Finding It

by Leah Marie Brown

  “It doesn’t work that way, Vivian.” Fanny crosses her arms and tilts her head, looking at me from behind a thick veil of mahogany hair. “Do you know how many calories are in a Lindt chocolate truffle ball?”

  “No, but I’ll bet you do.”

  “Seventy-nine.”

  “Oh, the humanity!” I cover my eyes with my hands and rock back and forth. “Seventy-nine calories in a single truffle ball? Sweet baby Jesus, what evil is afoot in that factory?”

  “You laugh, but that’s thirty minutes of walking at three miles per hour to burn off the calories in a single chocolate truffle.” Fanny uncrosses her arms. “But if you want to visit the chocolate shop, I’ll go with you.”

  “Hit it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Hit the chocolate shop. We are going to hit it. Hit. It. Hard.”

  I walk out of the kitchen and down the hall to the bathroom, knowing full-well that my best friend will be planking and squatting her little heart out while I am scrubbing off the evidence of my heroics. You’ve probably already figured this out, but Fanny has some pretty big issues about food. Sometimes, it crimps my style, but that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as watching my beautiful best friend twist herself up over something that should be simple. If you’re hungry, eat. If you have extra energy, exercise. Instead, she frets over every calorie consumed, mentally calculating the time she will need to spend on the treadmill or taking a Boot Camp class to work off a kale milkshake.

  I take a hot shower, slather my body with L’Occitane Sweet Almond Oil, and slip on my fluffy pink robe. I am heading back to my room when my iPhone starts ringing. I make a mad dash for the kitchen, unzip the pocket on my rain slicker, and pull out my phone, but I am too late. The Caller ID reads UNKNOWN.

  I hate missed calls from strange numbers because I obsess about them for hours. Who was it? What did they want? What if an anvil falls on UNKNOWN’S head, and they get amnesia and forget to call me back? Am I just supposed to spend the rest of my life in a state of suspense?

  Was UNKNOWN a misdialer, a telemarketer named Dashika hoping to sell me a new Dell computer, or Luc? Maybe Luc was calling from a hotel. Maybe he has a new mobile number. Maybe that’s why it registered UNKNOWN.

  Maybe. Maybe. I don’t do well with uncertainties.

  Maybe I should just call Jean-Luc and ask him if he phoned me. Maybe he will say “no” and hang up on me. Maybe he will send my call to voicemail again. Too many damned maybes.

  All right Bank of Karma, I’ve deposited some serious cash over the last few days and now I want to make a withdrawal. If I call Luc, you better show me some love.

  I go back to my room, dial Luc’s number, and hold my breath while the call connects.

  One ring. My heart is beating like a drum. Boom dabaoom daboom. Two rings. I press my hand to my chest as if it will somehow slow my pulse.

  “Allo.”

  My heart stops beating when I hear the utterly unfamiliar, utterly female French hello.

  “Hello?”

  “Oui, qui est-ce?”

  Who is this? Who the hell are you and why are you answering my boyfriend’s phone?

  “May I please speak with Luc?”

  “Désolé. Je ne parle pas Anglais.”

  Breathe, Vivia. There’s probably a logical explanation for why a strange woman is answering Luc’s phone—maybe he’s gone deaf and she’s his sign-language instructor.

  “Je veux parler à Luc, s’il vous plait?”

  “Ah! Luc est dans la douche.”

  Wait! What? What does she mean Luc just stepped into the shower and why did she say it so casually, as if performing receptionist duties for a naked man—my naked man—is a regular occurrence?

  “Who is this?”

  I actually wanted to say, “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Quoi?”

  “Qui est-ce?”

  “Celine. Qui est-ce?”

  Who am I? I am the woman who is going to fly across the Channel, grab you by your scrawny neck, and shake you like a mother flipping ragdoll, that’s who!

  “C‘est Vivia, sa fiancée.”

  I tell her to let Luc know I phoned and jab my disconnect button repeatedly, half-crying, half-growling in fury.

  Celine? Celine!

  Celine is Luc’s ex-girlfriend. She is a slutty little model who broke his heart by cheating on him with one of his best friends. Chantal, Luc’s sister-in-law, told me Celine only dated Luc because he comes from an old distinguished French family and owns a chateau.

  Really? Celine? Are you kidding me?

  I grab my MacBook, sign into my Facebook account, go to Luc’s wall, and—there it is—the horrible, awful, gut-wrenching, heart-shredding proof that Luc is over me.

  So over me.

  Celine Belangé added six new photos.

  I click on the first photo, dated a year before I met Luc, and snapped at one of Celine’s fashion shoots. She is wearing a dramatic crimson and orange ball gown made of wispy feathers, her ebony hair scraped back to highlight her sharp cheekbones and her pouty, crimson-lacquered lips. It is a candid shot, with a fog machine and light stand in the background, but could be an advert in a glossy fashion magazine. Luc is turned slightly away from Celine, as if preparing to leave. She is leaning away from him and clutching his tie like it is a leash restraining a high-strung poodle. There’s almost something desperate about her pose—but her haughty expression, the lifted chin, the arched brow, the subtly smug smile, suggest something altogether different. The woman in the photograph exudes the quiet confidence of a puppet master, someone who knows they pull the strings, they make people dance.

  The bile that began churning in my stomach when I heard Celine answer Luc’s phone with her smooth Allo burbles up my throat.

  I always hoped Celine was one of those ugly models—the ones with bleached eyebrows or flat-chested boy bodies—but no such luck. She projects the same detached sexiness as Angelina Jolie, but with Dita von Teese’s sex-toy in stilettos beauty.

  I study the next few photographs—also dated before Luc and I began dating—with the intensity of any self-flagellator, intent on inflicting as much damage as possible.

  Luc and Celine paddleboarding in emerald waters. Jesus, Mary, and Thong-Wearing Joseph! Could she look any sexier in a swimsuit? I don’t think so. Luc holding a pair of skis with Celine posing beside him in stylish snow bunny attire, hands on hips, elbows facing forward, back rounded. Luc in his Tour de France cycling gear, hair plastered to his sexy head, while Celine plants a kiss on his already red lipstick-stained cheeks.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuckedee Fuck.

  So Angelina von Teese is a paddleboarding, skiing, cycling supermodel. Fantastic. She can probably make a sailboat out of popsicle sticks and bubble gum, finish the New York Times crossword puzzle while getting a pedicure, and bake pastries like Julia Child, but wearing only stilettos and crimson lipstick.

  If the first four photos wounded me, the last two gut me like an eviscerated Thanksgiving turkey. Time stamped less than twenty-four hours ago, they show the glammed-up couple sipping champagne at some black-tie soiree. My heart flips when I make the picture bigger and look at Luc’s handsome face, the smoldering gaze, the leisurely smile, the cleft in his chin I’ve kissed at least a thousand times.

  “Vivian?” Fanny knocks on my door. “I thought we were going into town to hit the chocolate place? Are you okay?”

  “No!” I let out a strangled cry. “I am definitely not okay.”

  Fanny opens the door and steps into my room.

  “What’s the matter?”

  My strangled cry has become an otherworldly keening, a gut-level moaning usually only heard at funerals or movies set in insane asylums. Fanny rushes to my side. She takes one look at my MacBook screen and her eyes open wide.

  “Mon dieu!” She says, grabbing my MacBook off my lap. “Is that Jean-Luc?”

  “Yep.”

 
; “Who is the woman with him?”

  “Celine.”

  “His ex? The supermodel?”

  “Yep.”

  Fanny curses in French.

  “Maybe they just ran into each other.” She looks from me to the screen and back at me again, smiling brightly. “It’s a plausible explanation.”

  “You run into your ex at the grocery store, when you’re wearing baggy old sweats and in need of a shower, not dressed in formal attire and sipping champagne.”

  Fanny opens her mouth and closes it again. She doesn’t need to admit her unexpected encounter explanation is as farfetched as an M. Night Shyamalan movie. We both know.

  “Did you call him? What did he say?”

  I hear Celine’s Allo in my head and press my hands to my ears and rock back and forth, still keening like an Irish granny at a wake. Fanny wraps her arms around me. She hugs me until my granny wailing subsides to sad, jagged gasps.

  “What did he say, Vivian?”

  “N-Nothing.” I sniffle. “Celine answered the phone.”

  “Shut up!”

  I nod.

  “What did she say?”

  I shrug.

  “Did you tell her who you were?”

  “Of course I did!”

  “What did she say then?”

  “She said she didn’t speak English and then she told me Luc was in the shower.”

  “What? Are you kidding me?”

  I shake my head.

  “Let me talk to her,” Fanny says, holding out her hand. “Get her on the line.”

  I grab my iPhone up, hit redial, and hand it to her. She speaks in rapid, staccato French. I don’t know what she’s saying, but the longer she speaks the snippier she sounds. She hangs up suddenly.

  “Salope!”

  I don’t need a translator to tell me what that word means. It’s a colorful euphemism for a female canine.

  “What? What did she say?”

  “Ce n'est pas important.” Fanny frowns. “I don’t like that woman and I don’t even know her. She’s sketchy.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her to let Luc know his fiancée needed to speak with him as soon as possible.”

  He didn’t actually ask me to marry him, so I’m not his fiancée. I look at the computer screen again. I might not even be his girlfriend anymore.

  Fanny grabs my MacBook, shuts it, and shoves it in my top dresser drawer.

  “Now, let’s go!” She claps her hands. “Let’s go into town, skip the chocolate shop, and head straight to that pub we saw when we first arrived here.”

  “I can’t! What if Luc calls me back?”

  “That’s the beauty of an iPhone, Vivian, you can take it with you wherever you go, even to a pub in Strathpeffer, Scotland.”

  “I don’t want to go to a pub.” I grab one of my pillows and hug it tight. “I just want to curl up in the fetal position, pull the covers over my head, and listen to Adele songs.”

  “No!” Fanny grabs my arm and jerks me up. “You are absolutely forbidden from listening to your ‘For When I Am Blue’ playlist.”

  “But I am blue.”

  “Well holing up in this room listening to a singing barbiturate is not going to chase your blues away.” Fanny tries to pull me to my feet, but it would take a lifetime of Boot Camp classes for the ant to become strong enough to move the rubber tree plant. “You know what you need?”

  “A thong bikini and a supermodel’s body?”

  “Vivian!” She puts her hands on her hips and glares at me. “Do not let that salope get into your head. You are beautiful and you have a slamming body.”

  “Puh-leez,” I snort. “I have a ginger ’fro and a muffin top. No wonder Luc ran back to Celine.”

  “Shut up!”

  I am about to add pale alien-like legs to my list of hideous, anti-supermodel features when Fanny holds up her hand.

  “I am serious, Vivian. I don’t want to hear your whining. I’ve listened to you complain about your looks ever since we first met and I am sick of it.” She feigns a truly laughable Valley Girl accent. “’Oh, poor me. I brush my teeth with salted caramel sauce, but I never gain a pound, and my legs are so long I don’t need to wear high heels. It, like, totally sucks to be me.’”

  “Whatever.”

  “Don’t whatever me. It’s true. You know I love Luc, but he is lucky to have you. Crazy lucky. If he doesn’t call you back, then he was never worth the Dior.” She snaps her fingers. “Now get your skinny ass out of bed. A few whiskys and a plate of fish and chips and you’ll feel better.”

  I am hungry. “You know what goes with fish and chips, right?”

  “No. What?”

  “Chocolate.”

  Chapter 22

  A New Man and A Manky Hole

  Vivia Perpetua Grant @PerpetuallyViv

  Did you know #whisky is uisge beatha in Scottish #Gaelic? Try a few shots and see if you don’t suddenly sound like you’re fluent in Gaelic.

  “Nice Wellies.”

  “Thanks.”

  The barman slams two shot glasses on the bar, fills them with whisky, and returns to his regular customers clustered at the other end of the pub.

  “Did you see that?” I whisper to Fanny. “Did you see the way he smirked when he said he liked my Wellies? What was that about?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” She lifts the shot glass to her lips and tips the contents into her mouth. “We’ve got whisky and a bar full of men in uniform. Who cares about a smirking old bartender?”

  “Touché.”

  Several of the men at the end of the bar are dressed in green flight suits and throwing darts at a bull’s-eye shaped board. One of them, a tall broad-shouldered blonde dressed in civvies, takes aim and sends a dart whizzing through the air. It lands dead-center and the pub erupts in raucous cheers.

  I make a little salute with my shot glass before downing the whisky. The fiery liquid burns a path down my throat, igniting like a stick of dynamite in my belly. I shudder and cough.

  “Good, right?”

  I cough again. I am still coughing when the barman refills our glasses and Fanny downs her second shot.

  “What were ye thinking, Dougal? Dinna ye ken ye cannae serve Dalwhinnie to a lass wearing pink Wellies, man?”

  Jesus, Mary, and Scotch-drinking Joseph. I don’t need to turn around to put a face to that voice, but I spin around anyway.

  “Calder.”

  Just speaking his name reignites the fiery feeling in my throat, and I start coughing again. Coughing might not be the right word to describe my violent hacking and wheezing. It’s embarrassing. The leather-throated whisky-swilling Scots have stopped talking and are staring at me with expressions that vary from amused to annoyed.

  Calder reaches around to grab my second shot of whisky.

  “Here—” he hands me the shot glass. “Drink this.”

  “Are you crazy?” I clutch my throat. “If drinking one shot of that liquid napalm can cause this kind of suffering, I’ll stick to champagne cocktails and strawberry margaritas. Thank you.”

  Calder throws back his head and laughs. He has a seductive laugh, warm and rich like the amber liquid he’s trying to get me to drink.

  “You’re in agony, lass, because ye dinnae ken th’ proper way tae drink whisky.”

  Fanny giggles, and I shoot her a “Thanks Judas” look.

  “Oh, is that why it feels like someone tossed a Molotov cocktail down my throat, because I dinnae ken the proper way to drink whisky?” I take the glass from him and slam it back down, causing a small amber wave to splash over the side and onto the bar.

  “Aye.” He crosses his arms and smiles. “Ye dinnae.”

  “And I suppose you know the proper way to drink whisky?”

  “Ach, of course I dae.” He stares into my eyes and the heat kindling in my throat spreads to my cheeks. “I’m a Scotsman; I was
weaned on Dalwhinnie.”

  Calder’s drinking buddies erupt in laughter. They are watching our exchange with keen interest. One of them says something in Gaelic.

  “Please.” I roll my hand. “Teach me the way, Most Exalted and Wise Jedi Master.”

  “Just Master.”

  “What?”

  “Most Exalted and Wise Jedi Master is a mouthful. Just call me Master.”

  Fanny covers her mouth with her hand and pretends to cough, but I know she’s just hiding her laughter. I think she likes this arrogant, grinning, sheep-wrangling Scot. I’m not impressed.

  “Never.”

  Calder frowns.

  “I will never call you Master.”

  “A challenge.” Calder grins. “I accept.”

  Two of Calder’s buddies join him. One of them, a fellow ginger with a mischievous glint in his green eyes, speaks in Gaelic while staring at Fanny.

  “Allow me tae introduce my friends,” Calder gestures to the men in uniform standing beside him. “Duncan and Connor.”

  The redhead holds his hand out to Fanny. “I’m Duncan. What’s yer name, lass?”

  “Stéphanie.”

  Fanny shakes his hand, but I can tell from her tight smile that she’s not into him. She’s not very comfortable making small talk with strangers. It’s just not her thing.

  “Hello.” I hold my hand out to Connor. “I’m Vivia.”

  “I ken who ye are.”

  I frown because I don’t recall meeting him before today. “Have we met?”

  Calder flushes and adjusts his collar.

  “Nae,. Connor smiles and shakes his head. “Calder was telling us aboot—”

  Calder’s arm shoots up so fast it reminds me of when I drive with my mom and she makes an abrupt stop. The swift forearm to the chest instantly silences Connor.

  It’s one of those supremely uncomfortable moments when a girl knows a boy has been talking about her to his friends because he likes her. Poor Calder. He possesses a certain brand of charm, but he’s wasting it on me because I am still hopelessly in love with Luc.

  Luc. Celine. My stream of consciousness carries me from peaceful emotions to a churning whirlpool of longing, grief, and blinding anger. I sneak a peek at my iPhone. It’s been two hours since Fanny asked Celine to tell Luc to call me, and still no calls or texts.