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“No.”
The waiter leaves, and we sit in Angelina’s in an awkward silence. One thing I never liked about Paris is how close all the tables are to each other. There’s no privacy at all.
“Why are you here, Whiskey?”
“You guessed it earlier.”
“Say it, Whiskey. It’s not real if you don’t speak the words,” she says as our drinks are placed in front of us.
“I love you, Lottie Corton. Is that what you want to hear?”
She stirs her tea, looking down at it.
“And I’m sorry. I’m sorry it took so long for me to realize it. Sorry for what I did, and that’s how our story started. I’m sorry.”
She looks up at me with wet eyes. “I’m highly emotional.” She lifts her drink and takes a sip. “I’m also pregnant,” she says, making me push my chair back to a stand. I look down at her, and her eyes fall to the teacup, not looking at me.
The waiter comes back over and hands her a chocolate crepe. She thanks him and starts eating. “I’ve been craving them.”
“You were drunk,” I tell her, reminding her of the other night, was she drinking when she knew?
“I didn’t know then,” she says, defending herself. “It was the next morning when I couldn’t stop throwing up. Then I realized I was late. I haven’t told a soul, you’re the first. I even waited until I got here to take the test, what better way to find out you are going to be a parent then the city of love.”
I sit back down.
Eyes that were on me are no longer there.
“So, you came to Paris?” I ask her, confused.
“I needed to breathe, and what better place to do that than in Paris, I mean, I have a rich husband, so I booked it with his card, business class of course.”
“You flew around the world to decide to breathe?”
Lottie takes another bite and looks up, watching me with those sea green eyes that have me trapped, in her. So many emotions run through me. Like how the fuck did this happen? But I already know how, don’t I? And I don’t know if I’m angry, excited, scared, or all three at the same time.
“I needed to know I could do this.” She looks down at her stomach. “And I needed to be as far away from you and my father as possible.”
“That didn’t turn out quite like you expected.”
She nods. “Yep, but I guess life has a way of sneaking up on you, hey?” she says, looking at me.
“I never wanted to be a father,” I tell her.
Lottie doesn’t look at me. She’s also not shocked by my admittance. She just waits to see what else I have to say.
“I never wanted to be married again, either.”
Her breathing picks up. “What a way to tell your wife, in Paris, that you don’t want her,” she says. “You know how to make my heart pitter-patter, don’t you?”
I reach forward and take her hand in mine. “What I am saying is, Bunny, I never wanted any of that”—I pause, looking right at her—“until I met you.”
She pulls her hands away from me. “You can’t do that. You can’t come here and try to make me love you. It doesn’t work like that. You didn’t just fuck up, you ruined me, Whiskey.” A stray tear leaves her eye, I reach for her wanting it gone. She shouldn’t be the one breaking. It was me who fucked this up.
“And I would do it all again, if the end result was that I got to have you.”
Lottie’s hands come to the top of the table, and she clasps them together. “But you don’t have me.”
“No, but I want you. And I will do whatever it is you need for me to do to show you. I know words won’t help, but maybe showing you will?”
