“How did they pass?”
“My dad had a heart attack. My mom caught pneumonia.” Not that we needed to discuss that.
“That’s hard. But you’re not alone. You have me now.”
I let my shoulders relax in the seat. “Well, I’m happy to be yours.”
His face became more clinical. “And you eat proper to avoid a heart attack?”
Was he a doctor? He sounded like he cared about my health, which was nice. No one else had asked me things like that. “I need to be better. Late nights at the office sometimes aren’t the best for healthy eating.”
He squeezed my thigh. “You must stay healthy. I want to imagine your life as beautiful for as long as I live.”
My life wasn’t that, not like his seemed to be. A vineyard would be sweet and peaceful. I never really knew peace.
One day he’d move on and find some French woman to marry, and I’d go home and maybe never marry. I wasn’t sure I’d find another man to be this intimate with.
And sex was now important in my choosing a mate. It should have always been, but I needed Quentin to show me.
I’d not be melancholy, though. I had a few more days to live in heaven, and I intended to let that last forever.
I scooted closer and pressed my hand to the side of his scruffy cheek. “Quentin, you’re sweet.”
His face looked like I just called him something he hated. “Don’t tell anyone that.”
I kept calling him Mr. Wanker to myself, as he made my body sing for his in a way no normal man had.
I was getting warm and my nipples became perky in my bra. I massaged the back of my neck until I wasn’t on fire. When I was under control, I cleared my throat and asked, “What are your friends like?”
He smiled. “They’re older than me. Calliope used to be my babysitter. She married Nigel, who I vaguely remember as someone always reading. And then there is Simon. He was a practical joker. Nothing bad or anything, but he sounds so responsible now. He’s married to an American, vacationing in Monte Carlo with his children.”
There was more to the story with whoever Simon and Calliope were. I don’t think I ever intentionally visited my babysitters from when I was little. The idea that Quentin was willfully heading toward a family played in my mind. “Children?”
He continued driving me on the endless beautiful road with white dotted lines. “Why, do you not like them?”
I let out a soft sigh. “I mean, I do. I love little kids, but I never quite saw myself as a mother.”
We continued, and I wondered what life would be like if I was actually with Quentin for more than a week. If we’d met back at home, where our lives might actually have a shot at intermixing. But it wasn’t more than a passing thought.
“It’s the circle of life,” he mused.
“I suppose it happens to everyone,” I said. Responsibility was something I was normally good with. At least, the facts and figure types didn’t argue or blame to cover their own mistakes.
I didn’t know much about Quentin, and it seemed crazy to imagine I’d chuck my life in Pittsburgh for a life on a farm. “I’m sure your children will be handsome and sweet.”
“Yours will be wonderful, like you.” He didn’t say anything else, and I finally broke.
It was like he saw me and liked me. It was nice. What was the harm of sharing? We’d never see each other once the week ended, and maybe that fact gave me the courage to open up more.
I sighed. “I’ve been so routine lately. I go to work, go home, watch a rom-com, maybe pick up a bottle of wine on a Friday night and let a double feature play. I go out with my friends, and even dating was just something I did to pass time. I honestly had no feelings on it. It was like I was a robot, going through the motions of living.”
We headed toward the gas station signs and an exit on the highway.
“I might have been doing the same, if I’m being honest,” he said
Details. Right. I ignored the twist in my heart and decided it was okay to talk. “And I know what it’s like to be lonely. I thought marrying would solve that, but now I see that was a bad idea entirely.”
“I asked Cecilia, because it fit my life at the time, but I wasn’t in a rush to have her forever, and neither was she.”
“How did it end?”
“In silence.”
He parked in front of the pump and people came out to serve us. France wasn’t self-serve? I didn’t ask but watched as attendants pumped gas like I was watching magic happen. “That sounds so grown up and mature, Quentin. I admire that about you.”
“You like more than that about me, and we both know that.” He handed his card over and signed.
A moment later we were heading off. “In the future,” I said, “we both need to make ourselves happy and not settle for convenient. No one else is going to shake us out of our ruts.”
“Smart.” He nodded.
Yet I knew nothing about Quentin other than he made me feel better. I glanced at his profile and ached for more of him. “What about you?”
He moved fast back onto the road. “What about me?”
I needed to know more. Quentin rocked my body, but maybe we could talk and be friends during our week-long relationship, too. Anything was possible, right? I raised my eyebrow and said, “You said you broke up with Cecilia.”
“That’s not quite right.”
I blinked as my heart sped up. “What happened?”
“She died.”
My gut twisted. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Tell me about you and your ex.”
I’d sound shallow, but he’d asked. “Marlon practically left me at the altar after I bought our honeymoon and my dress. It’s horrifying how I was going to say yes, but it was nothing tragic like Cecilia.”
He glanced at me for one second before focusing on the road. “You want details?”
“Oui,” I said in my impression of him.
He stared at the signs that started to read Monte Carlo. “Cecilia’s family went through a lot when she died. If I stayed, I would only make their lives worse. Besides, I’m okay alone. I haven’t seen my own family in a while, and I’m needed on my family vineyard.”
Cecilia sounded like a beautiful French woman. In my mind I saw Audrey Hepburn or whoever that actress was in the movie Amelie I’d watched on Netflix. Both had some childlike wonder of life and the world in how they interacted, which probably wasn’t true, but either way… I’d never be that dreamy and starry-eyed.
I never had that child-like joy to living.
And that vision didn’t need to be indulged anymore. Quentin was mine for the week, but my spine heated as I asked, “Any particular reason why?”
He kissed my hand. “My father has no one else to leave the vineyard to. I suppose it was always my fate in a way, and my own desires to do something else were always secondary.”
“That sounds like rich boy problems,” I said without thinking. Following passions wasn’t the luxury of the working class. He’d said he could have anything or anyone. Now I was sure of it.
He laughed a little. “It does sound like that, doesn’t it.”
“Am I wrong?”