I took a deep breath, steeled my shoulders and started from the beginning.
“About a month ago, literally the day after I got the job at La Petite Miette, we went to dinner to celebrate. I wanted to go to Maison de Lys where he works, my favorite restaurant since it was where we met. But Mathieu convinced me to try Bistro Éclipse, a new place just down the street from my apartment. When I made an offhand comment about not being at Maison de Lys, he acted… strange. I don’t know how to explain it, but something was just off. One second, we were toasting to my new job and our future in Paris, and the next, he admitted that we couldn’t go to Maison de Lys because a new waitress had started a few weeks earlier and the two of them?—”
“No. Oh my God, Mae.”
“Yeah. But the absolute worst part was his attitude about it. As if it were somehow my fault for wanting to go there and was it ‘really a big deal?’ since we weren’t married yet.”
“Are you shitting me? You areengaged,” she said with as much antagonism as one would expect from a good friend.
“Were engaged.”
Jules looked as devastated as I felt.
“That’s why you went MIA for weeks.”
“And delayed my return. Instead of packing for a one-week visit, I cleaned out my apartment and took everything I could fit in two suitcases.”
If I surprised her with the Mathieu announcement, Jules was positively shocked now.
“Your job?”
I shook my head, tears forming in the corner of my eyes despite me willing them not to. Without a word, she put her arms around me. I hugged my friend, wishing I hadn’t given in to her when Jules begged me to meet her at the pub. I should have had her over to the house, or gone to hers, but my mother insisted I should get out.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told my mom when she’d asked what my plans were now that my life, and future, had gone up in flames, “To lie in my bed and cry for the next week.”
“What a lying, gaslighting, narcissistic asshole. I’m not going to say a word about how I thought he was love-bombing you or that I never liked how he treated you.”
Smiling against her shoulder, I pulled back.
“I’m glad you’re not going the ‘I told you so’ route.”
“I would never.”
My chest still hurt. From a broken heart. Or crying so much over the past few weeks. Who knew? But for the first time since I made the decision to break off our engagement and come home, rather than making a life in Paris as I’d planned, I could breathe. I should have leaned on my family and friends as soon as it happened. Instead, I retreated into a black hole of despair that was almost embarrassing to think back on.
“This has been the worst month of my life,” I admitted.
“Of course it has. Everything has been completely uprooted at once. Your relationship. Your career. Your future. But the most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”
“I like that.”
“Can’t take credit. Someone said it. Just don’t remember who. Anyway, you’re home now and I got you.”
“Thank you,” I said simply, wanting to express how much that meant. “I’ll be taking you up on that. My life is pretty much a wreck right now.”
“Like I said, I got you. And we don’t have to go back inside. I will text them saying I got sick and you took me home. It’s not a total lie since I’ve had a headache for two days that won’t seem to go away.”
“Really?” The thought of going back inside and facing questions about the French fiancé I was supposed to be coming home with actually did make me feel physically ill. “That would be amazing.”
“Really. Come back to my place. We can open a bottle of wine and bash that French fuck for the rest of the night.”
Jules had always talked like a sailor. “Sounds like a plan.” I hesitated. “Although I did want to see Beck.”
“You go in there,” she warned, “and there’ll be questions. Totally up to you.”
Questions I wasn’t ready to answer without breaking down just yet. As good as I felt, getting that scholarship at CIA to École Lenôtre and spreading my wings to Paris, tonight was just the opposite. Back home, no job, no fiancé, no job prospects or plans… pretty much bottom of the barrel.
Beck could wait.
