One Cruel Night

I had no idea. But I couldn’t stop the unease that hit me. The sick feeling that snaked through my veins.

Maybe he was just gone.

I swallowed back the rising panic and started back down the hallway to try to figure out what the hell was happening. When I turned the corner, I nearly ran smack dab into a woman in a black dress and white apron.

“Oh my god,” I said, nearly jumping out of my skin. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was staying here.”

The woman was a French beauty—tall, lithe, and polished. She spoke to me in swift French. I didn’t catch a word of it.

“I’m sorry. Pardon,” I said, holding out my hands, placating. “I don’t speak French.” I repeated it again in the jointed French I used to get by in the city, “Je ne parle pas Français. Parlez-vous Anglais?”

The maid dramatically turned her nose up. “So, he found an American one.”

“An American…what?” I asked in embarrassment.

She gestured to me as if it were obvious, which only made it worse.

“I see,” I said softly. “Is Penn still here?”

“He left.”

“For the morning?” I asked, my voice getting smaller and smaller.

“What do I look like, his secretary?” the woman asked dismissively. “I’m a housekeeper. I take out the trash.” She looked at me pointedly.

I felt about an inch tall. Maybe less than that. Her disapproving stare only made it all worse.

I’d misjudged him. Oh dear god, how I had misjudged him.

I felt light-headed. I was definitely going to be sick. Or faint. Yes, maybe fainting was in order. I didn’t care how dramatic that made me, but everything was crashing down around me. I wasn’t sure I could bear the walk of shame back to my flat. Or facing Amy. Oh god…that conversation.

“I’ll just…” I gestured toward the elevator.

“Au revoir,” the woman said. She lifted her chin and strutted her tiny hips straight toward the kitchen.

I jammed my finger on the button to take me downstairs. I was a fool. An utter and complete fool. Penn had played me like a fiddle…and hadn’t even had the decency to send me away on his own.

Young, naive, and stupid.

What a way to lose my virginity.

Chapter 12

Down Penn’s elevator, three buildings over, and up another elevator was the distance between our two places, and it felt like miles. I wasn’t sure if anyone noticed me, the girl struck dumb, as I stumbled around in last night’s clothes. France wasn’t prudish like America, but still, I was sure I was a sight.

Amy came running out of her bedroom as soon as she heard me enter the apartment. “Oh my gawd!” she squealed. “You were gone all night. All night! I know what that means. Did it happen? Huh? Did it?”

“Yep,” I said, gritting my teeth. “It happened.”

“Oh no, honey, was it…bad?”

I laughed a slightly hysterical thing. “Bad? No. No, it wasn’t bad at all.”

“Okay, I’m hearing your words, but you seem to be saying something else. What happened?”

She followed me back to my room where I stripped out of last night’s clothes and pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. Comfort clothes. I handed Amy back her dress and heels. Thank god, they weren’t mine, or I might have burned them.

“Uh, thanks,” she said. “Now, spill the details. What’s wrong?”

“I think we need icing for this.”

“Oh fuck,” Amy said. “That bad?”

I nodded, and Amy disappeared to go find a container of icing in the kitchen. It was her mother’s defense mechanism. Every time something went wrong at work or with Amy’s dad or with Amy’s grandparents, we would come home and find her mom sitting in the middle of the living room with her hair in a messy bun and a half-empty container of icing in her hand. Icing was now a go-to for trauma.

Amy came back with a container of icing and two spoons. “Here you go, sister. Spill the deets.” We plopped down on the bed and dug in.

I took a heaping portion of chocolate icing and devoured it. Sugar hit my system like a two-by-four. “He left.”

“Be more specific.”

“We had the most amazing night. Dinner on the Seine in front of the Eiffel Tower, sneaking around the Paris opera house, dancing all night in a club. Then, we went to his place and did…” My eyes cut to hers. “You know.”

“Yes. That is the part I’m interested in,” she said with a laugh, taking her own bite of the frosting.

I held up three fingers, and Amy nearly choked on her icing.

“Three times?” she gasped.

“Yep.”

“How are you walking? I was so sore after my first time that I pretended to be sick the next day, so I wouldn’t have to walk around like a camel.”

I snorted in disdain. “No idea. Everything hurts.”

“But not just your body.”

I shook my head and stared blankly out the open window. “I woke up, and he was gone. He had a maid tell me to leave. She said she took out the trash.”