Curio Vignettes 04 Confession

Confession

Cara McKenna

This is the fourth title in the Curio Vignettes series,
follow-up stories to the novel
Curio
.

Caroly has waited forever to fall in love. An American now
living in Paris, she’s finally found what she craved all those lonely years—a
passionate, sensitive man, more gorgeous than she’d ever dreamed, and just as
beautiful on the inside.

The only issue? Well, that small matter of him being a
prostitute.

Didier’s job is more than a calling. It’s a beloved craft, a
chance to soothe broken hearts. It’s also a crutch—the perfect vocation for an
agoraphobe, never forcing Didier to leave the safety of his flat. Yet the role
he used to cherish has soured since he met Caroly, his admirers now feeling
more like enablers. It’ll take a leap of faith to cast his fear aside in favor
of a future, but when the alternative is to risk losing the woman he loves, he
might discover he’s braver than he ever knew.

Confession

Cara McKenna

Dedication

For
Ruthie and Bobbi. Thanks for coming up to the roof.

Chapter One

I beat the rain, if barely. The sky went from silver to
pewter between the Métro station and number sixteen Rue des Toits Rouges, but
I’m spared, dodging a headful of frizzy curls and a ruined silk skirt.

I trot up the stone steps and into the elegant old foyer and
press the brass button for flat 5C. Smoothing my top and hair, I wait for the
buzz—for Didier to unlock the foyer’s inside door. Normally it takes a matter
of seconds, but not this evening. After a minute I ring the bell again and
check his mailbox. Empty.

A smile overtakes my lips.

It blossoms to a grin when I spot him through the glass
door, appearing at the end of the hall from the stairwell. He waves, striding
to let me in.

“Hello,” I say. “Well done.” Perhaps one visit in five he’ll
come down to meet me. Sometimes he has food on the stove, a ready excuse, but
in truth it’s his agoraphobia that keeps him upstairs. But not tonight, it
would seem.

“Caroly. Good evening.” He kisses my cheeks and takes the
overnight bag from my hand. We head for the stairs and I save the chitchat,
knowing he’ll be edgy and distracted until the deadbolt’s snapped shut behind
us, four flights up in his garret sanctuary.

Ah, blessed Saturdays. Nowhere to be in the morning and my
lover all to myself for the evening. Usually I get him both Fridays and
Saturdays, but yesterday I had a friend’s engagement party to attend, a
girls-only affair.

Other days of the week…

On weekend nights Didier is all mine, but he’s anyone else’s
for the right price come Sunday evening. I used to pay it myself, but not since
March, nearly five months ago. Now the price I pay is having to settle for
whatever leftover weekdays haven’t been booked by his clients.

Sometimes it’s a pittance. Other times, not such an easy
pill to swallow. But he’s my lover, not my boyfriend. I’m a total lost
cause—drowning in terminal love-lust for him, though I haven’t told him in so
many words. In gifts? Yes. In heated glances and physical gestures and
emotional support—loud and clear.

I watch his back as we climb the stairs, wondering if he
knows exactly how bad I have it. He’s the best-looking man I’ve ever seen, as
if you shook a copy of
Vogue
and a swarthy, elegant model from a Brioni spread
magically tumbled out. Add to that the fact that he’s so good in bed, women pay
for the experience? Yeah, wobbly-kneed infatuation probably isn’t a noteworthy
reaction to him.

What does make me special—aside from my being the only woman
I’m aware of who doesn’t have to shell out to enjoy his company—is that I’m the
only one who makes him leave his flat. Every time I visit, I drag him out with
me, down the street for a coffee, occasionally to dinner. It’s the equivalent
of taking someone who’s deathly afraid of the ocean and pushing them overboard
into a choppy sea, so I must be special for him to keep letting me torture him
so.

We reach his flat and when the door shuts behind us, I smile
up at him. “Good job.”

“Thank you.”

“And your mailbox was empty.”

“Yes. It was a good day.” He pushes off his shoes. He hadn’t
bothered with socks, and he’s just as I prefer, barefoot in slacks and a tee
shirt. A shirt I bought him, a cotton-merino blend as soft as a baby’s cheek
and the dark green-blue of the Seine, with a price tag that would make any sane
person snort with derision.

I lean my umbrella against the wall and breathe in deeply.
“I smell potatoes. And chicken. And something else.”

“
Romarin
.” Rosemary.

“Yum.”

The living room feels already set for seduction, a single
lamp switched on in the corner, its soft glow all but swallowed up by the deep
red walls. The curtains are drawn back, but the clouds offer little more than a
view of birds the roosting on the ledge, gray as the fog. Except for one.

“The white pigeon is back,” I say, excited. He showed up
last week, and has a mottled black-and-gray marking on his breast partly
obscured by one wing, which I think makes it look as though he’s holding a
painter’s palette. Perhaps I’ll name him Gauguin. Gauguin was a Parisian
transient with unsavory diseases too.

I follow Didier into his warm, cozy kitchen and watch as he
checks on the roast.

“Wine?” he asks, his voice still a touch tight from the
journey downstairs.

“Please.”

He pours us each a measure of white. “
Salut
.”

I echo the toast and we clink our glasses. “Oh, very nice.”
Clean and sharp.

Didier nods stiffly. He feels…far away tonight. It’s just
from the trip downstairs, I assure myself.

But a week ago I arrived here to find him mired in the
aftermath of a panic attack, triggered by a disastrous solo excursion out in
Paris. He’s nowhere near that upset now, but there’s definitely something going
on. Something that’s stolen the ease from my normally graceful lover’s gestures
and words, and made his steady dark eyes dart nervously.

“So. What did you get up to today?” I ask, hoping I sound
casual.

“Not very much. Tidying up. Reading.”

“That sounds relaxing.”

Another nod.

“How soon ’til dinner?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Want to go sit down?”

He gestures for me to lead the way.

I settle on the couch and Didier switches on a second lamp,
lifting some of the shadows. He sits beside me, but he feels so distant he may
as well have stayed in the kitchen.

His anxiety’s nothing new—it’s a cloak I’ve seen him wear
dozens of times, though rarely inside these walls. Usually here, sitting as we
are, it’s only him and me, easy as breathing.

He sips his wine. I sip mine, unsure where to look. I’ve
caught his nerves and there’s a knot forming in my chest. I take deep belly
breaths to try to loosen it.

There’s something undeniably not right with him, and it’s
getting worse by the minute. He’s as stiff and quiet as he gets in the moments
before we leave for the corner café, but we’re not going anywhere tonight. Only
to bed.

Or maybe we
aren’t
going to bed tonight.

My stomach turns over.

Usually by now he’s flirted with me. Asked about my day. At
least given me that hot little look, the one that makes promises about what
will happen between us later. So far, nothing. Evasiveness or nerves. News he
needs to share…bad news.

I watch him as we drink but his eyes are on the wine, the
floor, his hands, the far side of the room. Everywhere but my face, it feels.

If we’re not going out, then the stress is coming from
inside his head. And now it’s inside
me
, a black viscosity rising from
my gut, chilling me to the bone.

“Is everything okay?” It hurts to even get the words out, my
throat’s grown so tight.

A long pause. A very long pause, then a deep breath. “I need
to talk to you about something.” His voice is heavy—heavy with dread, not
lust—jumpy gaze watching the wine in his glass.

My heart twists with fear. My feet are heavy, like huge
rocks pinning me to the bottom of a river, cold water rushing by, wrenching my
limbs and filling my mouth.

“Okay,” my lips say, detached from my brain.

Didier swallows, and I know now it’s over.

We’re over.

No one looks like that, so sad and broken and scared and
disappointed, unless someone’s died.

Or some
thing
. A relationship, if that’s what this
has been.

My chest aches so badly I want to rub it. My lungs shrivel
like pricked balloons, and I can’t seem to gulp enough air to stir them.

Didier leans closer, eyes narrowed at my face. “Are you all
right?”

“Yes, fine.” I drink deeply, gaze glued to the middle
distance beyond his shoulder. “Are you? What did you want to talk about?”

He stands. “I don’t want to tell you here.”

“Here?”

“Not in the flat.”

Pardon? Is this place too sacred, too sensual to be soiled
by a breakup? I set down my glass. “Where, then?”

“Follow me.”

He offers his hand and I take it, numb.

We stop in the kitchen so he can crack the oven door and
switch off the heat. Already my palm is clammy and I want to run. I want to run
away from what’s coming and from this delicious roast I surely won’t even get a
chance to taste.

He leads me to the front door, not bothering to put his
shoes on.

“Should I get my stuff?” I ask.

He looks confused. “No.”

“Okay.”

Back to the stairwell we head, Didier marching with more
purpose than usual at this moment. But his hand shakes in my damp one,
undermining the show.

“Where are—” I don’t finish, too surprised when we turn left
in the stairwell, heading
up
the steps, not down.

He drops my hand as we turn a corner, climbing another half
flight. It’s cramped and dark, with just enough light for me to watch him draw
a padlock from a latch. The door opens with a creak, a sliver of gray sky
widening to a rectangle. Didier helps me over a high threshold and out onto the
narrow, tar-papered roof, caged on all sides by an old wrought iron latticework
rail topped with posts like spearheads.

Paris is all around us, above and below, in every direction,
its tallest spires hidden by the heavy woolen cap of clouds.

I’ve never been dumped before. I’ve never even had a
boyfriend before, and Didier’s the only man I’ve gone on enough real dates with
to warrant such an official conclusion…but I don’t think this is right.

People don’t get taken to rooftops to get cut loose. They
get taken to roofs to be murdered, perhaps, but even panicking as I am, I know
that’s now why we’re here.

I look up at his strained face. “What’s going on?”
Why
have you brought me to what must be the most unpleasant spot an agoraphobe
could imagine? What on earth are you trying to prove?

“I need to say something to you.” He swallows one, two,
three times. He falters, gaze darting all around us, at his worst nightmare.
When he switches to French, the words seem to come easier. “I wanted to tell
you here. When I’m terrified, so you’d know I meant it.”

My shriveled lungs swell a bit and my aching heart gives a
weak pump. “All right.”

He clears his throat and takes my other hand, holding each
gently, running his thumbs over my knuckles, eyes on the task. He clears his
throat again. I look everywhere—at our hands, at his face, at the first beads
of light rain clinging to his dark hair.

“A few months ago,” he begins, slow and shaky but clearly
determined, “I hadn’t left this building in three years. I hadn’t taken my
laundry out or collected my own groceries, sat and had a coffee in a café. Or
smelled the grass or felt the sunshine.”

A fat raindrop smacks me on the temple and slips down my
cheek.

“I hadn’t passed an evening with a woman—just her and I with
no money exchanged—since before my exile. I haven’t felt I had much to offer,
besides my talents, in all that time.”

I give his hands a squeeze just as another drop lands,
slipping between our fingers. The breeze flings my curly hair all over and
threatens to lift my skirt.

“You’ve made me feel things again. Made me
want
to
feel things again.” His gaze jumps to mine for a second before dropping shyly
back to our hands. “Difficult things, not easy ones like lust. The things I
work so hard to numb, like fear and helplessness and…and attachment.”

My brows rise.

He laughs, the sound like a huff of frustration or
disbelief. “I don’t know why you think I’m so worth fighting for. But I’m
grateful you do. And I’m grateful for whatever it is about me that keeps you
coming here, dragging me out that door every morning we wake together.”

My throat is swollen, sore and tight; the pain is
so
sweet, nothing like the way my heart hurt a few minutes ago. My eyes are
already glossing with stinging tears, my lips quivering.

“I’m going to tell you something,” Didier says in English.
“I wish I could claim I’ve never said it to anyone else. I have, but if I’d
known that it felt like this, I would have saved it. I’d have known better.”

My first tear rolls free, tracing the edge of my nose.
Didier lets my hand go to wipe it from my chin. He smiles and the second falls,
the third and fourth and more. I laugh out of nowhere, emotions
short-circuiting. It hurts to laugh, my throat’s so constricted. It hurts to
cry, my sinuses burning.

He releases my other hand to cup my jaw, thumbs wiping at my
cheeks, where tears and rain are mingling. He looks right in my eyes. The
breath before he speaks again lasts for ages, long enough for me to record the
texture of his irises, every radiating brushstroke blending a rainbow of rich,
deep browns, molasses and chocolate and espresso and every other decadent
flavor.

“I love you.” He strokes my cheeks. “I’m in love with you.”

My lips part but nothing comes out.

It feels…

Oh God, it feels so scary.

It feels like the breathless, slow-motion instant when you
realize you’ve tripped, but you haven’t hit the ground yet. Free-fall. The pain
in my throat and heart is gone, and I’m blissfully numb. If I take my foot off
the ground, if he lets go of my face, I’ll tumble weightless up into the rain
clouds, never to find gravity again.

My mouth opens, and words I’ve never said to anyone out loud
tumble past my lips like soap bubbles, so faint they’re nearly lost in the
wind. “I’m in love with you.”

Just a shadow of a smile, a perfect, unsure little gesture,
gilded with hope.

When he kisses me, I think,
He’s not shaking.
His
hands are strong and calm, his lips steady against my trembling ones. I wrap my
arms around his neck, needing his solidness to anchor me to the roof.

He tastes like Didier, like wine and seduction, like the
salt from whatever sauce he made to baste the chicken.