by Robin Lovett
“My name’s Aurelia.” His nicknames grate on me. “Frenchie” is better than “sweetheart”, I guess.
“You always so serious?”
“Reading French is fun.” I flush, remembering how I told him I read Proust for fun. Only two more blocks to go.
“Right.”
“You ride bikes for fun.” I speed up next to him. “That’s not exactly my idea of a good time either.”
“Riding bikes is work. I enjoy it, but it’s not what I do for fun.” His voice floods hot and thick. “I do—other things for fun.”
My lungs tighten. An embarrassing urge to giggle wrenches my throat. I bite my tongue to keep it down. Did he really just suggest—
“I’m guessing you don’t do those things either.” His tongue drawls over the words in sensual suggestion.
My eyes are saucers, and I brave a stare at him. I must be reading too much into his words. But no. The “things” he’s thinking steam from his liquid eyes and wicked, curving mouth.
His mouth. I wonder what things he does with it.
I jerk my eyes to the pavement, my feet still moving, my brain addled. He’s shameless. “Asshole,” I whisper.
“Maybe,” he whispers back.
Chapter Seven
I should be running from him, dismissing him, saying goodbye. He’s nothing like the kind of guy I’m interested in.
But not only am I interested, I’m—blood-pumpingly aroused. My breaths are as jagged as my thoughts. I knew I should have stayed home with my books.
I didn’t, and I’m not home yet. I’m not even to the damn tram stop. He’s here, walking next to me.
We round a corner, and he points down the block. “It’s there.”
The tram stop is quiet but well-lit. There’s no one here. I could wait by myself and be perfectly safe.
I’m breathing fast. It’s just from walking up a steep hill. It’s not because he’s now looking at me.
“This is it,” he says. The amusement is back in his tone, like I never insulted him. He doesn’t seem to care that I called him an a-hole.
I could be sitting on this curb until dawn waiting for the next tram to come.
He plops down on the curb next to a lamp post and stretches his legs. His shoulders hunch, and he massages his thighs.
I sit at a distance, with the lamp between us.
“Seriously?” He leans around the post. “I save you from a mob, show you a surreal light show from my awesome place, walk you to the tram, sit to wait with you. And you won’t sit next to me?”
I look down at my twisting hands. He’s been so nice to me, but he’s also made suggestive comments. There’s nothing he can say to get me to sit closer to him.
The street lamp casts a muted circle of light on the tracks inlaid amongst the cobbles.
He lies back on the sidewalk, placing his hands under his head. “My coach would kill me for being out here with you.”
“Why?”
“Walking. Uphill. At night. Feet up after six p.m. Got to recover from the day’s ride. You?”
“Huh?”
“What’s your curfew, book girl?”
“Oh—um—I don’t know. Nine?” That’s when I’m usually in bed, reading.
“Any good late-night reading in those books of yours?”
“Not in the way you think.”
He turns on his side, his long legs stretching those tight jeans. “And what way am I thinking?” he purrs.
“Oh my God, stop insinuating.”
He smirks and his dimple pops out. “Oh, Frenchie, you’re sweet as pie. It’s adorable.”
“That makes no sense. Pie isn’t adorable.”
He laughs.
“Where are you from, anyway?” I ask tightly. His speech has a simple feel to it. It’s very rural, not southern, but he’s definitely not city-born.
“Pennsylvania,” he says, lying back with his head on his hands again. He stares at the sky. “You?”
I’m surprised. I expected him to say the Midwest. “I grew up outside of D.C., but I went to undergrad in Philadelphia.”
“Oh yeah?” He lifts his head to see me. “I grew up less than two hours from Philly.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He lays his head back, sighing with fatigue.
He doesn’t say anything for a while. I wonder if he really is so tired that he should be in bed. “Thanks for sitting with me.”
“You’re welcome.” He says it like he’s been waiting for it, and now he’s satisfied.
He lies there with his eyes closed, his face quiet. I brave a look at his jeans again. His thighs stretch wide and tight beneath the denim, and his hips are so lean—I gulp and remind myself to keep breathing. He’s wearing a jacket, hiding his chest, but the hem is pulled up so I can see his belt. His pants ride low on his hips. Very low. He must need the belt to keep them from falling down. Though they’d probably catch on his thighs, the muscles there are so huge.
“I’d be happy to help with your problem.”
My gaze shifts to his face. “What problem?” His eyes are still closed. I take a deep breath in relief.
“You need to get laid, Frenchie.”
My heart. Stops. Beating.
“I could help out with that.”
He did not just say that to me.
“I’m serious.” He lies there like he’s talking to the sky. “Think about it. It’s the perfect situation. You’ll only be here through, what, June? From now till then, guilt-free sex with this banging hot bod. Then you go home and never see me again, back to your uptight prissy self. No one will ever know.”
My heart leaps from full stop to full speed, and my lungs pump like bellows. “I—uh—no. That’s not happening.” But my voice is so terrifyingly breathless, I don’t believe myself.
Chills run my spine and my gut fires to boiling. I need to pinch myself. This can’t be real.
His lips curve in a lazy grin. Tilting back his chin, he adjusts his hips on the sidewalk. My gaze glues back to the waistband of those jeans.
And lower.
I clench my eyes shut. I did not just look at his crotch in those super-tight pants and eye his package and—
I want to cup him there.
Ah!
I cover my ears. Maybe if I can stop hearing things, it will block my thoughts, too.
The ground rumbles with an approaching tram, but it’s from the wrong direction. It pulls through the intersection without stopping.
His breath on my neck hits me like whiplash.
I jounce on the curb. He grips my arm to keep me from pulling away. I didn’t notice him get so close. I take my hands from my ears.
“What’s wrong?” he whispers against my skin. “Don’t you like me?”
I gasp so fast I can hardly speak. “Braker, I—” All I can do is feel his fingers stroking my arm and his breath along my collar.
“Mmm.” He nuzzles my ear.
I am frozen, rigid and stiff. I can’t move. I don’t want to move. I want to run screaming. Oh my God, this is amazing.
Please let the tram come soon.
Or never.
“You’re such an uptight little package.” His palms drag across my shoulders and down my back. “But so soft.” His fingers slip to my waist and grip my love handles.
I’m normally ticklish there, but his fingers are so firm, his grip so wanting. My pulse beats in my ears.
He licks a steamy trail along my hairline, making me shiver. His tongue drifts behind my ear, and the sensation is so thrilling I whimper. My jaw falls open when he blows a trickle of air along my ear. The world does not exist, except for his mouth.
He nips my earlobe. The shock jolts my eyes open, and I yank away. “Stop it!” He scurries away faster than I can smack him.<
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He crawls back to lean against the building, sitting and laughing at me. He expected me to try to smack him. “I’ll touch you again, if you come a little closer.”
I squeak in protest and bounce to my feet.
My face is flaming as hot as the phoenix birds before they burst into flames at the light show. Pressing my cool hands to my cheeks, I walk away from him, needing space.
I let him touch me. While sitting on a street corner. I’m a girl falling prey to a smooth-talking boy.
Blessedly, the pleasant dinging of the tram bell sounds, and a blaze of headlights reflects down the street. I breathe in, in a staggering conflict of disappointment and relief. I cement my feet in the direction of the tram, refusing to look at that—man.
The tram stops. The door opens. I feel him too close behind me. “Think about it, Aurelia,” he whispers. “I can give you what you want.”
I hop to the side and shake myself, wishing I could rid myself of the memory of him touching me. I want him to do it again. I want to turn around and say, Yes. Now. And give in to the growing curiosity of what it would feel like to kiss him.
Instead, I steel my spine like a rod. “Braker, you don’t know what I want.”
I step onto the tram, my chin held high, and sit by the window, determined not to look at him.
As the tram pulls away, he stuffs his hands into his pockets, and the movement ensnares my eyes. The smug expression on his lips and the flicker in his amber eyes undo my resolve. I feel it in my belly and see it in his face.
He’s right.
He knows what I want, better than I do.
The tram glides on, and he disappears behind it.
I’m tingling with elation and fear. This whole experience, coming to France with my naïve preconceptions, has turned out nothing like I expected. I came here searching for something.
Terrence Braker propositioning me for sex has left me more exhilarated than I have ever been in my life.
A buzzing sensation radiates over my skin like an electric wave. My blood, my breath, my very bones hum with a vibrancy I never knew possible. I slap a hand over my mouth to hide my bizarre smile. Inside, I’m squealing. Inside, I’m terrified.
The tram stops near my street, and I step off into the quiet lights of Vieux Nice. A few easygoing locals walk home from their late-night cafés. I’m stunned they aren’t staring at me.
My skin pulses, broiling hotter than the sun, burning with an illicit desire to do something that I could never do.
You’re such an uptight little package.
I do a little skip and dance across the curb, attracting a glance from a stranger.
I’m not little. I’m short but not skinny. He thinks my love handles are soft. I never thought of those as attractive attributes, uptight and soft.
He’s an ultra-fit super-athlete. I’m a bookish girl whose idea of exercise is carrying books home from the library. We would never work in a relationship.
He’s not talking about a relationship. He’s talking about sex.
In bed, I alternate sweating hot and freezing cold. I’ve had sex before, but I’ve never felt like this.
I had one boyfriend in college. He was a good guy, a philosophy major. We had sex a bunch of times. The whole experience was far from spectacular. We broke up when he went to law school. I never loved him, not in the way my favorite poets proclaim, not like the characters in my novels do.
I want that. Someday.
My heart cracks a little.
I want sex to mean something the next time I have it.
Braker is ignorant of all the things that matter to me. He seems dedicated to his cycling career, which is admirable, but I could never connect with him on a soul-deep level.
I connect with him on a body level. Holy hell. I want to lick him from crown to foot, and sink my nails and teeth into his ass.
Argh!
I burrow my face into my pillow. I have to teach tomorrow.
Physical satisfaction without emotional interest isn’t something I could ever do.
But oh, how I wish I could.
Chapter Eight
I avoid the café the next day. I refuse to see him again until I can do so without blushing. I just sat there when he touched me, his hands on my shoulders, my back, my waist. I let him lick my neck and bite my ear.
I shiver.
“Ms. Santos?”
Aaaand one of my students is answering a question that I can’t remember asking.
“Enough speaking for the day.” I switch my lesson plan. “You may get a head start on tonight’s reading.”
If I saw him again, I don’t know what I’d say to him. As long as I don’t have to make conversation with you, because we have nothing in common, yes, I’ll have months of banging sex with your hot bod.
Right.
The next day, I succumb to temptation and Google him.
With no wi-fi in my apartment, I have to do it at school.
The first headlines are doping accusations against him. Though he’s never tested positive, so they’re all false. I’m so appalled that I nearly cancel the search, until I see images of him.
Pictures of him with girls and trophies. Candid race photos.
When he wins races, he speeds across the line, literally roaring with his mouth open, arms in the air and thumbs pointing at his chest. They call him “The Terror”. Some derivative of his name, Terrence, I guess.
I smash my finger on the mute button when a loud video with thumping techno bursts through my speakers. It’s a YouTube montage devoted to him.
Students mill in the halls. I pry my eyes from the screen and invite them into the classroom. Formality in French schools forbids them from entering without my permission. Before, it was weird. Today, I’m grateful.
I ask my class a question about their day’s reading assignment, a question that I know none of them can answer. When they can’t, I tell them to get out their books to re-read it.
I sit down at the computer again to read more articles on my cyclist.
I worked so hard for this Fulbright—months and months of applications and essays and scraping together funds. I’m one of only five Americans awarded it this year, and I’m ignoring my students and wasting my time Googling Braker.
I don’t stop.
I watch the montage of him pinching a girl’s butt when she hands him a trophy on a podium. He signs his autograph on a girl’s boobs. There’s one where he stops on the side of the road during a race to give some random chick a kiss. I wonder what that feels like.
His power, his cockiness—he pulls this who-gives-a-fuck attitude, not with anger, but with a broad smile.
But the suggestions of doping bother me. They do not endear me to the sport of cycling.
I close the laptop.
I’m avoiding Paul after the Mardi Gras disaster. And to avoid seeing Braker, I lose the best part of my day when I don’t visit my café. All I have is my students, and my lonely apartment with my lifeless books and cold food.
I could give in to the growing curiosity I have for this guy who wins bike races like it’s a personal party, who propositions a strange girl for sex, who cuddles up to the same girl on a street corner, at night, and kisses her neck.
My ex in college was a good guy, but when we decided to have sex, it was a very methodical process. I was a very willing participant, but it left me underwhelmed and wondering, “Is he done yet?”
There has to be more to sex than that.
I go back to the café that afternoon. It doesn’t matter if I blush at him or have only awkward things to say. The café is my spot, and I will go there if I want.
He doesn’t show; none of them do. I should be relieved, but after days of nervous exhilaration, the letdown shoots depression through my veins worse than even my coldest dinners.
I sit in the café every afternoon for three days. Nothing and no one, and I haven’t seen them riding either. The depth of my loneliness falls so low that when the Fulbright request to go home early resurfaces in my desk, I’m too weak to resist. I fill out the form and mail it.
I have less than two months now, if they approve it.
It doesn’t assuage my loneliness, though. The resultant feeling of inadequacy produces layers of guilt. I’m a failure as a Fulbrighter. But as powerful as the guilt is, I can’t stay here until June. I’m too lonely to make it that long.
I give in to my need for contact from home and check Facebook. Even though I don’t leave comments or update my status, just reading what my friends from college are doing helps. The world I left at home still exists.
On Saturday, I’ll treat myself to a trip to the Promenade des Anglais. Maybe I can find Terrence’s apartment again, see if the team is still in town.
It smacks of desperation, like I’m some groupie following him around for his autograph or for—other things—which he freely offered me. But I can’t imagine not seeing him again.
* * * * *
I plug one ear with my finger and cower in the corner of the little booth. “Hi Mom,” I say into the phone. The timer on the wall counts down from ten minutes.
“Aurelia? I can’t hear you. Talk louder.”
Before going downtown to search for “him”, I call home. Except, thirty seconds in, I’m regretting it.
I shout into the receiver. “Can you hear me?”
“That’s better,” my mom shouts back.
I hold the phone back from my ear, fearing for my eardrums. “When are you going to learn to use Skype?” I could talk to her on my laptop for free at the school.
“I forgot to ask your cousins. How are you?”
I tell her about teaching, leaving out the uncomfortable parts. I mention Carnival, leaving out the things I hated. I reference the volunteering that I’m supposed to be doing at the hospital, though I don’t even know where the hospital is.
It’s nice to hear her voice, though.
“How’s Dad?” I’m glad he’s not on the phone. He’d drill me about medical school applications.