Chapter 161

“You need to call Arry and tell him, Baby-girl. You can’t just run out of school and not go back.”

Christian is sitting stroking my hair as I lay on the couch with my head on his lap, looking down at me soothingly as I compose myself.

I’ve cried, raged, regretted and so much more. We drunk so much wine everything is swimming around me and I’m just a mess. I’m drunk, and Christian has refused to move even though his flight back to London means he needs to leave soon. He has helped demolish Arry’s expensive collection of booze he likes to stock in his overly expensive wine rack and I just don’t care. I sit up, swaying lightly as I do so and grasp his hand.

“I will, when he comes home… Just right now. I need to let this sink in, and to sleep this off. I need time to think. What if he presses charges? I mean, I assaulted him, Chris” I stare at him imploringly and wipe my hand across my messy face once more. Still reeling from the shock of what went down but number than before. I don’t doubt I look as much of a fright as I feel; there are smears of eyeliner and mascara all over my hands from frantic wiping.

“I doubt he will… Sleazy little weasels like that tend to hide this sort of shit. He could lose his job, Sophie. He made moves on a student. He totally crossed the line.” Christian squeezes my hand and then glances at the clock over my head on the far wall. I know he’s worrying about missing his flight but the kind of friend he is, he will stay here if I need him to stay. He needs to go, he’s on a trip with the New York school and if he doesn’t go back, he could be in serious trouble.

“Go… I’m okay. Your right, I doubt he will, and I really need to lay down and sleep. I’m okay really and I promise, I will call Arry when I wake up, and soon Janetta will be here too. She always comes and goes through the day to clean and keep the house in check and will want to start dinner too. I won’t be alone.”

Christian hesitates then hugs me putting his arms tight around before getting up to move.

“Turn your cell back on, not just for Arry’s benefit, but mine too, Sophie. I’ll call you when I land in London and I won’t be happy if I can’t get through.” He frowns harder and I love how cute he looks this way. I may have limited number of real friends, but the ones I do have are worth their weight in gold.

Christian is almost as close to me as Arry and I’m sad that he is leaving me.

“I will when I wake up, Chris. I really think if I go to bed when you go, I may just sleep this day away and wake up tomorrow a ton better. I barely slept last night.” Now I’ve decided I need to be alone and I don’t want the guilt of him missing his flight, I just want him to go. I’m better when I’m left to process things on my own time with space.

“Okay… Pinkie promise?” He holds up his hand in our timeless way, something Arry told him the importance of and I latch my little finger in his and give it a shake.

“Pinkie promise.”

“If you don’t tell him, I will. I’ll call him if I cannot get hold of you and spill my guts, Sophabelle… I swear I will.” He’s trying to sound threatening, but I throw myself at him and hug him around the neck.

“I know you will, and I love you for it. Now go. I’m okay, and I swear Arry is going to be told.” I don’t know when, but I wouldn’t keep something like this from him at all. Right now, all my anger for him is irrelevant. I just want Arry to make this all go away.

***

I sit staring at the wall while Janetta bustles around the hall dusting and cleaning, I have barely said two words to her and I’m sitting with my cell in my hands putting off the moment I switch it back to normal mode and let Arry’s calls and texts flood through. I know there will be a lot, I know him. He isn’t the type to just sit and wait for me to make contact again. He will have left a dozen voicemails and texts and for once I’m glad we don’t have a landline phone in this apartment as I am sure he would have called it a dozen times too. He’s probably going insane with my silence and try as I might to be feel bad about it, I don’t.

I’m still fuming at him for letting me down, even if work held him back and then flights made it impossible. I get that he thought he tried to come back, but he promised me and then he didn’t follow through. Then, to add injury to the wound… he still didn’t come home anyway. I stare at the cell as my finger hovers over the settings icon and change my mind about turning my signal back on.

I’m so not ready to get his gushy love texts and apologies right now. I want to yell at him, look him in the face when I cry over his absence and then tell him that due to not being there with me, my creep tutor made a fucking pass at me. My skin is still crawling with his touch, that even a shower and clothes change has not rectified and that slimy breath on my face and the feel of his skin has my body crawling with fire ants.

I know for a fact that tonight my nightmares will catch up with me, like they always do following some sort of trigger and he isn’t here to sooth them away either. Scared to go to sleep because I know it’s inevitable. Like somehow that creep’s assault is partly Arrick’s fault, seeing as if he was there, I would never have been alone with him. Arry would have broken his face had he tried that shit around him.

I think even just Arry’s presence would have killed Claude’s urge to try at all. Even though to friends Arry is a laid-back boy with a lot of patience and a cool manner, other men seem intimidated by him so effortlessly, as though they can tell that under that kind face and easy smile, is a mean and trained killing machine with a hell of a knockout punch.

I stare at my screen for longer than necessary, at the selfie of us on holiday last summer when he took me to Hawaii. I look happy and carefree and realize I haven’t looked that way in the entire time we’ve stayed here. We’ve barely taken any pictures while being here, not that we’ve had many fun or happy memories we wanted to capture. We have trawled up the Eiffel tower twice and both days it was hellishly cold and rained, we visited the Louvre museum once and that was the day I got food poisoning and he had to bring me home and take care of me. We haven’t even been to Disneyland here because Arrick is never here long enough to make the trip.

I hate Paris, I hate this fucking school and I hate my life here. I want to go home.

It’s like a little bolt goes off in my head, maybe because I’m still half-drunk as I have yet to sleep it off and suddenly, I’m itching not to be here anymore at all. Head on my home, my real one, with him in New York and suddenly I want to be there. More than anything in the world and not in a month, or in a week, but right fucking now. Like a need so deep you can almost taste it and nothing else will come close to curbing it.

I don’t care that I still have a couple weeks left of term here. I’m never going back. The show made up my final grade, I don’t need to be there now, and I don’t want to be. I don’t want their offer of another term, with a sleazy asshole who paws at me. I want my School in New York, with our friends and our family and our cozy love nest that Arry has been sleeping alone in all year.

I want to go home. NOW.

Stubborn headed, filled with this thought and way too much white wine. I storm to my room and pick up my laptop, scanning the airports sites until I find departures and a flight to new York leaving at nine p.m. Arry said if he couldn’t get a flight before dinner then he wouldn’t be coming back and I can already see that most flights were cancelled all day and only just beginning to start around nine pm onwards to JFK airport. I know for a fact he isn’t on a flight home if he needed to head back again so soon.

Well he’s about to be faced with an angry girlfriend with a lot to fucking say.

I book a flight immediately, using his credit card that he leaves here for emergencies and put my laptop down, heading to pull my suitcase from the wardrobe and start packing for my trip home.

I want to see him, tell him about creep, but I also want to see him face to face without the barrage of texts and calls clouding my anger and let rip about exactly what he did by not showing up. Things between us are getting strained and changing and this lack of time together is making me crazy insecure and over the top needy. I can’t keep on this way and he can’t keep on commuting between two countries anymore.

I want to go home to New York and stay there and I don’t see that he will have a problem with that. I want our relationship back on track and I can’t do that in Paris. We have done the year we set out to do and it has almost killed us. I’m so done with all this shit and this hellhole.

Arry would never let me down like that if we were home and maybe I’m being unfair. I mean he has spent months almost killing himself with eight-hour flights back and forth, commutes from airport to airport, sometimes three times a month and more, and all I have done is give him a hard time when he can’t jump on a flight home when I demand it.

Yes, he let me down. Yes, I am still crazy upset with him. I also kind of see it from his side too though and know how hard work has been for him these past months, even here at home in Paris he never stops. Emailing, reading files, making calls and that’s not even including his fight responsibilities which seem to nestle in the only quiet times he’s had. He is juggling so much, all so far away and mad at him or not, I need to go be with him right now and see him.

That creep has knocked me for six and Arry is the only one who can make me feel better.

I’m not warning him that I’m coming. I need the flight to get my emotions in check and my head clear. I need to figure out what I will say to him when I finally see him again and we need to talk about where we go from here. Time to tell him Paris is done with.