The Art of French Kissing (24 page)

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Authors: Kristin Harmel

BOOK: The Art of French Kissing
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Chapter Twenty

T
hat week, I went out twice more with a repentant Brett, and he even stopped by Frenchy’s one day at lunch to bring me white lilies, my favorite. There was no doubt that he was doing everything he could to win me back. I just hadn’t made up my mind yet.

After all, on the one hand I’d been so sure little more than two months ago that he was The One, I’d been gleefully planning a wedding with him. Had he not freaked out on me, I probably never would have considered leaving him. Our wedding would be mere weeks away.

On the other hand, his leaving me had forced me to look at all the things that were wrong with our relationship. He was, at times, condescending and overbearing. He often didn’t listen to me and sometimes treated me like a child. But all in all, our relationship hadn’t been bad. I knew he loved me—or at least he had, for a time. He seemed to be genuine in his proclamations of love for me now.

Maybe he
had
just made a mistake. Maybe he
did
deserve another chance.

“Are you seriously considering getting back together with him?” Poppy demanded the day after I’d been out with Brett for the third time. I had finally called to sheepishly tell her, knowing that she wouldn’t react well to the news.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Maybe he deserves another chance.”

“Emma,” she said slowly. “Perhaps you don’t remember. He cheated on you. With your best friend.”

“No,” I protested. “He didn’t exactly cheat. He didn’t get together with her until after we broke up. Besides, maybe he just made a mistake. You should see how hard he’s trying.”

Poppy made a snorting sound.

“Besides,” I added, “you’ve forgiven Darren, haven’t you?”

Poppy had been seeing her British ex regularly since the London junket, and I knew that she was beginning to think more seriously about calling off her whole mission to date as many Parisian men as possible.

She was silent for a long moment. “Emma, it’s a different situation,” she said quietly. “Darren and I both did a lot to hurt each other. We both made mistakes. And who knows what will happen now? We haven’t made any decisions. We’re just seeing where things go.”

“Maybe that’s all I’m doing, too,” I said defensively.

“But, Emma,” Poppy said, “it’s different. Brett moved on by
sleeping with your best friend.
And you weren’t just dating, you were engaged. He kicked you out of
your
house.”

“So?” I asked in a small voice.

“So,” Poppy said gently. “Don’t you wonder what’s motivating him now? Why has he changed his mind so quickly? It just doesn’t feel right to me.”

The day after I talked to Poppy, Brett took me out to dinner again, this time to Seasons 52, a restaurant I loved down on Sand Lake Road. He booked my favorite table alongside the lake out back, and he ordered a bottle of my favorite wine—a smooth Petite Syrah—and the artichoke and goat cheese flatbread I adored.

“See, babe?” he said after we had started sipping our wine. “I remember exactly what you like. We just
fit.

But Poppy’s words had been gnawing away at me for the past twenty-four hours.

“Why?” I asked slowly.

Brett looked confused. “Why what?”

“Why do we fit?” I asked slowly. “Why do you think we’re so perfect together? And why are you so intent on getting back together with me?”

“Because I love you,” Brett answered promptly. “Because I made a huge mistake. C’mon, Emma, we’ve been over this. You know how much I care. You know how I feel.”

I thought for a moment. “What about your parents?” I asked. “They never thought I was good enough for you, did they? They wanted you to marry some Ivy League girl or something.”

“That’s not true,” Brett said.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “I know it is. They’ve always acted like I was a disappointment. Like you could do so much better.”

“Well, then why are they so eager to have me get back together with you, then?” Brett asked triumphantly.

I stared at him in surprise. “Your parents
want
us to get back together?” I had just assumed that Operation-Win-Emma-Back had been a secret from them.

Brett nodded vigorously. “Yes! They’ve even invited you over to dinner this week. They’re thrilled about us.”

“They are?”

Brett nodded again. “They were mortified when we broke up,” he said. “They said it made the family look bad. They even stopped paying me my allowance.”

“Your
allowance
?”

Brett blinked a few times and turned scarlet. “Um, yeah,” he said. “I guess I never told you. But they gave me some money every month. Something about a tax write-off.”

“How
much
money?” I asked slowly, thinking of all the times Brett had insisted we split the check fifty–fifty when we went out to eat.

Brett paused. “Five thousand dollars.”

I dropped my fork.

“A
month
?” I asked, my voice cracking as it went up several octaves.

Brett nodded and had the decency to look embarrassed.

I digested this for a moment. “And they’ve stopped paying you this allowance?” I repeated. I was starting to feel a little sick. “Until you can get me back?”

Brett nodded again, not seeming to realize he was talking himself into a hole. “They called it their grandbaby fund.” He chuckled. “They’re ready for us to get married and start having kids, Emma. I mean, if that doesn’t prove to you how much they care about you, I don’t know what will.”

“Brett,” I said patiently, “that doesn’t mean they care about
me.
That means that they care about how our broken engagement made
them
look. And they care about being grandparents. I’m just the quickest route to that.”

Brett tilted his head to the side. “That’s not true. They love you, Emma. Just like I do.”

“Do you really?” I asked flatly. “Or are you just trying to get me back so that you can win back your allowance?”

Brett opened and closed his mouth, fishlike. “I can’t believe you’d even ask that,” he said after a moment.

Just then, my cell phone rang. Grateful for an excuse to escape the conversation momentarily, I dove for it.

“You’re going to answer your phone in the middle of dinner?” Brett made a face.

“Yes,” I said. I checked the caller ID.
UNAVAILABLE
. It could be a sales call, for all I knew, but at least it would give me a temporary escape. “It’s an important call.”

I stood up and walked away from the table toward the outside bar area. Knowing that Brett was watching me, I sank down into a lounge chair with my back to him and pressed
SEND
to answer.

“Emma?” It was Poppy, and she sounded excited. “Where are you?”

“Out to dinner with Brett,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“Don’t ask.” I sighed. “So what’s up? It’s late over there, isn’t it?” I did the mental math. If it was eight thirty in Florida, that made it two thirty tomorrow morning in Paris. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Poppy said. I could hear the smile in her voice. “I’m not in Paris, actually. I’m in your time zone.”

I sat up straight in my lounge chair. “What? Where?”

“In New York!” Poppy said gleefully.

“In New York?” I repeated. “What are you doing there?”

“Turns out that Guillaume’s waterskiing incident was a success after all,” Poppy said. “We got calls from all sorts of American media outlets. We just got in tonight, and we’re scheduled to do
Today with Katie Jones
tomorrow and
Good Morning America
on Friday!”

“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed. “Poppy, that’s wonderful! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I wanted to surprise you,” she said.

“Surprise me?”

She paused. “I was hoping you would come up and join us.”

My heart sank. “I’d love to, Poppy. But I can’t afford the trip up there now. You know that!”

“Well,” she said, “let me put it this way. I’ve already booked an airline ticket in your name, and you have a room at the Hyatt Grand Central. You’d fly up tomorrow morning, so you’ll only have to take a day off work. Frankly, you’d be silly not to come.”

“Poppy—”

“Guillaume paid for all of it out of pocket,” she cut in. “He still feels terrible about what happened—as he well should. So you might as well get a free trip on his dime!”

I thought about it for a moment. She
did
have a point. And if the ticket was already purchased . . .

“All right,” I said slowly. “I guess I’ll be there, then.”

“Brilliant!” Poppy exclaimed. “Be at the Katie Jones studio on Broadway and Fifty-third at noon tomorrow. I’ll leave a ticket for you. We’ll have dinner after the show!”

“That sounds wonderful,” I said warmly. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I know how you can thank me,” Poppy said.

“How?”

“Come to your senses and walk away from Brett before you get sucked back in,” she said. “I know you feel like you’re lonely and stuck there, Emma. But don’t fall back into that. Please.”

I thought about it for a moment. “You’re right,” I said softly.

“Good girl,” Poppy said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Emma.
Au revoir!

I sat there for a moment after I hung up. What was I doing? How had I come to a place where I once again thought Brett was the answer to everything? Three weeks’ worth of Jeannie’s get-back-together-with-him-you-idiot diatribes had turned me into someone different, and the hopelessness of my situation had made me desperate and needy.

But I’d become someone else during my brief time in Paris. Or, more accurately, I’d looked inside for the first time and gotten in touch with
me.
It wasn’t the job or the meaningless dates, or even the self-destructive crush I’d had on Gabe. It was that, for the first time in more than three years, I’d learned that being alone really wasn’t so bad.

I took a deep breath, stood up, and walked back to our table.

“That was really rude, Emma,” Brett said, shaking his head. “I never answer calls during dinner.”

I looked at him funny. “Brett, you used to answer your phone all the time while we were eating.”

“That’s different,” he said. “Those were work calls.”

“Well, actually, this was a work call, too.”

“What, the restaurant was calling you?” Brett smirked. “Important waitress business?”

“No, Poppy was calling,” I said. “About Guillaume Riche.”

“I thought you were fired from that job.”

I nodded. “But maybe it’s time to fight for what I deserve,” I said. I paused. I was still standing beside the table, and Brett was beginning to look uncomfortable.

“Aren’t you going to sit back down, Emma?” he asked. “People are looking.”

I ignored him. “I need to ask you something,” I said. “
Why
do you want to get back together with me?”

Brett looked confused. “Because I love you.”

“Why?” I persisted. “
Why
do you love me?”

“I don’t know.” He looked uneasy. “I just do.”

“Why?” I persisted. “I mean, why me? Why me instead of Amanda?”

“Let’s not bring her into this,” he mumbled.

“I think you already brought her in,” I said with a shrug.

Brett had the decency to look embarrassed. “I don’t know, Emma,” he said, sounding exasperated. “I love you because you’ve always been there. I love you because you know me and put up with me. I love you because I know you will be a good mother to our children. I love you because we’re perfect together. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

I looked at him for a moment. None of his reasons for loving me had anything to do with
me.
They never had, had they?

“You were right,” I said finally.

Brett nodded, as if this was a given. “About what?”

“About us.”

Brett smiled. “Good. Finally! You’ve seen things my way. So do you want to move back in? Or should we take things slow?”

I shook my head. “No, I mean you were right the first time.”

“What?”

“When you said we weren’t right together. When you kicked me out.”

“Now, wait a minute, Emma.” Brett held up his hand impatiently. “You’re being ridiculous here.”

“No,” I said. I shook my head sadly. “I was being ridiculous to even consider getting back together with you.”

Brett gaped. “Emma, you’re making a huge mistake. Do you know what you’re saying?”

“Yes, I do,” I said slowly and calmly. “I don’t want to be with you.”

He just kept staring at me, as if he couldn’t understand what he was hearing. “You’re not going to find anyone better than me, you know. Not at your age.”

For some reason, I thought of Gabe, whom I quite possibly would never hear from again.

“You know, I think I already have,” I said softly.

I took a cab home, and the moment I walked in the door, Jeannie cornered me in the front hallway.

“Brett called,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at me.

“Did he? How nice. Did you have a nice chat?”

Jeannie ignored me. “Do you know what you just did?” she asked, her eyes wide. Upstairs, Odysseus began wailing something unintelligible. Jeannie didn’t seem to hear.

“Yes, I know exactly what I did,” I responded calmly. “I told Brett I didn’t want to get back together with him.” I wasn’t sure why a recap was necessary, as Jeannie had clearly been filled in already.

“Emma!” Jeannie exclaimed with dismay. “Why? He’s perfect for you!”

I looked at her blankly. “Why do you say that?” I asked finally. “Why do you think he’s so perfect?”

Jeannie looked a bit caught off guard. “I don’t know. Because he’s hot and he makes good money?” she said after a moment. “And he’s a pretty nice guy. I mean, really, what more can you ask for?”

I nodded slowly, feeling deeply grateful that although we’d come from the same set of parents, somehow I’d grown up with a completely different set of values. “Yes, Jeannie,” I said softly. I looked her right in the eye. “But he’s not capable of loving me even remotely as much as he loves himself,” I said. “And I want to be with someone who loves me and wants what’s best for me. Brett will never be that person, because all Brett cares about is Brett.”

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