The Devil In the South Of France: An Enemies To Lovers Romance

by Sage Rae

  “I’m told that falling in love is always stupid, but always worth it,” Manu said, shrugging. “I haven’t allowed myself to feel it. I’ve been a fucked-up mess. Nobody could have dared to fall in love with me, you know?”

  “I think that’s even more stupid to say,” Peter stammered. “Thinking you’re unworthy of love. What kind of idiotic thing is that?”

  Peter called a taxi, and it carted them all the way back to the French villa, where he loaded Manu into his guest bedroom in the back apartment. Manu’s blonde hair spilled out over the crisp white pillow, looking very out of place. Above his head as he slumbered, Peter had hung a thousand-dollar painting from an old fling in Spain. He gazed at it for a long moment—the blues and greens flashing across the canvas—and scrunched his nose. How had he ever found meaning in it? He couldn’t see it, now.

  Peter slept fitfully, having dreams of Charlotte, wondering if she had made it to wherever she was running. His dreams involved her stumbling over the steps of that metro train station, a million years ago. Always, he reached her in time to catch her before she fell.

  Interview

  Charlotte awoke three hours early on the day of her job interview. It was a chilly day, one that sent her toes curling beneath her comforter. She yanked herself from bed just in the nick of time to grab a mug of coffee, and then wrapped herself in blankets, staring out at the rainy Parisian sky. Paris was a bustling place—far louder than she’d remembered, with its people crowding into one another, clacking their heels on cobblestones and honking their car horns. “It feels like it’s crowding in on me,” she’d written in her journal the previous evening, when she’d sat outside a cafe, sipping wine. Someone had tumbled into her table, casting drips of wine across her white shirt. Everything felt difficult, lonely. But time had to press forward, regardless.

  “Thank you for asking me about my experience,” Charlotte stuttered toward the mirror. She glossed her cheeks with makeup, brought eyeliner just above her eyelashes. She batted them at herself. What if they didn’t like her? What if they thought she was too girly, too stupid, too insecure? She deepened her voice as she practiced, but then remembered that she didn’t want to seem TOO overbearing, either. That would come after, when she got the job. She couldn’t show all her cards at once.

  The office was located in the Marais district: where the Jewish people had lived, prior to the war. Charlotte ducked her head as she marched past a school of children, screeching and flailing their arms for the mid-morning snack. She was only twenty-six years old, but something within her told her that that kind of life—with children, with life and vitality, might not be for her. The love of her life had been Peter Bramwell. She couldn’t envision having anyone else’s child.

  Once inside the boardroom, Charlotte crossed and uncrossed her legs, splayed out her portfolio, dotted her finger across the particularly “big” accomplishments, and gave a half-grin. The three architects who interviewed her were high-up in the Parisian architecture game. She recognized them from their magazine spreads, from their ironic facial hair and their architecturally strange glasses. Charlotte found herself making the occasional high-brow joke, as she spoke to them: something she hadn’t been able to do around Manu, essentially her only friend of the previous five years. Maybe this life in Paris was for her, after all.

  When she walked from the boardroom, all three architects shook her hand with firm grips. They told her they would be in touch, but to start preparing for the wildest ride of her career. “It’s taken you long enough,” one of them said, echoing back words that Paco had told her.

  What had she been waiting for, all these years?

  Charlotte took a short train back to her neighborhood, glancing at her phone. In the previous few days, the calls from Manu and Peter had stalled out. She wondered what had happened after she’d left Montpellier: if they’d continued to tear into one another, if they’d given themselves a moment to speak. She Googled the French villa, saw that it was still reported as “sold” to Peter Bramwell. But there was no message regarding whether or not he’d hired another architect to take on the job.

  In fact, one interior design website in particular had reported that the French villa was the number-one coveted job by most architects and designers. “It’s an opportunity of a lifetime,” one journalist wrote. “But who will Peter Bramwell choose? He has the entire world at his fingertips. He can make it into whatever he dreams it to be.”

  Me. Me. Me. Charlotte pressed her fist against her chest, aching with sadness. That should have been her job.

  But as she sat, perched at the edge of the cafe table with a glass of wine poured before her, her phone buzzed. She answered it swiftly, taking a call from one of the architects from the agency. He offered her the position, agreeing to her salary—and declaring that she had the best portfolio of any one fresh architect he’d met in the previous five to ten years. “It’s going to be remarkable working with you,” he told her.

  Charlotte waited at the table, the phone still in her hand. A large dog with fat curls rustled past her, pausing to look up and wag his big, fat pink tongue. Somehow, she was twenty-six years old, and she was starting over again. She felt as non-plussed as this dog. The owner, wearing a long, flapping trench coat, finally joined behind. “Come along, pup,” he said, coughing slightly.

  The following few weeks became a blur of meeting new clients, orientating her new life, buying a whole rack of brand-new “business” clothing (always with an artistic eye), and settling deeper into her Parisian life. The job forced her to remain at the office for long hours, but she enjoyed the work—crafting new designs for buildings outside of Paris, honing fresh looks for apartments within the city, and picking and choosing color palates. She declared she would be the one to bring color to a black and white and grey Parisian world. Her colleagues just laughed.

  She’d even allowed Paco to set her up on a single date, with a single man who bored her nearly to tears over the evening. He explained to her the dramatic teachings of his early college years (something about philosophy and trigonometry and a particularly abrasive teacher) and seemed not to notice as her eyelids molded over her eyes. She nearly fell asleep several times before she yanked herself out of the bar, moving her little heels down the road as fast as she could. Maybe it would be a little while before she got laid, she thought. Maybe it didn’t matter so much anyway.

  At the beginning of October, Charlotte tried to call Manu for the first time. When he didn’t answer, she checked in with the bar he’d been working at in Montpellier. The bartender, Margaret, just scoffed at Charlotte, saying, “Charlotte, he took off not long after you did. Everyone here thought he went with you.”

  “Oh. Oh, shit,” Charlotte murmured to herself. Her heart beat ramped up in her chest. Suddenly, the colossal weight of what she’d done met her eyes: she’d abandoned her struggling brother, leaving him with a rent he couldn’t pay for, and, probably, an undiagnosed mental issue. She shivered, pressing Margaret for more information.

  “He just stopped showing up?” she asked.

  “Well, he missed a shift, and then another one. So I had one of the guys go out to your apartment to check on him. The door was unlocked. Most of the stuff was still there, including that stinking couch. Nobody wants to steal it. Although, I would guess nobody’s paying that rent. You better get the rest of your things out of there before they tear it out and toss it away. Although maybe they already have. Don’t know.”

  Charlotte struggled with this, realizing that the past she’d thought she’d left in Montpellier no longer existed. She thanked Margaret and sat at the edge of her desk, gazing out from her third-floor Parisian window at the main Marais offices. Downstairs, French people nibbled on crepes for lunch, filling their tummies so that they bulged against their super-thin frames. Charlotte had been starving before, but now, the concept of food made her stomach lurch.

  She tried his number once more, then rang a friend in Montpellier to see if she’d heard an
ything. Maria, a girl she’d grown up with prior to their move to New York, answered with a bit of snark to her tone.

  “Well, well. If it isn’t the girl who skipped town without telling anyone,” Maria said. “One day, you’re planning on meeting for lunch. And then the next…”

  “Maria…” Charlotte trailed off, feeling her throat constrict.

  “No, no. That’s okay. It’s only that I was the only person there for you and Manu when you moved here five years ago. Only that I got Manu that job at that bar, which he just ran away from…”

  “Maria, I’m so sorry,” Charlotte said. She shook her head wildly, making her curls quake. “You know what? That was really an asshole move, and you didn’t deserve it.”

  It had been a long time since Charlotte had had to “own up” to something she’d done. And doing so felt like ripping a band-aide off. She huffed, waiting for Maria to answer. And when she didn’t—seemingly, she was standing in stunned silence somewhere in the Montpellier sun—Charlotte continued.

  “I was wondering if you’d heard what happened to Manu. He’s not answering his phone. And, as you said, the bar hasn’t seen him and more or less let him go. I’m kind of nervous. You know how sick he can be…”

  “Well, I can tell you that I did see him one more time, just after you left,” Maria began. “I didn’t know that you’d gone, of course. You hadn’t told anyone anything. But the way he waved to me told me something was up. He was walking next to that asshole…”

  “Wait, what?” Charlotte demanded. “Which asshole?”

  “The one who was staying here. The billionaire you grew up with, in New York…”

  “Peter Bramwell?”

  “I guess so. I try to stay away from the gossip columns, honestly. But yes, sure. Peter Bramwell,” Maria continued.

  “And they were fighting each other?” Charlotte demanded.

  “No. They were, um. Just walking down the road. Manu looked like he’d brushed out his hair, and maybe even cut it, since I’d last seen him. He looked hot. I know you don’t want me to say that, but…”

  Charlotte hadn’t heard anyone describe her brother as good-looking or put together in nearly four years. Her lips remained parted. She realized she was gaping. A colleague across the room from her tilted his head, copying her expression.

  “Thank you for your help, Maria…” Charlotte finally said. “Really. It means a lot.”

  Charlotte spent the rest of the afternoon and evening scouring the internet for information about Peter Bramwell. There was a lot of gossip about him, of course. Many tabloids thought that he might have married his most previous girlfriend, spending his days on a private island somewhere in the Caribbean. Other tabloids stated that he was in India on a meditation retreat. Regardless of their announcement about his whereabouts, it seemed that everyone used the same few photographs that had last been taken of him—about four months ago, right after he’d arrived in Montpellier.

  Therefore, there wasn’t historical evidence of him existing anywhere at all.

  Charlotte blinked and it was after six in the evening. Her colleagues were already heading home, darting down to their favorite bakeries to purchase their crunchy dinner baguettes. But Charlotte remained stumped about Peter and Manu’s whereabouts, and remained at work—her pencil poised over the design she was meant to be crafting, and her brain rolling a mile a minute.

  As her boss, Jennette, strutted past her desk, she stabbed a finger against the design. Arching her eyebrow, she said, “It’s essential this is finished by tomorrow, Charlotte.”

  Charlotte gave her a blank look. It was the first she’d ever given to her boss, like this, and she felt like a teenager as a result. So meek. So stupid.

  “Tomorrow?” she asked, her throat tightening.

  “I believe I said that when I gave it to you this morning,” Jennette continued. “The clients are redesigning the entire warehouse near Versailles for their opening gala. The gala is in two weeks’ time. Which means we have to get started as soon as possible.”

  Charlotte felt that the world spun around her. Her eyes were hazy with tears. “Um. Um. Wait. So, this has to be done by…”

  “You already heard me. I don’t want to repeat myself,” Jennette said, her voice ice-like. She marched to the door, flung her black coat over her shoulders and gave Charlotte a final, concrete-faced look. “I won’t tell you again.”

  Charlotte went to work that night, finding a jolt of adrenaline within her that she’d thought she’d long lost back in college. As she worked, she was no longer hung up on Manu or Peter. She couldn’t allow her thoughts to trickle over to the beauty of Peter’s smile, or the way he smelled when they kissed.

  She wouldn’t allow herself to remember the good times with Manu, either. The endless afternoons when they’d laughed till they’d cried, when they’d played video games deep into the night, or when they’d eaten burgers stoned out of their minds: each inhaling the bread, cheese, and meat like an animal.

  When dawn peaked over Paris the following morning, Charlotte remained at the office, completing the finishing touches. Her eyeballs felt ready to pop from her skull, but her pencil remained sure, crafting thin lines and tiny notes for the craftsmen. By the time Jennette arrived, Charlotte slid the folder of completed designs on her desk and marched for the door, unspeaking. She felt she’d been to war.

  When Charlotte’s designs began to unfold at the warehouse near Versailles, Charlotte donned a hard hat and trekked into the building, eager to see it. To one of the head construction workers, she asked, “So, who is this for, anyway? Which company?”

  And he just shrugged, rolling his eyes at her heels (they weren’t exactly practical for a building site, it was true). “I don’t know, lady,” he said. “Just some rich assholes, all I know. Some party I’ll never get invited to. Whatever.”

  Charlotte hung back, pressing her arms into her chest and switching her weight. A small nugget of curiosity had begun to churn through her head. Why so much secrecy about this project? Why hadn’t she heard from Peter or Manu? Were they actually together?

  But she didn’t want to hope for it. Didn’t want to assume. There were countless businessmen in Europe, many of them rich, all of them capable to have a top-secret gala party near Versailles.

  Charlotte arrived back home that night, tapped her hard hat back on her dining room table, and began to sort through her mail. Bills. A magazine. Another phone bill. But the final envelope was an off-white, vanilla color, with her name written in gorgeous cursive across the center. The envelope didn’t have her address. Rather, it seemed that somebody had tracked her down and slipped her envelope into her mailbox. How was that possible? Even most of her friends in Paris didn’t know exactly where she lived.

  Using a knife, Charlotte carefully unhooked the envelope from itself and removed the letter within. It was similarly handwritten, and incredibly short.

  “We request the appearance of our favorite architect at our gala, for the unveiling of the next step of our journey.”

  The next step of OUR journey. Charlotte suppressed a smile. She scampered to the window, pressing her forehead to the glass, as if she could possibly see them down below. She imagined Manu and Peter, spying on her. She felt just like that twenty-one year old girl, simmering with excitement about her brother and his best friend’s visit to see her. How she’d been so unaware of how her life was about to change, back then.

  She wondered if she was on a similar precipice, waiting for a shift.

  Regardless, the next two weeks would creep by, as she waited, aching to know if this gala was truly the boys’ doing. How was it possible that the world could return to its proper order, without her help? How was it possible that Manu and Peter could find one another again, and be free?

  Gala

  The night of the gala event, stormy clouds rumbled over the Parisian streets. Charlotte scampered down the cobblestone road, with her gala dress above her head—lined with plastic. It rustled
against her hair and back, but avoided dropping to the ground. She’d chosen something a bit out of her price range, a deep green gown with a dangerous V-cut. In a dream, she’d envisioned standing before Peter in it, telling him that he wasn’t allowed to toss her around anymore. That if they were really going to try it—whatever “it” was—then he was going to respect her.

  She stepped through puddle after puddle, cursing the weather, and herself for running late. But construction on the gala had lasted a bit longer than expected, forcing her to remain at the site until early that morning to finalize everything. Plus, she’d gotten into a small bickering argument with the so-called event planner of the event—a particularly leggy French blonde, who she was definitely jealous of, if she was being honest. She’d demanded that the leggy blonde give her just a vessel of information about the event that night. “Just who it’s run by,” Charlotte said. “So I can begin typing up the portfolio for myself.”

  “Can’t you wait twelve goddamn hours?” the leggy blonde had spat back, arching her eyebrows. “My clients have told me how impatient you are.”

  “So you’ve met with them? Frequently?” Charlotte asked. She hated the “hope” that seemed to beam through her words.

  “How the hell do you think I planned this event without them?” the woman demanded, swiping through various pages in her notebook. “I never thought I’d have so much trouble with a freaking architect, but here we are…”

  Charlotte arrived back at her apartment in a flurry, splaying the plastic of her dress across the bed and then blinking around at the small space. What the hell would someone like Peter think of it, if he arrived? She began to toss things left and right, acting like a storm across her floor, trying to right all the messy wrongs of the previous week of mania. But when she stepped back, realizing how dehydrated and exhausted she was, she pressed her fingers into her eyes and felt close to screaming. With only a few hours left until the gala, she felt on the brink of losing everything.