Fromage a Trois

by Brownlee, Victoria

  “Ella, look. Now is not a good time . . .”

  I heard a voice coming from the kitchen and was surprised to see another shirtless man walk into the hallway.

  What the hell is going on? I thought, feeling panicked.

  “Oh, hi,” I said awkwardly. “Sorry, I didn’t realize Gaston had . . . err . . . company?”

  “Ella, this is Camille’s boyfriend, Antoine,” Gaston said. “He’s staying here while his apartment is . . .”

  “Getting painted,” Antoine pitched in.

  OK, that makes sense, I thought, feeling relieved that Camille had gotten back with her boyfriend.

  I gave Antoine a smile and shook his hand, still on the alert for weird vibes.

  Gaston suddenly asked me why I wasn’t at work and I explained that I’d taken the afternoon off. I apologized again for interrupting and asked them what they’d been up to.

  “Well . . .” started Antoine before Gaston cut him off.

  “Just hanging out, watching TV,” he said. “The football.”

  I was surprised to hear Gaston admitting to watching sports. Perhaps it was Antoine’s influence.

  “Is everything OK?” I asked him.

  As soon as the words had come out of my mouth, I spotted something in the hallway that made my heart drop. It was a pair of Chanel ballet flats. My mind raced, trying to place where I’d seen them before.

  “Gaston? What’s going on?” I asked, looking around the room for more potential clues, feeling increasingly uneasy.

  “Nothing’s going on. Look, we’re a little busy now. Are you free to meet up later instead?” he asked.

  I heard a rustle from the bedroom.

  “Oh, God. Is there someone else here?” I asked.

  “Ella . . .” Gaston started.

  The appearance of a gorgeous woman walking out of the bedroom in her underwear interrupted him. It took me a minute to realize it was a near-naked Camille.

  “Are you the house cleaner?” she asked in French.

  I half screamed.

  “Oh, sorry, Ella. It’s just you. Did you change your hair?”

  Was this really happening?

  “Anyway, Antoine, we should probably go,” she continued.

  I stared at her as she unapologetically flung her luxurious mane of hair across her bare shoulders and searched around the room for her dress. She strutted across the hallway dramatically and I stood frozen, watching her beautifully-manicured feet move across the parquetry floor.

  Gaston touched my arm. “Ella, relax. We were just fooling around. You know, like a ménage à trois?”

  He paused, looking at Camille and Antoine, before continuing, “We can make it a ménage à quatre, if you prefer.”

  Hardly the most romantic proposition I’d ever received.

  “Seriously?” I asked, looking around to see Camille and her boyfriend shrug as if to say, “Why not?”

  What. The. Actual. Fuck?

  “I think I’ll just go. Leave you three to it.”

  “Ella, don’t be so dramatic,” Gaston said laughing.

  With my mouth still agape, I slammed the door and got the hell away from them.

  A few minutes down the road, tears working their way onto the pavement, I felt my phone vibrating somewhere in my bag. It was Gaston. I juggled the bottle of champagne that I was stupidly still holding and answered.

  “What in the world could you want?” I said.

  “Ella, look. Come back and talk to me. I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t think you’d find out.”

  “Gaston! That’s even worse.”

  “You know, what I was doing with Camille and Antoine, it was just a cinq-à-sept. Obviously, it doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said.

  “Are you being serious right now?” I asked.

  “Don’t be angry, Ella. We’re in France . . .”

  What the hell is wrong with these people?

  “Gaston, you’re an arsehole. I can’t believe you told me you loved me.”

  “What? When did I say that?”

  “At the snow, after you’d been skiing with Camille all day.”

  “Oh là là, Ella. I never said je t’aime.”

  I paused, flabbergasted, wondering if I’d misheard him. I couldn’t have invented such an important memory, could I?

  “Please come back and see me. I told Camille and Antoine to leave. They’re gone now,” he said. “We can enjoy that bottle of champagne together.”

  “What? Do you really think I’d want to sleep with you after your little ménage à trois?”

  “Look, Ella. It just sort of happened. We were all hanging out together, drinking rosé, and then we were naked. It was actually very innocent.”

  “Threesomes aren’t ‘very innocent,’ Gaston . . . God, how is it possible I ended up falling for someone worse than Paul?”

  “Who is Paul? What are you talking about?” he asked.

  I hung up.

  Struggling to coordinate walking, carrying the champagne, and crying, I sat down on a nearby park bench. It was freezing outside and the cold wind whipped up off the pavement and slapped me like an icy snowball directly in the face. I sat, oblivious to any oncoming frostbite, while simultaneously overheating from rage. I popped open the champagne and glugged it directly from the bottle. It was cool and crisp, offering a small consolation after busting Gaston having an affair, and, perhaps more importantly, dulling the realization that I’d been deceived by somebody I thought I loved. Again.

  I dialed Clotilde’s phone, relieved when she picked up immediately.

  “Gaston is cheating on me,” I blurted out.

  “Merde,” she said. “I was worried this might happen.”

  “What? Why? Has it happened before?”

  “Yes, but Ella, I didn’t want to tell you because I was hoping he’d changed. He told me that he was really into you. He said that with you, things were different.”

  “I feel so embarrassed,” I told her. “He said it was a ‘cinq-à-sept.’ What does that even mean?”

  “Eugh. Men can be such pigs. Cinq-à-sept is like an after-work fling. Something to do between five and seven . . .”

  “What the hell?” I said, disgusted. “Is this a common pastime for French men?”

  “Not just for men, but for women too. It’s not so common anymore, but you know, some people are just more sexual than others,” Clotilde said, explaining the intricacies of French relationships to me like I was the world’s biggest prude.

  “But he said he loved me,” I told her.

  “Really? Gaston did?”

  “In the mountains,” I told her. “Why do you sound so surprised?”

  “It’s just that he’s had commitment issues in the past. What did he say exactly? Was it in French or English?”

  “What does it matter?” I asked.

  “It matters a lot,” she said seriously.

  “He said, “‘Je t’aime bien’.”

  “Oh Ella, that can mean that he likes you a lot.”

  Oh, I thought, my heart almost dropping out of my chest. Was my French really so terrible?

  She continued. “Aimer is a complicated verb because it can mean both like and love. Like ‘Je t’aime beaucoup’ means ‘I like you a lot,’ but ‘Je t’aime’ on its own means ‘I love you.’ Do you understand the difference?”

  “Yes,” I said, despairing.

  “Where are you now?” she asked.

  “I’m in the park behind Gaston’s apartment. I’m drinking champagne,” I said through tears.

  “You’re what? Oh Ella, come home and we’ll get drunk together. It’ll help you forget about men.”

  With the bottle still perched on my lips, an old man strolled past with his poodle and asked if I was OK.

  “Ça va, mademoiselle?”

  “Ça va, merci,” I replied.

  He asked me why I was so sad and I told him that life wasn�
��t easy. He assuredly told me that everything would be OK and wished me luck. I couldn’t help but laugh at our exchange. His attitude initially struck me as cold but he was right. Life could be hard but of course things would be OK.

  So what if I’d just walked in on a guy who I thought was my boyfriend—who I thought loved me—only to discover that he was sleeping with someone else . . . and another someone else? I’d misunderstood the nuance of the verb aimer in French—a simple mistake—and then misinterpreted Gaston’s and my relationship status. Embarrassing, yes; world ending, no.

  Thankfully, I had a loving housemate who was ready and willing to help me ease the pain with more champagne. I started walking home.

  A couple of blocks away from the safety of our apartment, I did a double take as a billboard caught my eye. It featured a gorgeous, scantily-clad model who was unmistakably Camille . . .

  In the larger-than-life advert, she was wearing a bra—very similar to the one I’d just seen her in—under a chic jacket and paired with a short leather skirt. She looked ridiculously glamorous, strutting down a cobbled laneway, suggestively touching her inner thigh with her bedroom eyes staring down the barrel of the camera lens. I noticed a tiny smirk on the right side of her lips, as though she was saying: I get everything I want, Ella. I’ll have my Gaston and eat him too! Her face made me both furious and sad.

  “You beautiful arseholes deserve each other!” I screamed at the billboard.

  “What did you say, Ella?” I turned around at the sound of a familiar voice.

  Oh my God, what is happening?

  “Jean-Pierre, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I was just passing by, then I saw you screaming like a crazy person,” he said. It seemed as though he hadn’t made much progress in the charm stakes. I wondered if he’d found a girl yet . . .

  “Not now, Jean-Pierre. Get out of the way.” I pushed past him and rushed home. What on earth is the world trying to tell me?

  “I spoke with Gaston,” Clotilde said, motioning to her phone as soon as I stepped through the door. “He’s really sorry.”

  She grabbed two glasses and the partially-consumed bottle of champagne I was still carrying and motioned to the couch.

  “What did he tell you?” I asked, wondering if he’d been honest.

  “That you walked in on him having a threesome. He said you were very mad. He was looking for my sympathy but instead, I yelled at him. I’ve never done that before with Gaston. I think he was shocked.”

  “Did he tell you who he was sleeping with?”

  “No, and I didn’t even think to ask. Why, who was it?”

  “Camille . . . and her boyfriend, Antoine.”

  “What! That skinny waitress-slash-model-slash-trust-fund girl and her airhead model boyfriend? I’ve met them both a few times out clubbing, smug as anything,” Clotilde said. “She’s a menace.”

  “That sounds like the same Camille,” I said, feeling tears working their way down my cheeks. “What’s worse is that I saw her on a billboard right after I’d busted her with Gaston.”

  “Who for?”

  “Balenciaga. And she looked gorgeous, of course.”

  “Don’t worry, Ella. I’m sure Gaston will regret this. Camille probably will too.”

  That evening, I drowned my sorrows under Clotilde’s watchful eye. When I was finally ready to drag myself to bed, she grabbed my phone, turned it off, and put it on the kitchen table.

  “You should leave that here tonight. Just in case you fancy making any late-night calls,” she said.

  I may have had a few more glasses than usual, but I hadn’t lost all my common sense, I told her. I gave her an unbalanced hug and stumbled off to my room.

  Around half an hour later, when I was unable to sleep because the ceiling was spinning, I snuck out into the kitchen and grabbed my phone. I turned it on and pulled the bedcovers over my head.

  I dialed.

  “Hello,” a voice on the other end said.

  “Billie, are you there?” I whispered into the receiver.

  “Ella? What’s going on? Why are you whispering?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “Are you drunk?” she asked.

  “No. I mean, yes. Maybe. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “Is everything OK?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I said, starting to cry. “Turns out that French people are crazy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone is sleeping with each other! Gaston included. I’m pretty sure we just broke up.”

  “Oh dear,” she said with a sigh.

  “I know. It turns out he wasn’t the complete package after all. Turns out he was an arsehole, actually. I busted him having a ménage à trois.”

  “I take it you weren’t one of the three, then?” she asked.

  “Not even,” I said, sniffling. “They invited me to join but they were clearly only being polite.”

  “Ella, I’m so sorry. Are you at home? Why don’t you make a cup of tea and you can tell me what happened.”

  “I can’t leave my room,” I said. “I stole my phone from Clotilde.”

  “Right . . .” she said pausing. “Maybe just go over all the details slowly then.”

  Over the next half hour, I told Billie what had happened that afternoon. I went into detail about how excited I’d felt leaving work early to sneak into Gaston’s apartment, ready for an afternoon romp. Then I recounted how surprised I’d been when Camille’s boyfriend had walked out of the kitchen—and my immediate relief that Gaston wasn’t cheating on me with Camille like I’d half been expecting. Finally, I told her how devastated I’d felt as soon as Camille herself had made her grand entrance from the bedroom, half-naked, asking if I was the cleaning lady.

  When I’d finished, having stopped occasionally to sob or blow my nose, I was relieved to find Billie was still listening quietly on the other end of the phone line. She asked gently if I was done and then took a deep breath.

  “Ella, seriously. You know I love you, but this situation you’ve gotten yourself into is ridiculous. I’ve seen you make all these mistakes before.”

  “What do you mean? Paul wasn’t cheating on me,” I said, hiccuping. “Was he?”

  “Forget about Paul. Look, I’m going to be completely honest with you: The men you choose to date are arseholes.”

  Good cop Billie was clearly over; it was time for bad cop. I braced myself and she continued, “You date people you’re not compatible with. And yes, they might appear glamorous, or exciting, or wealthy, but have you ever stopped to wonder why they treat you like you’re not important?”

  “No,” I said, sobering up slightly as she unleashed a world of truths upon me.

  “Because you let them. They never understand or care about what you want in life because you don’t assert yourself in front of them.”

  “Yes, I do,” I protested, unconvincingly.

  “Paul was an idiot, and while yes, he could be sweet at times, he was never going to give you the life you wanted because he always put his own plans first. And this Gaston, from what you’ve told me, sounds appalling. Just like Paul, he kept you around while it was convenient for him, but the minute things started to appear serious between the two of you, he let you know he was still in charge. Trust me, he’ll be better off with that model and her boyfriend, and you’ll be better off without him.”

  “But I loved him.” I realized how desperate I sounded, but the mix of heartbreak and wine was too strong to bear.

  “Don’t kid yourself, Ella. You loved the thought of him.”

  “So it’s all my fault?” I interjected, feeling wounded.

  “Of course it’s not your fault, but choosing to date idiots is something you can stop. Immediately. You should never date another Paul or Gaston in your life. And yes, breakups will still happen, but it’s better if it’s because you’
re incompatible and not because he’s got his sights set on another girl, or boy and girl. You need to value yourself more and make it damn clear to anyone you’re seeing that you do.”

  “I’ll never find love,” I sobbed.

  “Of course you will.” She switched back to good cop. “You just need to look for a man with more substance than style.”

  “But I thought Gaston was that man.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was so handsome and French,” I said, wailing.

  “Ella . . .” Billie said, sounding worn out. “What about that guy from the cheese shop, Serge? He seemed nice.”

  “We kissed,” I squealed. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten to tell her about the disastrous dinner with Serge. Too much else had happened.

  “There we go,” she said, sounding encouraged.

  “But he’s still not my type,” I added quickly.

  “Why not? Because you think he’s not sophisticated enough? Because you think of him as a friend since he’s kind and he cares about what’s important to you? Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “Kind of, but I think I’m going to be sick,” I said, and rushed to the bathroom, leaving Billie on the line to hang up. After throwing up a bottle or two of wine and looking at my miserable face in the mirror, I went back to bed.

  The next morning, fragments of my drunken conversation with Billie came flooding back to me when I saw a text message from her. I read it nervously.

  “El, I hope you’re OK. I’m sorry if I was harsh and I’m sorry you’re upset. I really didn’t think you’d fall for another Paul-type after moving to Paris. When I saw you recently, you seemed really confident and happy. I’m so sorry it ended up like this. Call me any time if you need to chat.”

  I pieced together what I remembered Billie telling me. Something about always dating the wrong guys, something about Serge.

  Although it was hard to admit, especially with a hangover, she did have a point. I did tend to date jerks. And I’d certainly gotten swept up in the idea of being with Gaston and with the magic of starting a French romance. I’d assumed I’d found the perfect boyfriend and had ignored the warning signs of him flirting with other girls and being aloof. I sent Billie a reply, apologizing for my drunkenness and letting her know that I appreciated her advice.