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Zeke pressed his nose against my neck, breathing in audibly. “I would never make fun of you to other people. Or let anyone make fun of you.”
To other people? “You don’t mind making fun of me yourself?”
“That’s just between us. And I know, we’re too quick for there to be an us. But that’s the only way I do this. Fast. Quick burn. Then it’s over. No one is hurt because everyone understands. I can promise you that while other things might change between us, the making fun of you won’t ever.”
I’d wanted his guard down, and I was pretty sure I’d gotten it. He wasn’t thinking about all the reasons he shouldn’t be with me right now. He was thinking about the fact that I’d been sitting in his lap for a length of time pressed up against his body.
“I just got out of a relationship that left me…very unsatisfied.”
I wasn’t good at this, and I was sort of winging it. Bridget always seemed to be able to get men to do what she wanted. For these moments, I was going to pretend I knew how to do this, too.
He lifted his head to whisper in my ear. “How so?”
“Kit didn’t really know what he was doing. Do you?”
His laugh was low, and it moved right through me. “Young men in their early twenties never know what they’re doing. That comes with experience, and getting your cock to behave and wait its turn.”
I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. It was a good thing the picture was going to be in black and white, because I was sure I was red as a beet. “Zeke…”
The artist finished, effectively shutting me up before I told him I wanted him to take me back to his home and fuck me all the ways he knew how. Instead, we got up, and he paid the man as I stared at the rendition.
Pressed up against each other, we both stared at the artist in the sketch with distant eyes. Zeke looked almost angry, and I was lost. While others surrounded and complimented the work,I didn’t love it. Not in the least. Was that how I appeared to strangers? With the distant, unconnected gaze that seemed like it didn’t really look at anything? And Zeke, what had been making him so angry in that second?
He stepped next to me and looked down at it. “Where should we put it?”
Didn’t he see what I did? Wasn’t he disturbed by how we’d been captured? Apparently not. The artist took it and rolled it up, placing it in a container and handing it back to Zeke, who took it from him before he wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
Someone shrieked, and the ants crawled on my neck, rushing around like they were having a party. This one was going to be bad.
“What is it?” Zeke asked me three seconds before the teenagers arrived. They surrounded me and spoke so fast, I couldn’t even guess what language they were speaking, but they knew me, and they were really excited.
It must not have been French, because Zeke didn’t answer them. Instead, after a few moments of this with one of them trying to grab me and none of them taking my smile and good-natured nods to mean I didn’t like what was happening, he tugged my hand and yanked me out of there, elbowing his way through the crowd.
We hustled away, eventually losing them down a small street where we darted inside the first open door we saw to wait them out. Five teenage girls. Wow. They could be pushy.
“Sorry.” I sat down fast, fanning myself. My feet hadn’t been up for the run, but since I’d caused it, I was hardly going to complain.
“Not your fault.” He spoke to the waiter and then looked back at me. “How did it start?”
“When we were fourteen, we went out to a party. Someone was taking pictures, and we posed together. Looking back, it was sort of ridiculous that it got so much attention. We were fourteen-year-old girls, right? Bridget still had braces, Hope was wearing a headband, and I was… Well, anyway, for some reason, people really responded to that picture and we ended up in newspapers and magazines.”
When he didn’t respond, I kept speaking. “Then as social media did what it did, it really only got bigger, the interest in us. And Justin, of course, but it was different with him. He came out of the fascination with us. I guess we were rich, young, redheads. It was strange, but it did what it did. Eventually, we stopped fighting it.”
“Sure, but they’re not as interested in Hope and Bridget. Mostly you. For every hit they get, you get eight to ten more. That is substantial in the world of social media, especially exponentially.”
I’d never done that math. Or listened when PR people wanted to talk to me about it. “Well, I guess it’s probably because they have their shit together and I don’t. I make more of an interesting look, like I might fall off a train or end up in rehab.”
They placed two glasses in front of us, both filled with red wine, and then placed the bottle between us. I eyed the glasses. He did like his red wine.
And I’d liked the little bit he’d been letting me try in the last twenty-four hours.
“You hardly even drink. Unless you have a drug problem I’m missing, I don’t see a trip to rehab for you happening anytime soon. You don’t eat enough, but I’m not thinking you need to be hospitalized for that. You don’t look sick, seem to have plenty of energy. I’m not a doctor. I’m guessing here.” He sipped his wine. “And maybe you should stay off trains if you really think that is a problem.”
I laughed despite myself. “So I guess it’s not either of those things. I don’t know why they follow me more.”
“I do.” He said that startling phrase right before the waiter set down cheese in front us. I almost laughed. I was in France. I couldn’t believe how long it had been for me to see cheese in France. We hadn’t even had any at my rehearsal dinner because my almost mother-in-law was allergic to it. Zeke started cutting it up and distributing it on a plate for me and then some on a plate for him.
I guessed I was eating it, and the truth was that I was sort of hungry. It had been a busy morning, and I was actually hungry. And I liked cheese, a lot. Actually, the stinkier the better. I couldn’t get enough of it, like other people couldn’t stop eating sweets. I had that problem with dairy, so I did try to avoid it simply because it was harder to control myself.
