That afternoon I saw him leave on foot. My plan had worked. I went after him, followed him into the Metro and got onto the next carriage. He got off in this really shitty part of town. What the hell was he doing there? He went and sat down in this greasy-looking kebab place. I sat in a shisha bar across the road and ordered a Turkish coffee and tried to look like I fitted in among all the old guys puffing away on their rose-scented tobacco. Ben was making me do things I never normally would, I realized. He was making me brave.
Ten minutes or so later a girl came and joined Ben. She was tall and thin, a hood up over her head, which she only took down once she was sitting opposite him. I felt my stomach turn over when I saw her face. Even from across the street I could see that she was beautiful: dark chocolate hair with a sharp fringe that looked so much better than my home-cut one, a model’s cheekbones. And young: probably only my age. Yes, her clothes were bad: a fake-looking leather jacket with that hoodie underneath and cheap jeans, but they somehow made her seem even more beautiful by contrast. As I watched them together I could actually feel my heart hurting, a hot coal burning behind my rib cage.
I waited for him to kiss her, to touch her face, her hand, to stroke her hair—anything—waited for the worse pain I knew would come when I saw him do it. But nothing happened. They just sat there talking. I realized it seemed quite formal. Like they didn’t actually know each other that well. There was definitely nothing between them to suggest they might be lovers. Finally he passed her something. I tried to see. It looked like a phone or a camera, maybe. Then she got up and left, and he did too. They went in different directions. I still couldn’t work out why he’d been talking to her, or what he might have given her, but I was so relieved I could have cried. He hadn’t been unfaithful to me. I knew I shouldn’t have doubted him.
Later, back in my room, I thought of that night in the park, how we’d shared that cigarette. The two of us in the dark by the lake. The taste of his mouth when I’d kissed him. I thought about it when I lay in bed at night, fingers exploring. And I whispered those words I heard in the darkness by the lake. Je suis ta petite pute. I’m your little whore.
This was it, I knew it. This was why I’d waited so long. I was different from Camille. I couldn’t just screw around with random guys. It had to be something real. Un grand amour. I had thought I’d been in love before. The art teacher, Henri, at my school—Les Soeurs Servantes du Sacré Coeur. I’d known we had a connection from the beginning. He’d smiled at me in that first lesson, told me how talented I was. But later, when I sent him the paintings I had made of him, he took me aside and told me they weren’t appropriate—even though I’d worked so hard on them, on getting the proportions right, the tone: just like he’d taught us. And when I sent them to his wife instead, but cut up into little pieces, they made some kind of formal complaint. And then—well, I don’t want to go into all that. I heard they left for another school abroad.
I didn’t know where this part of me had been hiding. The part that could fall in love. Actually: I did. I’d been keeping it locked away. Deep down inside me. Terrified that sort of weakness would make me vulnerable again. But I was ready now. And Ben was different. Ben would be loyal to me.
Down in the cave, I tear my eyes away from his Vespa. I feel like there’s a metal band around my ribs stopping me from taking in enough air. And in my ears still this horrible rushing sound, the white noise, the storm. I just need to make it stop.
I yank my bike free and haul it up the stairs. I can feel the pressure building inside me as I wheel it across the courtyard, as I push it along the cobbled street . . . all the way down to the main road where the morning rush-hour traffic is roaring past. I jump onto the saddle, look quickly in each direction through the tears blurring my eyes, push straight out into the street.
There’s a screech of brakes. The blare of a horn. Suddenly I’m lying on my side on the tarmac, the wheels spinning. My whole body feels bruised and torn. My heart’s pounding.
That was so close.
“You stupid little bitch,” the van driver screams, hanging out of his open window and gesturing at me with his cigarette. “What the fuck were you doing? What the hell were you thinking, pulling out into the road without looking?”
I yell back, my language even worse than his. I call him un fils de pute, son of a whore, un sac a merde, a bag of shit . . . I tell him he can go fuck himself. I tell him he can’t drive for shit.