by Penny Wylder
“I have something that might cheer you up.” He shows me the flier in his hand. “I found it in the lobby.”
The flier is for a night club in downtown Paris.
“Live music, boys, and booze,” Charlie says with a wide smile. “You can get all the experience you want before going off to college.”
I want to roll my eyes. I’ve gotten plenty of experience in the last two weeks and it’s been magical. I doubt some French boy can pleasure me more than Nicholas has.
“It’s better than reading about it in a book,” he adds.
“Yeah, I know,” I mumble under my breath.
I’m hurt, but I still want Nicholas even if he suddenly doesn’t want me anymore. His words play back in my head and the pain starts to turn to bitterness. I need to get out of my head and away from these spiraling thoughts.
“Yes, I’ll go,” I tell Charlie.
As much as it’s going to kill me to move on, I don’t really have a choice. Nicholas doesn’t want me and there’s nothing I can do about it. Maybe I’ll meet someone at the club who I won’t have to sneak around with. I hate keeping a relationship a secret. It’ll make my life a hell of a lot easier.
Tara comes around the corner and sees us talking. She looks at the flier in my hands. “I saw those earlier. Are you guys are going to the club?”
“Yes, and so are you,” Charlie says. Tara seems hesitant. “We’ll go while everyone else is site-seeing.”
“It’ll be fun,” I tell Tara. “We’ll get to hang out.”
I’ve been spending so much time with Nicholas it seems as though I’ve barely spent any time with my best friend.
“The trip is almost over,” I say, practically begging.
Tara smiles. “Okay, I’ll go.”
I manage to avoid Nicholas the rest of the day. I can’t bear to look at him right now.
That night we make our way to the nightclub advertised on the flier. Paris is gridlocked this time of night with tourists everywhere. Nightclubs line the strip. Long lines spill out of doorways. We get to the club and it’s no different than any of the others. We wait in line for a good half hour before we get to the front door. All the while I’m worried we’ll get turned away for one reason or another. Standing in line allows my brain to wander back to the thought of Nicholas. I need the chaos of the club to drown it out.
The bouncer at the front door doesn’t bother to check our IDs. I’m not even sure what the legal drinking age is in Paris. I’m relieved when we finally make it inside.
We have a few drinks that loosen me up and help—just a little—to take the sting off Nicholas’s rejection this morning. The bartender seems amused that we’re American and makes us “authentic” French drinks. I’m not exactly sure what all that entails, but whatever is in it has a hint of coffee, is strong, and tastes delicious. More than one of these can be dangerous. So I drink two. I need it tonight.
We decide to go out on the dancefloor. I’m determined to have a good time. I sway to the beat of the music. None of the songs are what I’m used to from clubs back home. The music is very European, which only makes this place feel further away from home, which I like. Tara finds a cute French boy to dance with. She finally looks like she’s having a good time while I dance with Charlie. As much as I’m hurt by what Nicholas did to me, I can’t get him out of my head long enough to even bother looking at another boy. I can’t imagine dancing or rubbing up against someone else right now.
Charlie starts to get a little too comfortable with me and his hands go to my hips and he grinds against me—the very thing I was trying to avoid from strange boys.
I take his hands and move them back to my waist, putting some distance between us. He doesn’t take the hint and continues to try and get closer to me.
“Charlie, you’re like a little brother to me.” I have to yell for him to hear me above the pulse of heavy music.
He winces as if it’s the most offensive thing I could possibly say to him. “Come on, Cleo. We have chemistry. I know you can feel it between us.” He tries to touch me again, and again I keep him at arm’s length.
“No Charlie, it’s not like that with us.”
He’s drunk and starting to get belligerent. I should’ve tried to stop him when he decided to order a third drink.
“Don’t be such a tease,” he says and leans in like he’s going to kiss me.
I jump away from him before his lips can land. He stumbles forward and I run for the back of the building and out the door, into the alleyway. I’m not so much afraid of Charlie. I don’t think he would hurt me, but I’m really not in the mood to deal with his childish and drunken antics.
The air has a chill tonight despite the hot and muggy day. I’m in a sequin tank top, freezing. The alley smells like piss. It’s the first time I’ve seen anything in this city that’s less than glamorous. I wish Nicholas was here. I wish he never said those words and never broke my heart.
8
Nicholas
I regret what I said to Cleo. I hate that I hurt her. Nothing good ever comes from a conversation with my ex-wife. I shouldn’t have let her bully me the same way she did throughout our marriage. I’m done letting her rule my life. I need to find Cleo and fix this. I need her to know I would never abandon her.
I also need to find Tara. I have a feeling she’s blaming me for not being able to go to school abroad like Cleo. I didn’t want to tell her that her mom demanded I give her the tuition money in the divorce. I fought to keep it, but the judge ruled against me in the end. But he didn’t know Gina. That judge had no idea that Tara’s mom would have that money spent within the first month of her getting her hands on it. I kept it from Tara because I didn’t want her to be hurt. But it’s put a wedge between us that nothing seems go fill.
I want to find out from Tara herself. I text her but there’s no response. I text Cleo too, but again, no response—though that part doesn’t surprise me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she never wants to talk to me again after the way I treated her.
I’m starting to get worried when even Charlie doesn’t answer my texts. At home I wouldn’t worry about it so much, but in a foreign country they should know not to ignore me.
As I head back up to the room, I see several fliers cluttering the message boards and coffee tables in the lobby. It’s for a trendy nightclub. I recall hearing Charlie talking to a friend on the phone about going out. I wonder if this is the place he was talking about.
“Excuse me,” I say to the receptionist at the front desk. She turns to look at me with the exaggerated smile that people who work in hospitality tend to have. “Have you seen three young people in their early twenties leave recently?”
“Yes, not more than an hour ago,” she points to the flier. It’s hard to understand her with such a thick accent. “They took a cab to that location.”
“Thank you,” I say and call a cab.
I run out of the hotel to wait for it to show up. Time seems to slow to a crawl. Only minutes have passed, but it’s enough time to imagine the worst. My anxiety level is through the roof. I know Cleo is going out because I hurt her and she’s trying to heal. She’s in the perfect state of mind for some asshole to take advantage of her. I need to get to her before that happens. If she gets hurt, I’ll never forgive myself.
When the cab finally arrives, I urge the cabby to drive faster and flash him a generous tip. He happily obliges, driving well over the speed limit.
When we get to the club, I can hear the music pouring out of the building before I even open my door. I hand over a wad of cash to the cabby and get out of the car. I rush inside the building. I can’t see anything through the fog machine they have spilling into the room and the flashing lights confusing everything.
When I’ve looked everywhere for Cleo and my kids, I head for the back of the building. There’s a door, but I don’t know where it leads. Maybe outside, maybe to another part of the club. I try the door to see if it opens. It opens out into an alley. When
I see my son standing in front of Cleo, shaking her by her shoulders, I’m stunned at first. When Cleo starts yelling at him, I grab him and yank him away from her.
“Charlie!” I say. When he doesn’t acknowledge me, I twist his arms behind his back until he cries out. I push him against the wall. As soon as I see his eyes, I can tell he’s drunk.
“Back off,” Charlie says to me, and tries to push me off of him. He’s too uncoordinated for his efforts to do any good. “Cleo and I are trying to have a conversation. This doesn’t concern you.” His words slur together into nonsense.
I look at Cleo. She glares at me. She looks cold, her skin bright pink and covered in goosebumps.
“Why are you here?” she says to me, still just as mad as ever. “You obviously don’t care about me.” She doesn’t seem too bothered by Charlie or the fight they were obviously having before I arrived. All her anger is now aimed at me. It’s like a stab in the chest knowing I’ve hurt her so bad that she’s looking at me like she hates me.
“Of course I care about you,” I snap, unable to control the heat in my voice. I need her to know that my feelings for her are just as strong as ever. “That’s why I pushed you away. I don’t want this thing between us to ruin your future.” I shake my head. “Why are you here at this club? This isn’t you.”
Cleo likes books, not noisy clubs.
“What I do is none of your business,” she says. “You can’t push me away then get upset about where I go.”
Charlie is slumped against the wall, still pinned by my arm. He watches us, but doesn’t say anything. If his eyes were closed, I would’ve guessed that he was passed out.
“What the hell is going on?” Charlie says with a somewhat sober look. He seems confused about the conversation between me and Cleo.
“Just leave, Charlie,” Cleo says, seeming annoyed that he’s here to listen to us talk. “I don’t like you the way you think I do. And you had no right to touch me.”
I glance at my son. I’ve always known he has a crush on Cleo, I just never expected for him to treat her disrespectfully, even when drunk. We’re going to have a long conversation about this when he sobers up.
Charlie looks dejected when he starts to walk away. He mumbles an embarrassed apology and goes back into the club.
Cleo starts to yell at me the moment Charlie is gone, but before she can get more than a few words in, I grab her face in my hands and kiss her passionately. I taste the alcohol on her breath and the sweetness of it on her lips. To my surprise, she kisses me back. I thought she would be too mad at me for that. At least I know I haven’t completely lost her.
When I pull away from our kiss, I say, “You’re reckless. I was so worried about you. Don’t scare me like that. You could’ve been hurt, or worse …” I shudder at the thought. “Don’t ever scare me like that again. I can’t live without you.”
She stares at me, blinking slowly. “If I wasn’t reckless, I never would’ve tried to make things work with you in the first place.”
I look her over, then I kiss her again. When I wrap my arms around her, she starts to cry.
“I was so mad at you,” she says through her tears. “I hate that you pushed me away. Can’t you see that I want to be with you? Why do you get to decide what’s good or bad for me?”
“Being with me will only cause problems for you. My ex is evil. She’ll do anything to hurt me. If she found out that we’re together, she’ll ruin you.”
“I don’t care,” she insists.
“It’s not just Gina, though. Everyone will be angry with us. Imagine what your parents will think … and Tara.”
“Being without you hurts more than anything. I’m willing to risk their anger. Our families will eventually get over it when they see how happy we make each other. I love you. Isn’t that obvious? Isn’t that enough? We can’t help who we fall in love with. Why can’t we be like the couples in the books I read? Why can’t I get my happily ever after?”
I crush her in a hug and kiss the top of her head. “I love you so damn much,” I tell her.
“Dad?”
I look up, startled to hear Tara’s voice. She’s standing at the door to the club, looking confused and angry.
9
Cleo
I feel a cold fear come over me when I see Tara standing at the doorway, looking as though someone had just slapped her in the face. Charlie is standing beside her, looking smug. He must have gone in and found her and told her Nicholas was out here with me. I guess Charlie wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t pick up what was happening with us by our conversation.
“Tara …” Nicholas says. He tries to explain, then stops himself.
Tara starts to back away. When I move toward her, she runs. I chase after her. It’s fairly easy to keep up when she’s wearing tall wedges and I’m in flats. We weave in and out of people on the dance floor until bursting out the front door of the nightclub and back into the cool night. She only makes it to the vacant parking lot across the street when I catch up with her. I grab her by the shoulders and spin her around, forcing her to look at me.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she says, crying. Not just a few tears, but an ugly, angry deluge of tears. Snot runs down her nose and black mascara streaks down her cheeks. “How could you do this, Cleo? That’s my dad. You’ve been my best friend since we were in kindergarten. You’re destroying an already wrecked home.”
Her words sting. “Tara, I’m so sorry. I know this looks really bad, and I don’t expect you to understand, but I can’t help the way I feel.”
More tears fall and Tara sounds defeated when she speaks again. “How could something like this even happen? He’s so … old.”
I can’t help but smile. She doesn’t share the same attraction to older men that I do.
“I guess it was all the talk about this magical idea of summer love before going to college abroad … I don’t know.” I pause to take a breath and collect my thoughts. Everything is so jumbled in my head. I love Nicholas, and I also love my best friend, and I hate that my happiness has to hurt her.
“I never meant to fall for Nicholas,” I tell her.
“My father is a monster, Cleo. He’s greedy. He only cares about himself. He won’t even give me my college fund. My mom told me he spent it.”
“He’s not a monster. He’s been broken after being cheated on and after the divorce.”
I can’t imagine Nicholas spending Tara’s college money. He loves his kids. My parents said he lost everything in the divorce including both Tara and Charlie’s college money. The only thing Nicholas was able to keep was the house. That’s why he’s been struggling. He almost cancelled this trip, but he didn’t want to do that to his children. He was willing to go broke for their happiness.
Tara’s face twists with rage. “You don’t know anything about that. And you don’t know what he’s really like. If he cared he would think about how he’s holding everyone back, including you,” she yells.
I know all of this is coming from the bullshit her mother feeds her. I know the real story. I’ve heard it from my parents and from Nicholas himself . Tara doesn’t know the extent of her mom’s lies and games. Nicholas has tried to protect her from all of that. Now that protection has poisoned her against him.
“You don’t know anything either, Tara, you know one side of the story,” I yell back at her. “You haven’t even bothered to listen to your dad’s side of the story.”
My throat hurts from yelling, and so does my head and heart. Who knew love could hurt this much?
I take a deep breath and try to settle down. Tara does the same. Her tears slow until they trickle instead of falling freely.
“Please understand that Nicholas and I never meant to hurt you or Charlie,” I say. “We didn’t plan any of this. It just happened.”
“You’re really in love with him?” she says meekly.
“I am. And he loves me too. It’s not just some summer fling. I’ve never felt this way about anyone
before.”
A sad look sweeps across her face. She looks destroyed as she hangs her head. “I just want my family back. I’m losing everything. Even my best friend who I won’t get to see again for almost a year after this vacation is over. It’s not fair.”
“Tara, you’ll never lose me.” I hug her and she begins to sob in my arms.
I see Nicholas approaching in the distance. He has his hands in his pockets, looking unsure if he should interrupt. When Tara hears his footsteps she turns to face her dad. She runs into his waiting arms and he hugs her tight.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, apologizing over and over again. “You and your brother are everything to me. But I also love Cleo.”
He glances at me and smiles with a wink. Tears spring to my eyes. For a moment everything feels better, fixed somehow. We’re now out in the open and no longer have to hide. There’s no turning back. I love Nicholas no matter the consequences.
Nicholas explains to Tara about the divorce and her mom getting the money for her college tuition and spending it shortly after. He does his best not to make Gina sound like a monster, but she absolutely is. There’s no denying it. Tara seems reluctant to believe it at first, but Nicholas convinces her. By the end of the conversation, Tara is teary eyed, and her loathing of her father is gone. I don’t want to interfere, so I stay in the background. But then Tara calls me over to them.
“You’re the best person I can imagine for my dad. He needs someone in his life as loving and loyal as you.” She hugs me and we weep in each other’s arms.
“We should get back to the hotel,” Charlie says. I didn’t see him standing in the shadows. The smug look is gone. He looks sober and more like himself again.
My insides turn to cement because I know once we get back to the hotel I’m going to have to tell my parents.