  “Je suis Michel,” the keyboardist says, handing me the mic. “Quel est ton nom?”

  “Nice to meet you, Michel. I’m Laney.”

  We bump fists.

  “What do you want to sing, Laney?”

  I look at the crowd of street performers and trendy Parisians and try to think of an edgy song that would entertain them, but all I can think of is poppy-happy tunes that reflect what I am feeling in my heart. I am not sure this crowd will dig the notes I am about to lay on them—but if I have learned anything in the last year, it’s that I have to own who I am. Gabriel smiles at me, and a melody plays in my head.

  “Do you know ‘Love You like a Love Song’?”

  “Selena Gomez and the Scene?” Michel asks, squishing his nose up as if he just got a whiff of a bad round of camembert. “That one?”

  I nod my head.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, I want to slow it down—like, way, way down, until the second verse. Just you, me, and a guitar.”

  Michel plugs the mic cord into an amp, slides the mic into a stand, and lowers the stand so I can sit on the stage. I walk over to a girl holding an acoustic guitar and ask her if I could borrow it, and she hands it to me. I sit on the edge of the stage, adjust the mic, and strum the cords, getting my fingers used to the unfamiliar instrument. When I am ready, I smile at Michel.

  “Ready?”

  Michel nods and begins playing an extended intro on the keyboard, slowing the song down and stripping it of its usual synthesized, techno-beat sound. I take a breath, close my eyes, str
um the guitar, and begin singing “Love You like a Love Song.” I strum and sing the first verse as if it is a sorrowful ballad about heartbreak, not a catchy, upbeat pop song about love and lust. I sing like I have all of the time in the world, stretching out the syllables.

  When I come to the chorus—which is really just the title repeated in two sets of three—I open my eyes and look at Gabriel. I look into his eyes, only his eyes, so he can see what I am thinking, what I am feeling. So he knows I am not singing for the other musicians, the drag queens in ball gowns swaying at the back of the crowd, the street performers in face paint making motions to match the lyrics. I am singing this song for him and only him.

  When I sing the last word in the chorus, I set the guitar out of the way, grab the mic, and stand up. Michel picks up the tempo, switching from a mournful piano to a highly synthesized keyboard, and the crowd goes wild. I match my energy to Michel’s, increasing my tempo and moving my hips to the beat, flipping my hair, and dancing like a pop starlet. Michel turns the auto-tune on, and my voice comes out of the speaker sounding remote and robotic.

  Gabriel hardly waits for me to finish singing before lifting me off the stage and hugging me to him.

  “You are beautiful, Laney,” he whispers in my ear. “You are so beautiful you make me want to carry you back to my apartment, pull my mattress out onto the roof, and make love to you until the neighbors weep with jealousy.”

  He doesn’t wait for me to respond, but presses his lips to mine in a primal, possessive kiss that makes me flush from my petunia-painted toenails to my powdered cheeks. When he finally stops kissing me, a new singer has taken the stage and is singing a reggae song.

  We hold hands and sway to the music for two songs when he leans down and growls in my ear, “Do you want to go home?”

  “Yes.”

  We weave our way through the crowd to the street. Gabriel hails a cab, and we climb in the back. Eighteen minutes later, we are climbing the stairs to his apartment. He opens the door, and I follow him into the darkened living room.

  “There is something I want to show you,” he says, he whispers in my ear. “Wait here.”

  He crosses the apartment to the bookshelf and flips a switch. The gallery of lights flicker on, spotlighting Gabriel’s photographs. The striking shot of place Vendôme has been replaced with a photograph of me, one of the photographs he snapped weeks ago, when I first spent the night with him.

  “Wait! What?” I say, moving across the room to look closer at the print. “That can’t be me!”

  I look from the photo to Gabriel and back to the photo. The woman in the photograph isn’t a flaky, dyslexic, unfocused virgin. She is an ingénue. She is a French actress from the days of Brigitte Bardot, or a Catherine Deneuve, with tousled hair and cat eyes. Gabriel captured me with one leg sticking out from beneath the sheet and his T-shirt hanging off one shoulder. I am holding the sheet up to my mouth so the focus is on my eyes, which are narrowed and sparkling with a seductive invitation.

  “It looks like I am naked!”

  “Oui,” Gabriel chuckles. “It does.”

  “That’s so . . . naughty!”

  His laughter echoes in the quiet apartment.

  “Aren’t you afraid of what other people might think when they visit you and see your naked . . .”

  “Lover?”

  My cheeks flush. “We aren’t lovers.”

  “We will be.”

  He lifts me into his arms and kisses me deep, groaning when I put my hand on his neck, pull his head closer, and open my mouth wider. I tell him with my body what I have wanted to say since the second he flipped the light on to reveal my sexy portrait: Make love to me, Gabriel. I want to feel as beautiful and desirable as you made me look in that picture.

  I know we are in his bedroom because I can smell his cologne lingering in the air and the feathers in his down comforter. He stops kissing me.

  “Are you sure you’re ready, ma fleur?” he asks, pushing my hair away from my eyes. “Will you allow me to make love to you?”

  I nod.

  “You are sure?”

  I look at his handsome face, the stubble shadowing his strong jaw, the thick, black lashes framing his slate eyes, and my heart literally aches with joy. Images appear in my brain, one after the other, like someone is holding an old-school View-Master in front of my eyes and pressing the lever: Gabriel holding an umbrella over my easel as I put the finishing touches on a canvas during an unexpected rainstorm. Laughing and sitting sideways on the back rack while Gabriel pedals my bike through the Marais. Sunday morning at the flea market, laughing as Gabriel slips a pair of crystal-covered sunglasses on his handsome face and blows me a kiss.

  “I have never been surer of anything in my life.”

  He pushes me back onto the bed, props himself up on his elbows over me, and asks me again, “Are you sure, ma fleur? If not, say so now. I don’t think I will have to strength to stop if we go much further.”

  A bubble of apprehension forms inside my stomach as I imagine what it will be like to have Gabriel pushing inside me, but I look into his earnest, concerned eyes, and it pops.

  “Make me a woman, Gabriel,” I whisper, sliding my hand under his shirt, over the peaks and valleys of his muscular abs. “Please?”

  He growls, reaches over his shoulder, and yanks his shirt off. I reach up and unfasten his fly, easing his pants over his narrow hips and shapely bum. Gabriel stands and kicks his pants off. He pulls his briefs off, and I catch a glimpse of his erect penis. We have fooled around. I’ve touched him down there, but seeing the thing I have touched and stroked exposed, inches from me, is shocking.

  Gabriel falls back on top of me, pinning me to the mattress with his broad chest and heavy thighs. His big erection presses between my thighs, and a stream of apprehension bubbles form inside my belly, floating, popping, forming, floating, popping. My limbs begin to tremble. Gabriel puts his forearms on either side of my head and props himself up so he can look into my eyes.

  “Please do not be frightened,” he says, kissing me gently on the lips. “I love you, Laney. I won’t hurt you, ever.”

  I lower the straps of my sundress and wiggle out of it. Gabriel slides his hand under my back, unhooks my bra with a deft flick of the fingers, and drops his head to my breast. I moan as his tongue circles my right breast, slow, ever-narrowing concentric circles that turn my nipples into brownish-pink pebbles. Then he moves to my left breast and laps at the nipple like a kitten lapping milk, lap . . . lap . . . lap.

  I turn my head and watch him suck my nipple into his mouth.

  “Oh . . . my . . . god,” I moan, pressing my hand to my hot cheek.

  Keeping his lips around my breast, he looks at me and pushes the tip of his penis between my thighs. The slender strip of lace preventing Gabriel from entering me rubs against my clitoris, and I shiver, shudder, drop my head, and arch my back, silently encouraging him to keep going. He pulls away and pushes again, beginning a slow, teasing rhythm that has me moaning low in my throat, an animalistic moan that surprises me.

  “Please . . . don’t . . . stop,” I beg, feverishly turning my head side to side. “Please . . . don’t . . .”

  I close my eyes and am lost in the delirium of desire, a vague, foggy place that feels familiar and entirely new all at once. I am in a dreamy, misty world, far, far from Paris.

  I don’t even realize Gabriel has stopped sucking my breast until I feel my moist panties sliding down my legs and his stubbly cheeks grazing my thighs, his tongue lap, lap, lapping my clitoris, slipping between my slick folds.

  Something bright flashes in my dream world, a beautiful, bright firework, exploding over and over with each thrust of his tongue.

  “Gabriel,” I cry out, lacing my fingers in his hair and pushing his head deeper. “Oh my god, Gabriel.”

  He teases me with his mouth for a few more seconds before pulling his head free and climbing atop me, his body slick with a fine sheen of perspiration, his heart pounding
against my breast.

  “You feel so good,” he whispers, his hot, wet mouth against my ear. “I don’t know how much longer I can go without burying myself inside you.”

  He reaches for my hand and guides it to his erection. I wrap my hand around him and squeeze gently, feeling the veins throbbing against my fingers.

  He groans low in his throat and slides his hand between my thighs, cupping my sex. He holds my womanhood in his hand, and I hold big, throbbing manhood in my hand. When he coaxes my folds apart by slipping a finger inside and rubbing his palm against my clitoris in a circular motion, I cry out with pleasure and thrust my pelvis against him, rolling my hips and moving my hand up and down his shaft.

  “Mon dieu,” he groans. “I can’t wait any longer.”

  “Now, Gabriel. Take me now.”

  He removes his hand from between my thighs, reaches into his nightstand, and pulls out a condom, handing it to me. I rip the package and hand him the condom back to him.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve never put one of these—”

  “Shh.”

  I close my eyes while he puts the condom on and slip back into that warm, foggy world. He props himself on his forearms, and whispers, “Look at me.”

  As soon as our gazes meet, he pushes inside of me. One quick thrust that causes me to bite my lip and dig my nails into his shoulders.

  “Are you okay, ma fleur?”

  I nod my head, and he exhales.

  He drops his forehead to mine, and we stare into each other’s eyes while he slowly moves in and out of my body, in and out, in and out, until the pain of the first thrust fades to a dull, distant ache.

  In and out.

  In. And. Out.

  Gabriel’s breathing becomes ragged, and beads of perspiration form on his face, but he keeps his rhythm slow and gentle until I feel something building, building inside of me, a pressure, an urgency, and then—my body tightens around him, and I climax, like white-hot, colorful fireworks exploding against a black sky.

  I cry out and Gabriel collapses on top of me, unable to hold back any longer.