Chapter 147

Arry leads me into the apartment, holding hands, fingers interlocked snugly, and gives me a soft sexy smile as he guides me into the wide, high ceiling hallway of our new abode. I’m tired from our journey, drained, achy, and need a long soak in the tub from being on a commercial plane for hours, but we’re finally here. I can push off the heaviness of my body and bones and sink into our home with a huge sigh of relief. It’s finally happening. After weeks of hard work, stress, and panic to get us here before my new term starts. I’m drained, exhausted, yet tingly with anticipation.

Paris… our home for the next year.

Our little adventure while I go to school and take steps to the dream I have in my sights. He’s moved heaven and earth to make sure this happened, and I couldn’t love him anymore for it if I tried. It’s our reality, it’s my future.

I glance around as he drops our flight bags on the floor with a gentle thud, both from one hand. They slump by his feet practically sighing with the same relief of a tedious journeys end; a reflection of how we both look. We pre-packed and sent everything else we wanted here ahead of us and travelled light.

All we have are two tiny bags, immense exhaustion from a long ass, eight-hour flight from New York and a desire to take it all in.

The flutter of excitement, the tingles at getting shown around for the first time since we bought this apartment, rise within me, stirring me from my travel fog. Peeking my attention as my lungs fill with renewed energy at seeing all the new and shiny for the first time.

We sent someone Arrick trusted to scope this place out; a quick sale based on videos, pictures, and real estate inspector’s valuations. This is us seeing it fully decorated to our specifications, really taking it in, in all its real glory and really, seeing it in the flesh for the first time ever.

The grand entrance and French ornate moldings give me crazy excitement. It’s so quaint as you walk into the little half-closed entranceway, with its high ceilings and pale creamy walls and highly polished wood floor the darkest color of mahogany brown. It’s reminiscent of a dream home in a romance movie, set in a past era of Paris.

I can’t wait to see how it looks in its entirety, now that our designer has made it ready for us to move into. Hours of showing her designs, and ideas, and color palettes. Pouring over a million design brochures, and Pinterest images, endless sleepless nights while filling out mood boards for her.

Furniture websites, soft furnishing samples and art …

I blink as I take it all in, in one wide eye sweep as we turn into the open plan of our main living room and pause… Blink twice… blink again. Face stilling as the visual turns me to a stony-faced statue of not impressed.

Face and heart dropping spectacularly, like a lead weight, to my stomach as I take in the massive sitting room before me, and my mood completely shoots out of orbit. Excitement dead, happiness murdered, tears prickling, because I am so god damn tired and this is not the sight I was expecting to see before me. This has the same effect as being sucker punched in the stomach and head, systematically, with great force.

It’s nothing at all like we agreed, what we chose together, what we spent hours, days, weeks, choosing and bickering about, and giving to that overpriced, garish outfit wearing, so called designer. I can’t believe I endured her smarmy obvious flirting with Arrick endlessly for all this shit I now see before me.

I slide my hand out of his as I stop, rooted to my spot, temper simmering irrationally and spin around with a frown that fast overtakes my face. Feeling like bashing him over the head with anything I have to hand and cannot stop the bubbling of a “Sophie overreaction” at something Arrick did to upset her.

Yes, I need to get that crap under control, but he is so damn infuriating sometimes.

This is pretty much a replica of Arry’s apartment before I moved in with him. Same neutral tones and causal comfy vibe. Masculine, New York apartment in a French building and nothing at all of the things I chose. He has eliminated the “Sophie” from the “Arry and Sophie” love pad. And I’m on the verge of sobbing my little broken heart out. I want to bawl in a “my boyfriend’s such a mean dickhead” kind of heartbreak. This apartment doesn’t feel like my welcoming new home which I expected to embrace me with delight, instead it feels like a bachelor pad and a zone made just for Arry alone.

Where’s my sparkly, my fairy lights, my fluffy throws and romantic scatter pillows? Where’s my oversized lanterns filled with candles, and cute things on the shelves. My choice of prints on the walls or even the couch I chose? Where are my god damn silver Unicorn sculptures?

“What’s wrong?” Arry turns and appraises me, nonplussed, and does a double take around the room as if he is looking for the thing that makes me unhappy. Clearly blind to what’s missing and seeing only something he obviously likes.

Asshole!

I’m pissed that he doesn’t see it at all. That he looks completely surprised that I would have this sort of reaction to the bland man pad laid out before us in all its minimal, stark and unhomeliness glory. I’ve never seen grey look so boring.

“This isn’t what we chose?” I wave my hand around the room snappily, disappointment filling me up inside and I know it’s such a dumb thing to get upset over, but this is supposed to be our first place together. Not just one I moved into and added my stamp.

This was ours. Our first real ‘let’s choose everything together from scratch’. A half and half of us both.

I spent nearly three weeks scrawling pictures of rooms and accessory catalogues to give to the stupid designer and bugging him at every opportunity with options. My cell and WhatsApp are jam packed with the five thousand images I sent him at work daily and the ‘please kill me now and just choose whatever you want’ replies I got back from him. He kept telling me to go ahead and choose for us. He didn’t seem to care all that much and offered minimal input.

He clearly never fucking meant that no matter how many times he sent it!

“Sure, it is… Pretty sure we told her to stick with the style of our New York place.” He glances around again innocently, as he comes back to try and catch hold of me, but I slap his hand down with a satisfying thwack noise and walk off towards the low coffee table abruptly. Irritation is not good on me, and the last thing I can deal with when I’m pissed is him trying to get all smoochy and touchy and smooth it over without realizing what he’s even done.

He’s so god damn dumb sometimes.

“We said similar… We picked stuff together! Furniture, décor pieces, a color scheme. Soft furnishings and art. None of that is here… Did you sign off on this shit?” I turn and flash him an angry look, gritting my teeth to curb the swell of stomach aching disappointment and his face drops slightly too. Finally registering how seething hurt I am by this.

I’m tired from a long flight, a stressful couple of months cramming packing in between all the studying I had to do to catch up with this school. They’re ahead of New York and I had to spend my Christmas break doing homework, more than celebrating. The only time off I even got was at his family party over Christmas and the rest of it was spent obsessing over getting our new home how we needed it to be.

I just wanted to walk in here and love it, feel like we were starting in a new love nest… but what I get is a slap in the face. An apartment replica of a time when I had no influence on the surrounding’s he existed in. A time when Arry was with another girl and he had a whole future mapped out that didn’t include me. Where her shit taste and dull personality removed all the fun and sparkle from his existence. This here, somehow symbolizes a pre-Sophie time of Arrick’s love life.

“Baby?” Arry tries for another catch at my hand and I move away, prickly, pushing some pebble display in a bowl away from the edge of a side table. It’s not even nice, I don’t even get what it’s for, and don’t bother concealing the look of disgust at the tacky ornament, from my face. I know I get more difficult when I’m tired, but Arry has no concept of the fact that you do not fuck with a woman’s interior design decisions!

“Don’t, baby, me… Is this what you want? It’s like you got her to just repeat your other apartment and take everything that’s me out of it.” A tear hits my eye and I feel stupid. I’m just ruining our first moments in Paris with a dumb fight, because I’ve just had my feelings stomped on in a massive way.

Arry glances around again and comes back to me seeming a little more somber, hand reaching out carefully as though approaching a wild beast who is ready to pounce. He has the grace to at least look wary and a bit guilty.

“Our apartment! … I didn’t …”

I glare at him and don’t even let him finish “Forget it, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to lie down.” My tone is deflated and obviously emotion torn. I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to burst into tears, even though it’s brimming under the surface. I want to get away from him and clear my brain and maybe after a nap, it won’t feel this huge of a deal. I make a move to head to the door which I remember is the master bedroom from the floor plans, further down the hall, but he’s fast and in front of me first.

“That’s not what I did. She was showing me a bunch of designs and shit and you were stressed already. I just okayed a color palette and said make it like our home. I didn’t ask her to leave out anything you picked… I swear. I just asked her to tone down all the sparkly, fluffy, unicorn stuff, so that you could add your own later.” He’s completely serious, giving me puppy eyes and I shake my head at him angrily.

Tone down the Sophie?!?!?! What the actual ….

For the love of… Arghhhh “What about the stuff I gave her? Things I wanted, things you agreed to? I GAVE HER THOSE! What about my feelings and choices, huh? What about the god damn mood boards she made us fill up? And the items I bookmarked on websites! What the fuck was all that for? I spent weeks on those; weeks I should have been studying instead of doing crap I clearly never needed to.” I’m closer to tears now he’s stopping me; hating this dumb stupid room already as he slides his arms around me, slowly, cautiously.

He’s annoyingly calm and treading lightly, but it makes me madder.

“I didn’t think she would disregard all that. I guess I never made it clear… Look, we can redecorate, we can start over if you really hate it that much. I’ll call her and tell her I want everything you picked out, pay her to do it all again.” He lowers his face to me to push his forehead to mine, the way he does when he’s trying to win me around or coerce me into making out. I shove him in the abs, making him flinch. Anger spiking from deep down inside of me like a hot volcano suddenly letting rip.

Like I want that stupid bitch back pawing at him at every opportunity, just to disappoint me again. If she spent more time listening instead of checking him out, then maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

“You hate it all don’t you? What I’ve done to your apartment?” I blink up at that oblivious expression, wounded that I’ve lived with him for a full year and not once has he said, ‘Sophie you have shit taste in décor, and I hate it.’ I wish he would have just been honest with me, instead of this crap right here. If he had just said ‘Sophie, less of the unicorns and I fucking hate glitter’ and gave me some sort of heads up.

I’m crushed in this moment. My stomach and chest ache at the effort of trying not to bawl and he’s being his infuriating emotionless calm self that makes me want to throat punch him. He just doesn’t get the depth of this issue right here.

“No… I love your little touches.” He looks insincere, a tiny twinge in that sexy squared jawline that conceals a smile. He thinks I’m being dramatic, and my temper rises. Cute boy looks, and soft hazel eyes are doing nothing for him right now. That smug little twinkle is a huge tell because he’s a bare faced lying asshole!

“Oh my god… You do hate it!” I yell it at him, blanching, as I shove him away harder and the instant shock on his face goes from insincere to guilty as hell, increasing my rage. Stomping away, glaring hatefully and right now I actually do want to punch him in the head. It’s so close I can almost taste it.

“It’s not that I don’t like the fluffy cushions and three hundred identical throws… or the army of silver unicorns and excessive amounts of candles we never light but…” It’s the slight tone of sarcasm that gets me, that hint of indulgent attitude and my temper heightens. He’s trying to be cute and sass me, confirming his dislike of all my décor choices.

Boy does he have no clue who the sassy one is in this relationship.

“I swear, if you finish that sentence, I will hurt you.” I glare at him coldly, incensed, outraged that after a whole year he’s coming out with this shit. A whole year of letting me fill our space with things I like…

The truth comes out now! He stifles a smile, because he thinks it’s cute when I get mad over ‘weird stuff’ and tries to avoid my glare as I erupt.

“You’re an asshole… you said you liked what I was adding to the apartment. You said I made it feel homelier, that I was bringing life to the place, making it cozy! You’re such a fucking liar.” I spit at him, trying to simmer my inner outbursts as I stomp over to the nearby bookcase. Seeing a row of old novels and vague titles that neither of us would ever read, I shove them back, so a couple fall behind the space, not caring if I’m being childish. I need a physical outlet, a form of venting. I’m wounded. My boyfriend is one huge, lying dick head of a man, and he can go back to New York and leave me alone.

He can take his ugly décor with him and I can be done with both and be left alone here to make it as fucking sparkly, pink, unicorn infested as I like, and wallpaper with pink glitzy faux fur for all I care.

“I didn’t lie to you, baby. I do… I just like when things are less … sparkly.” He’s trying to soothe with his tone, but his words are not helping. His submissive pose and pleading cute boy face; the one he pulls out whenever he’s pissed me off. None of that is helping him, especially when I know him well enough to know it’s all an act. He is saying what he thinks will smooth my mood and pat down my ruffled feathers.

King of all assholes.