Owning It

by Leah Marie Brown

  “Very well.” He takes a deep breath and exhales. “My family is gathering at our house in Provence to celebrate Aunt Fantine’s ninetieth birthday next week. Would you go to the south of France with me, ma fleur?”

  The needle scratches across the Bruno Mars album playing in my head, and the romantic visions fade. Most girls would be thrilled if their super-hot boyfriend asked them on a vacay to Provence. So why do I feel like someone has just repeatedly jabbed a record needle in my heart?

  My phone starts to vibrate. I look down and see Fanny’s name on the screen and look back up, blinking, but not really seeing, not clearly. Gabriel nods his head at the phone.

  “I can wait to hear your answer. Take your call.”

  When I reach for the phone, my thumb accidentally hits the round green answer button and Fanny’s face pops up on the screen.

  “Félicitations, Monsieur et Madame Galliard!” Fanny says. “Did you set the date yet? Will it be a winter wedding?”

  I quickly disconnect the call and throw my phone in my handbag, snapping it shut and dropping it onto my lap. Gabriel is staring at me with wide eyes and raised brows. He is waiting for me to say something that will explain my friend’s outburst, but what can I say? I must have been drunk on the dancing juice when I let Fanny convince me Gabriel was going to ask me to marry him. I am not the kind of girl a guy like Gabriel marries. I am the kind of girl who rides through the streets of Paris on a bike with streamers and a childish red bell. I am the kind of girl who wears Heidi braids and recycled gowns with ridiculous ruffled petticoats.

  “Laney?”

  He reaches for my hand again, but I grab my gloves and pull them on, finger by finger. It buys me the time I need to visualize a ship on a stormy sea sailing into the shelter of a harbor. I am calm. I am strong. I am anchored in truth and light.

  “I would love to go to the south of France with you, Gabriel,” I say, smiling. “Thank you for asking.”

  Gabriel pays the bill, and we leave Bâtard de Valadon, walking beside each other without touching or talking. Gabriel opens the gate to the park, and I walk through it, my expensive new heels sinking into the gravel path. We are walking back to the gallery instead of catching a cab back to his apartment. I am trying not to read more into that.

  “Laney,” Gabriel says, grabbing my hand and pulling me off the path and beneath the shadowy canopy of a tree, “can we talk?”

  I lean against the tree and stare at my pink-painted toenails peeking out from the open toes of my heels. Tears fill my eyes, and I blink them away before looking at Gabriel.

  “Sure,” I say. “What do you want to talk about?”

  Gabriel pulls me into his arms, spins us around, and leans against the tree. I have no choice but to lean against his broad chest and look up into his handsome face.

  “Let’s talk about our trip. Are you excited?”

  I think about Gabriel’s family and feel a moment of panic. As far as I know, they don’t know Gabriel is dating me.

  “Yes.”

  He kisses me.

  “Your lips say yes, but your eyes say no.” He tilts my chin up so I am forced to meet his gaze. “What is bothering you, my love?”

  I ran through the streets of Paris, fell and skinned my knees, spent a ridiculous amount of money on a gown and sexy heels, because I thought you were going to ask me to marry you, but you just want to take me on a romantic vacation to the south of France and introduce me as your girlfriend to your family. Wah! Poor me. Break out the Kleenex.

  “I am fine,” I say, kissing him back. “When do we leave?”

  I rest my head on his chest and listen to his voice rumbling in my ear, but I don’t hear his words. It’s hard to hear what he is saying when my doubts are screaming in my head. You aren’t sophisticated. You lack focus. Your eyes are too big, and your hair is too thick. The Galliards will take one look at you and turn their perfectly sculpted, aristocratic French noses in the air, sniff, and say, “Ne sois pas stupide, Gabriel. You take an American girl to Vegas for the weekend, you don’t bring her home.”

  Chapter 33

  Laney’s Life Playlist

  “Come Away with Me” by Norah Jones

  “Just Give Me a Reason” by Pink with Nate Ruess

  TEXT FROM STÉPHANIE MOREAU:

  I am sorry again about that Facetime. I’m also sorry you are disappointed that Gabriel didn’t pop the question, but I am sure he will ask you when you’re in Provence. I can’t wait to hear all about it. Don’t forget Vivia and I are coming to Paris to celebrate the end of your internship (and your engagement). See you soon.

  Three days later, we are in the Comfort à la Carte compartment of a TGV train speeding to the south of France. Gabriel is napping, and I am staring out the window, watching blurry yellow fields of sunflowers whiz by while listening to Norah Jones.

  Every time I hear Norah sing about waking up in her lover’s arms while rain falls on their tin roof, I think about waking up in Gabriel’s arms as the light of dawn streams through his bedroom window. I think about those tiny motes of dust dancing through the golden rays and how I felt just as weightless and free in Gabriel’s love.

  I had no idea falling in love with Gabriel would complicate things so much. My heart and mind are all twisted up like the macramé bracelets I used to make at summer art camp.

  I look at Gabriel sleeping in the seat beside me. His long, thick black lashes against his tanned cheeks. The swoop of his hair hanging to one side. The full lips that kiss me awake in the middle of the night, when the moon’s silver light is the only thing covering our naked bodies. I etch this scene on a blank canvas in my mind just in case...

  . . . in case, what? Say it. Say what you have been thinking ever since you walked out of Bâtard de Valadon without an engagement ring on your finger.

  I am gathering many images, fixing them in an album in my mind, just in case this thing with Gabriel turns out to be another of those clichéd American girl–French boy short-lived romances. Not that I want it to be a short-lived romance, but I still find it difficult to believe a man as sophisticated as Gabriel would want to settle with me.

  Gabriel wakes up when his phone rings. He yawns, stretches his arms over his head, winks at me, and pulls his phone out of his pocket.

  He looks at the screen and clenches his jaw.

  “What is it?” I say, putting my hand on his leg. “It’s not bad news, is it?”

  “You could say that,” he says, slipping his phone back into his jeans pocket. “That was Alexandre. He has invited Giselle to join us this weekend.”

  “I am sorry, Gabriel.”

  “Me too.”

  He pulls his sunglasses out of the collar of his shirt, slips them on his face, and stares out the window for the rest of the journey.

  I listen to Norah singing “What Am I to You?” and wonder if Gabriel feels butterflies when he looks into my eyes, or if he’s filling my heart with lies. I wonder if the thought of seeing Giselle again is what has him acting withdrawn and moody.

  A private car is waiting for us when we arrive at the Marseilles train station. We climb into the back of the car and hold hands. Gabriel points out interesting sites as we drive from the train station to his family’s home near Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, a beautiful hilltop village overlooking the green waters of the Gorges du Verdon.

  Small, stone country houses are called bastides in the south of France. The Galliard home is whatever you call several bastides connected by colonnades and surrounded by Cyprus trees and ancient vineyards.

  The car pulls around the house and stops near what looks like stables. The driver jumps out and opens our door. Gabriel grabs my hand and helps me out of the car.

  “That’s okay, Jean-Paul,” he says, taking our bags from the driver. “I can manage these.”

  I follow Gabriel across the gravel drive and into the house. He drops the bags on the tile floor and pulls me into his arms.

  “Bienvenue La Bastide de Sainte-Marie, Lan
ey,” he says, kissing me. “I am so happy you are here with me. This is my favorite place in the world.”

  We kiss again until the back of my neck gets that tingly feeling it gets when I think someone is watching me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Your family doesn’t know we are dating,” I whisper, pulling away. “I don’t want them to walk in and catch us making out.”

  He laughs.

  “No worries, ma fleur,” he says, a wicked smile curving his lips. “My family doesn’t arrive until tomorrow afternoon. We have the place to ourselves until then.”

  He lifts me into his arms and carries me up the stairs, nudging a door at the top of the landing open with his foot and dropping me onto a big canopied bed.

  “You know what that means?”

  I shake my head.

  “It means,” he says, sliding his hands up my skirt and pulling my panties down my legs. “We have twenty-four hours to try each of the beds in the bastide and decide which one we like best.”

  * * *

  The next morning, I wake to the sound of a rooster crowing outside our bedroom window and Gabriel’s sleep-rough voice in my ear.

  “Wake up, my love,” he growls in my ear, his beard scratching my collarbone. “We have a busy day ahead of us.”

  I turn toward him, pressing my bare breasts against his side, wrapping my leg over his muscular thighs, sliding my hand up his chest, into his hair, moaning softly when I smell the scent of our lovemaking lingering on his warm skin.

  He kisses my forehead and rolls out of my embrace, standing and walking to the window, throwing open the heavy curtains. “It’s a beautiful day, ma fleur. If you don’t get out of bed, I will close the curtains, and we will spend it under the covers.”

  I roll onto my stomach, lift my bum like a Victoria’s Secret model, and look back at him over my shoulder.

  “We wouldn’t want that, would we?” I gasp, batting my eyelashes.

  He groans, yanks the curtains closed, and climbs back into bed.

  * * *

  Two hours later, I am sitting on the back of Gabriel’s shiny red BMW motorcycle, my legs wrapped around his waist, as he maneuvers the powerful machine over the hills and around the snaking roads that cut through Provence.

  After we made love, showered, and dressed, he grabbed my hand and led me to the stables behind the house. He opened a set of wooden doors, handed me a helmet, and told me to get ready for the ride of my life.

  I thought about telling him he’d already given me the ride of my life . . . but that seemed like something Vivia would say, not me, so I strapped the helmet on my head and climbed onto the back of his bike.

  I rest my head on Gabriel’s shoulder and squeeze my eyes shut, thinking about all of the firsts I have experienced with this gorgeous man: First time making love. First time visiting Provence. First time riding on the back of a motorcycle. First time feeling like my heart is being pumped, pumped, pumped full of so much love it is surely going to pop like a balloon and come flying out of my chest.

  We ride for another hour until we come to a round, blue-and-white sign welcoming us to Arles. Gabriel maneuvers the bike into the city center, parking it in a narrow spot on the street. He lets me get off the bike and then kicks the kickstand down, kills the ignition, and climbs off.

  He removes his helmet, takes mine, and hooks them to the back of the bike using a long, twisty cable with a lock.

  “Ready?” he asks, taking my hand.

  “Sure, but where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He holds my hand, and we walk down the street to a green square bordered with tall plane trees.

  “Voilà!” he says, gesturing to the square.

  “Okay,” I say, looking left and right. “Where are we?”

  “You see that building on the other side of the square, the one with the black awning?”

  I nod.

  “That is where Van Gogh’s Yellow House once stood.” He grins. “It was bombed during the liberation of Arles and demolished shortly afterward, but he spent time in this park. You told me once you wished to walk in Van Gogh’s footsteps. So, start walking, ma fleur.”

  I look around the green square and notice little things from Van Gogh’s painting, a bridge in the distance, a building. The scene becomes cloudy as tears fill my eyes.

  “I read online that the site where he painted Starry Night over the Rhône is a few minutes away,” Gabriel says. “Do you want to try to find it?”

  I look up at Gabriel, and a tear spills down my cheek.

  “What’s wrong, ma fleur?” he asks, brushing my tears away with his thumb. “Aren’t you happy?”

  I stand on my tippy-toes and kiss his stubbly cheek.

  “I am crazy happy,” I say, sniffling. “This is, like, the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

  “I’ve only just begun to make you happy, Laney.”

  “Promise?”

  He smiles. “Promise.”

  We walk to the site that inspired Van Gogh to paint Starry Night over the Rhône and are totes bummed to learn that the space is now occupied by a Monoprix, the French grocery store chain.

  On the way back to Gabriel’s motorcycle, we stop in a shop and purchase a bottle of wine, some cheese, and a crusty baguette, still warm from the oven.

  Gabriel stows our purchases in the hold affixed to the back of his bike, we put our helmets on, and we are off, speeding out of town and into the countryside.

  Gabriel turns off the main road onto a narrow dirt track bordered with wheat fields, the slender golden stalks bending in the breeze like graceful ballet dancers. A ramshackle stone farmhouse with an orange-clay tile roof stands at the end of the track.

  Gabriel stops the bike and kills the ignition. We get off the bike. This time, I don’t need him to tell me where we are. I pull my helmet off my head and grin.

  “Farmhouse in Provence, right?”

  Gabriel smiles and nods, his black hair falling over his forehead.

  “I thought we could have a picnic here in the field,” he says, pushing his hair off his forehead.

  He pulls our picnic and a rolled blanket out of the hold, and we make our way through the wheat field until we find the perfect spot, the tall grasses shielding us from passersby.

  We drink wine and eat warm, buttery bread beneath a blazing yellow Provençal sun and cobalt Van Gogh sky. We make love and then lie in each other’s arms, listening to the wind whispering through the fields of wheat, watching the day fade into a starry night. While Gabriel is packing up the remains of our picnic, I stare up at the heavens and make a wish on a shooting star.

  Please God, let the love we have for each other remain as vibrant and enduring as Van Gogh’s paintings.

  Chapter 34

  Laney’s Life Playlist

  “Pop Punk Pizza Party” by Sunrise Skater Kids

  “Death of a Bachelor” by Panic! at the Disco

  We make it back to La Bastide de Sainte-Marie in time to shower and change our clothes before meeting Gabriel’s family for dinner. Gabriel told me dinner is always casual at the bastide, held in the backyard under the stars. I don’t know how the French do backyard meals, but I am picturing a smoking BBQ grill, Solo cups filled with lemonade, and chill reggae music. A flip-flops and tees scene.

  What I find when we step out of the bastide and into the garden is definitely not a flip-flops and Solo cups scene. A long wooden trestle table set with fine china, crystal wineglasses, and elaborate floral centerpieces is situated beneath a pergola strung with fairy lights. Sweet-scented lilacs hang from the pergola like clusters of grapes. A string quartet is playing Saint-Saëns’s “The Swan” beneath the bowing branches of a wisteria tree, also hung with dozens of twinkling fairy lights. I stop walking and stare at the cellist plucking her strings.

  “Gabriel,” I whisper, looking up at him, “I thought you said this was a casual dinner?”

  “Oui.”

  I
look at the elegantly clad people sipping aperitifs and munching hors d’oeuvres beside a glimmering turquoise swimming pool and thank the universe I decided to wear my black ruffled chiffon sundress instead of my Namast’ay in Bed tee and shorts.

  “This is not a cazh backyard dinner. Where is the lemonade in plastic cups? Where is the Bose speaker blasting reggae?” I make the Vaayu Mudra hand pose for calmness, placing the tip of my index fingers at the base of my thumbs, and take a deep breath. “There’s a string quartet and”—I squint, peering into the darkness—“are those Grecian statues around your pool?”

  “Bof, ce n’est rien,” he says waving his hand.

  “Nothing?”

  Gabriel frowns at me. “This isn’t like you, Laney. Where is the free-spirited girl I met in the park? That girl was too confident and audacieux to let some champagne and a string quartet make her feel inferior. Where is that girl?”

  Where is that girl? That girl lost her audaciousness when she gave her heart to a boy from a family so rich and cultured they put statues as old as Socrates in their garden as if they were merely plastic garden gnomes.

  “You’re right,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I am without chill. I need to take a deep breath, reclaim my chill, and just do me.”

  He presses a kiss to my forehead.

  “Oui, ma fleur,” he says, chuckling. “Just do you.” He leans over and whispers in my ear. “And tonight, when we are back in our room, I will do you.”

  “Gabriel!”

  Gabriel stiffens, and the flirty twinkle in his eyes dims. He doesn’t turn in the direction of the voice. He stares straight ahead, a muscle working on his angular, whiskered jaw.

  I don’t need to turn around to know Giselle is standing behind us. The air left my lungs the second I heard her voice and caught the whiff of her bold perfume circling around us like a jasmine-scented cloud.

  She steps around us, a six-foot Gallic beauty in a silk Hermès minidress and gladiator sandals, hair scraped back into a fashionable knot, her makeup accentuating her almond eyes and pouty lips.