[Editors Note: Part One of this piece was previously published with us in February]

TRILOGIE

Part One: A Good Night’s Sleep

After my life imploded, I thought things would eventually get better. They didn’t. Bone weary and unable to sleep unmedicated, I quit my job and left for Paris without telling anyone. My insides roiled with a palpable guilt that felt like an empty stomach just after vomiting but without any of the relief. Strangely, that was probably a sign that it was the right decision.
           

I came here because the city didn’t care about me. I don’t know anyone here. I don’t speak the language and have no intention of learning it. So far I spent two weeks drifting through Paris’ endless museums, not talking to anyone for days at a time. I occasionally wondered if I’m dead. My stomach laughed, You don’t get off that easy.
           

One night, I went to a sauna. Within fifteen minutes, I had been fucked badly by a tipsy Arab. I walked the loop of the cubicles, losing track of time – it could’ve been morning outside; the city awash with a flash flood, something biblical splitting the sky. Still, I remained fully invested in this loop, the itch to see what lay around the corner and if its contents or attitude had changed in the last three minutes.
           

A man stared me down in a way that put me back into my body. I slowly wandered in, soaking in his impatience. He started divining my likes and dislikes. He backhanded me across my face and dropped his towel. He kept hitting and there was no time to think and this was exactly what I wanted. He pushed my body up against the corner of the cubicle, folding me as neatly as possible, whilst still maintaining enough access to fuck me.
           

After we’d both cum, the world brayed to be noticed. Terrible techno blared as if the building was ashamed of the sounds of fucking within. People chatted, caught up, bitched. I felt tired and more than anything upset that we had stopped. Life had gone and announced itself and here it was, a chill in a dim cubicle. I started to cry. He bent down to me – I was sat on the floor between the cubicle and the door – a soft voice asking me if I was okay. I took his hand and hit my face with it. He looked sadder than I did. I told him to fuck off. I called him a cunt, a limp dick sissy, a useless fucking cunt. He walked away. I watched the men follow their tracks. He never rejoined them and must’ve left. No one was brave enough to come in but I sat, covered in two people’s cum, daring them to.
           

After about 45 minutes, the cold had become unbearable so I got up. I sought out the red LED in the corner. Dinner time. I showered in preparation for the whole new clientele who were waiting. I left at lunchtime the next day, forced out by my stomach. I felt an urge to write something and took out a tiny pocket-sized notebook and a little pencil I’d swiped from a betting shop. Nothing came. I flicked through its used pages: not a salvageable line. I wrote my mobile number on about fifteen sheets and sat outside the entrance to the sauna. I gave them out to guys going in. One guy who was leaving, and had cruised me earlier, saw me give it to someone and wanted one but I acted confused, speaking in clearly made-up German and pointing angrily at the notebook until he left.
           

As I walked home, I wrote my number on each of the remaining pages of the notebook. I gave a slip to every half-decent looking man that I saw. I passed a site, called the builders over and gave them some too. Most didn’t know what to say. One or two laughed. I groped myself over my jeans and the remaining few started to shout at me but a younger builder pulled them aside and spoke to them. Regarder. And I could see pity. They looked at me like he’d told them I was a madman. I couldn’t bear it and headed for what passed as home.
           

The next day, I went back and the young builder was waiting outside the empty site, apparently for a lift. He smiled a little, testing the waters, but I didn’t have the capacity to respond so my face remained blank. Something in my face, unknown to me, must’ve softened, or perhaps he just imagined it did.
           

“Did anyone ring you yet?”
           

Of course he spoke perfect English. I shrugged my shoulders – I hadn’t charged my phone in a while.
           

“Why didn’t you give me your fucking number?”
           

“Because you’d fucking ring.”
           

He laughed. “Didn’t you want the others to?”
           

“Yeah, because it wouldn’t mean anything to them.”
           

He nodded, slowly mouthing an Oh, patronising me.
           

A car pulled up. “Give me your number.” I did. “And charge your phone. No one could get through.” He got in the back of the car and stared at me out the window, like I was a fucking sunrise.
           

Sometime later, my charged phone beeped with annoyance. Seventeen messages, all in French, mostly abuse. I saved those. One was in hushed tones: whatever he was going on about, it was a lot: très très très très très. And then, it was him again. He said hi and left his number. Didn’t ask me to call him. Didn’t say talk soon. I rang.
           

“Leo, the big guy from the South, the guy you gave your number to first, wants to beat the living shit out of you. The other guys said that he was the one you wanted and that it was Leo’s fault you came here. They spent the rest of the day calling him a faggot. The foreman had to send him out for supplies to stop him from punching them. They made up a little song and sang it at him as he left, a la recherche de son petit pédé, sung to the tune of So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music.
           

“And what do you they call you?”
           

He laughed. Nothing fucking bothered him. “My name. They’re mostly all married with kids and get laid, at best, a couple of times a year. I told them how often and easily I get laid and that shut them up. Also, I never rose to the bait.”
           

“You think Leo would be up for fucking me and knocking me around.”
           

“I can ask. He’d definitely be up for giving you a smack.”
           

I laughed.
           

He continued. “Or I could do it instead. That what you want, pédé?” He had made up the song. His voice was low and seductive.
           

I was hard again. I used to be so well-behaved. “Come over.”
           

I gave him directions and about half an hour later he arrived shirtless, wearing just work stained work trousers and a bike helmet. A sheen of sweat clung to him. It must’ve been hot out. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been out in the daytime. I wasn’t sure what day it was either.
           

Barely in the door and he pushed me to my knees and started to fuck my mouth. He slapped my face as if gauging the temperature. I told him not to waste my fucking time. He punched me hard in the stomach, leaving me breathless and filling my mouth with his now hard cock before I could catch my breath. But then he faltered.
           

“Have you always enjoyed pain?”
           

I sighed, somehow with my whole body.
           

“This is what I want, right now. Do I always? No. Do I want to explain why I want it right now? No. Do I want to discuss it? No.”
           

He ordered me onto my back and started to fuck me. He backhanded me a few times across my face. He was too invested in his thrusting and forgot about everything else. When he looked at me, I let him see how bored I was. He shifted a bit, trying for a better angle, but held my gaze. After a minute or so, he’d gone limp.
           

He took out his phone and sent a message. He dressed slowly and in silence. I hadn’t noticed his black boots – he’d kicked them off almost immediately. He unlaced and relaced them. He looked angry. I spread out like a dog at his feet and curled around his boots. He rolled his eyes.
           

The doorbell rang. He stepped out of my grip and answered it. It was Leo, looking confused, until he saw me and barrelled in. He didn’t care that I was naked. He beat the shit out of me as promised. He bust my lip, bruised a rib, knocked out a tooth. The young builder sat behind him watching, touching himself. Leo didn’t see that. He did however notice I was hard and kicked me in the crotch and spat on me, over and over. I thought my balls might rupture. After they left – Leo first, after he suddenly stopped, having gotten scared how much he was fucking me up and how I was putting up no resistance, and later, the young nameless builder who didn’t deign to touch me again but soon after Leo left, came on my face – I slept soundly, still in the hall, for almost 24 hours.
           

Part Two: The Morning Vortex
           

I had about a month before I was broke. Two, if I scrimped. Paris was expensive. Someone out of your league hitting on you and you’re flattered until they ask for money when you take off your clothes. That’s Paris.
           

My English mobile sat on the dresser of my AirBnB, whispering for me to come close, that I should be brave and turn it on, and at least read the texts – we both knew voicemail would be too much – but every time I got close, I was like a mime in a gale, stuck and reaching, about a foot away. About half the clothes I brought with me were in that dresser and now lost to it.
           

I went to a café and ordered the most expensive coffee. What would happen if I ran out of money? Not pretty or young enough to whore, not clever enough for the streets. Would I go running home? I asked the waiter for the food menu. He was a walking stereotype: tall, thin, beautiful and perpetually sneering. He told me food should come before coffee, not after. The next time he passed, I asked again very politely for the menu. I could see the rage flare across his face. He dropped the menu onto the table and muttered audibly, putain des touristes.
           

My French phone beeped. Je veux un cul à baiser. I google translated and texted back Where? I got an address and a time two hours from now. I clicked my fingers at the waiter. “Garcon! Food!”
           

Bristling, he leant down to clear the plates but his hand slipped, or at least he made a show of it slipping, very clearly to anyone who was looking. As it slipped, it became a fist and landed in my face. He expected me to apologise in that fumbling, tourist manner, in the way that those who are used to getting a smack do. I blew him a kiss. He dropped the plates back onto the table, from high enough that they cracked. He hurried off, feigning upset.
           

I should’ve said something terrible to him, slapped him back, particularly if he was going to make me out to be the monster. Instead, I went up and asked for the manager. Whilst waiting for him to arrive, I thought about you and us, really letting myself think about it, so that when the manager came, I was sobbing. My hands had been cut on the broken plates. He stood staring at me for a long minute before sighing and heading into the kitchen. He returned with a first aid box, brought me into his office, and started wrapping my cuts. I was crying the whole time, remembering what you said, what we had done, what I hadn’t. I sobbed thinking about the night I almost drowned in the bath, how easier it would have been if I had, how everything would’ve been someone else’s problem.
           

I was still crying when the manager finished and pulled me into a hug. He didn’t say anything. He just let me cry out, which took another ten minutes. Afterwards, he went over to the safe and counted out €300, holding it out to me.
           

“No,” I muttered, shaking my head.
           

“Take it,” he said softly in perfect English. Does everyone speak English here?
           

“Why?”
           

“Because Pierre was being a dick. Because you need it. Because I don’t want any trouble.”
           

I didn’t want it from him. I shook my head and started to cry again, much to both of our annoyances.
           

“Take the money.”
           

I took it. “What’s your name?”
           

“Jim. You’re from London, South London, right?”
           

“Yeah. Are you from there?”
           

“I’m from Hove.”
           

“Near Brighton?”
           
“Yeah.”
           

I mustered up what charm I had. “And what are you doing here, Jim?”
           

He sighed. There was pity there, but not just pity. “I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m short-staffed today.”
           

I nodded, over and over again like a tic. “Sure, sure, sure.”
           

“Look after yourself.”
           

I laughed.
           

He laughed too, “Yeah, I know. Stupid advice.”
           

I was still crying. He walked me to the kerb. We didn’t say goodbye. The sunlight was obnoxious and I stepped into it.

           

When I’d needed to make myself cry, I had let myself think about us and now it wouldn’t go anywhere. I went back to my room and the way the light hit, all I could see was the dresser. It looked mean, menacing and twice, three times its size. I could barely get in the room without coming close to it, being sucked into its orbit. I grabbed a top from the floor and locked the door behind me. Comparing it to what I had on, I put on the slightly cleaner top, and pushed the dirtier one through the letter box. I could hear the drawers open, expectantly, the squeak of ill-fitting wood against wood.
           

On the metro, I wondered if I’d ever start to enjoy getting fucked.

           

I arrived at the address, an empty half-finished row of houses. The young builder I met before was there. I had found out since that his name was Lewis but the other builders called him Louis, unwilling to utter a hard s. Leo was there, with a couple of others. They had brought a cooler. Leo had a cigar.
           

Lewis started to fuck me. The afternoon light spilled in through the missing roof. The others watched like critics. They drank and smoked and whispered to each other. Lewis looked really happy, like someone that for once was being understood. I could see the respect in their faces as they stared at him. Their eyes became glassy as they looked at me. I don’t think I existed beyond the example that Lewis was showing them.
           

Leo, the one that beat me up so badly last time we met that I actually slept, politely cut in and tenderly started to fuck me. He pulled me up by my throat, digging his chin into my neck, and whispered to me. Lewis translated: Don’t look at me.
           

As he came, I wrenched myself around and stared at him. He smacked his big hands onto my face and pushed my profile into the ground, without breaking his thrust.
           

When Leo finished, I called him a faggot and he looked at Lewis, as if to say What? He wasn’t even angry. He wasn’t scared of being gay. He asked Lewis something and Lewis sighed heavily, Il ne sait tout simplement pas comment profiter de la vie.
           

The other builders came up and patted Leo on the back. Lewis smiled and, gesturing at the nearly empty cooler, gregariously asked, Que diriez-vous d’une vraie boisson?
           

I wanted to go with them but they didn’t ask me. I knew if I spoke up, their whole mood would change. I just wanted to sit with them and nod along as they took the piss and had a good time.
           

Lewis texted later. Leo’s wife is sick and he didn’t want to cheat so I told him I knew how he could get off and it would mean nothing. The lads were moral support, lol. About an hour later, he wrote again. I think this was his way of apologising to you for what happened last time.
           

I texted him back at 3am, my phone screen lighting up the darkroom: He didn’t make me cum. As dawn broke, Lewis texted, What is wrong with you?

           

When I got back to my room, my English mobile was ringing. I stared at it. It couldn’t be. I hadn’t charged it in days. Instinctively, I reached out to answer it. The drawers started to open and close of their own accord. The mobile bounced across the counter, accidentally hitting answer. I heard your voice. My body was sucked into, slammed into the dresser. I was pinned there. I heard you say Hello? Robert? Hello? Would you please just answer my calls? But I couldn’t move. The winds had pressed me up against the dresser and the pressure was so much that I felt as if my skin was going to split. Everything on the floor got sucked into the vortex. The curtains stuck out towards it at a 90 degree angle. The sunlight, again, insistent.
           

This was my chance. I grabbed onto the mobile with all my might. I didn’t say anything. I could hear your voice, tinny, from across the sea.
           

There was a knock at the door and the wind stopped and everything fell to the ground, including, especially me. Please Robert. I don’t hate you. Please.
           

“Que se passe-t-il là-dedans?”
           

“EVERYTHING’S FINE. I just – I just- ”
           

The wind had stopped and I had the phone in my hand.
           

“J’appelle la police!”
           

“So fucking call them, then!”
           

I had the phone in my hand.
           

I scrambled away from the dresser and smashed the phone into the ground until your voice was gone, until the phone was unrecognisable, until my fingers were cut and bleeding and at least one of them was probably broken. I looked through the slit in the curtains and the sunlight was finally gone.

Part Three: Spare Rib
           

I sat in my unlit room, watching the darkness take hold, as evening shifted to night. An hour or so after the streetlights shut off, I reached for the lamp in my room. Light haloed through the lampshade. I looked down at my hands. They were unbruised. The left one held my mobile. I looked around the spare, and surprisingly tidy, room but I couldn’t find my other phone. They looked the same but I had two. The phone in my hand, my phone, was undamaged. It didn’t question itself. It was too busy ringing.
           

I tried to get rid of it. I’d leave it in the room and go walking through Montmartre, looking for trouble, and its tinny ring would bleep from my trouser pocket. I’d throw it in the Seine and later find it in my jacket. A man went to pull my cock out in a darkroom and, in the crotch of my jeans, found the ringing mobile lighting up his shocked and disappointed face. It never stops ringing but I do not, cannot answer it.
           

I walked through the museums. There, at least, the phone had the good grace to switch to vibrate. I went back to the sauna and saw ghosts of myself stuck in their previous laps, searching for phantom cocks. I pretend one sunny midweek day – a Tuesday? – to be a tourist and buy a postcard but am overwhelmed by what to write to you. I tear it up, unwilling to let someone else’s banality fill that space.
           

The phone rings incessantly but occasionally it rings harder, louder, than others, like when everyone in my metro carriage was staring. We were on the outskirts of the city in an overground tram. They tsked and muttered under their breath but the noise continued and rage and anger spilled out of them and they were shouting at me and the endless ringing coming from my phone and I had no choice and I answered it.
           

Robert?
           

I can’t.
           

I go into the centre of Paris. I start to drink. I disappear.

           

The sunlight, again. My life measured in it. Alongside that, a voice chattering along, pleasant and content. I blink. Lewis is in bed with me. It’s so unexpected that my brain refuses to react.
           

He keeps talking. There is a softness to him. The light suits him. It makes him look happy, uncomplicated.  
           

I put my hand in front of his face. I struggle to speak and each word comes out slowly. “Lewis. I need you to listen.” He takes my hand, holds it.
           

He laughs. “Since when do you, of all people, speak English?”
           
He expects me to laugh. “Lewis. Stop talking shit. I’ve always spoken English. I’m speaking English right now. Are you fucking high?”
           

His face falls. “No, we’re speaking French, Robert, like always. The only thing you said in English was Lewis, j’ai besoin que tu écoutes.”
           

He’s being stupid so I stop listening and focus on his body. I push him back against the headboard. I slink down, level with his crotch. “Can you call Leo? Have him come over and join us?”
           

He pulls me up to him. “Do you think you’re speaking English right now?”
           

I nestle into him and whisper. “I want it from both ends.”
           

“Robert. Are you speaking English now?”
           

“We both are. Now are you gonna call him?”
           

He stares at me, shaking his head, his mouth opening and closing but not able to say anything. I can see that he is hurt but can find no reason why. And he’s acting like a victim? He’s the problem. Him and Leo and the rest of them that beat me and fuck me. I’m just engaging with them on their level.
           

He looks as if he’s crying. “I can’t do this with you anymore. It’s too much.”
           

He gets up and makes to leave but he’s only setting an example – it’s his place. It must be, I don’t recognise it. I can’t. The light bleeds through the big double windows and I cannot see the décor. Only him and, when he points to it, the door.

           

I stop being tired, or rather, I stop feeling tired. There is only sunlight, blistering. All night is artificial, as it should be. I get kicked out of the Louvre. They don’t give me a reason and I don’t know what, if anything, I’ve done wrong. I wake up outside my building on the street. I wake up in Place de Concorde. I wake up on a train coming from Versailles back into Paris and watch the suburban houses blur on by, all concrete and grey. I wake up in an alley and it is finally night. I step out into it in search of food, or a close approximation. I order fish and chips and reaching into my pockets to pay for it, I find my notebook. Flicking through it, I look for money and find none but the notebook itself is full; every page hemmed in with scrawls.
           

I go back to the start and read. It’s a story, based on me and you. It talks about when we were happy. It’s us, but not. We’re slightly fictionalised. We didn’t live together in Quebec. You never proposed to me. Your mother was nowhere near as nice as I portrayed her. But nothing else is right. All the other beats are there – how we met in a goddamn arcade, like teenagers loafing through a Saturday and not two thirty-olds trying to reclaim their youth; how I knew I loved you that night after the cinema but couldn’t tell you until nearly a week later because I was fucking scared; how you said it back to me immediately, without hesitation.
           

I stop reading. All this can only end one way. Right now, we are in love and floating through these pages effortlessly. Let us stay there. I close the notebook and firmly hold it shut, afraid of it. I start to cry. It ended how it ended, nothing can change that but I don’t want that to come back into focus.
           

I hear my phone ringing, whining, like a dying car alarm. I check all of my pockets but can’t find it anywhere.

           

I walk back to my room. The landlady peers at me through the slit in her latched door. Lewis is sat, waiting for me. I let him in. The dresser is just a dresser, knowing we have company. Lewis sits beside it, against it, and nothing happens. He looks at me.
           

“Where are you from?”
           
Without hesitation, I answer “London”, with the assurance of someone asking you your name, or your birthday. “I’ve lived there all my life.”
           

Lewis starts to cry, properly this time. He looks lost and scared and helpless. It is disgusting to look at. I tell him this.
           

He nods, softly, over and over. “You’re not well, Robert. You haven’t been, for a long time.”
           

“What are you-”
           

He bangs the side of the dresser with his fist. “Shut up, would you, and just listen. You’re sick. And this, what you are, I can’t. It’s breaking me. You’re getting worse, you won’t get help, and I just can’t, I can’t-”
           

I try. I say “Louis-” but it is too late. He has pushed past me and is gone.
           

Nothing makes sense anymore. Not a damn thing.
           

The dresser drawers push open slightly. It looks like it is laughing. I run.

           

What he said, what he tried to make me believe, sits on top of what I know is true and won’t coalesce. I shake the puzzle pieces until I am exhausted but nothing fits neatly. I shunt them into a box and forget about them.
           

The phone, whose respectful silence I hadn’t noticed, blares to life. I answer, thinking, nothing can make anything worse.
           

Your voice. Robert? Robert? When are you coming home?
           

I turn the corner and the clouds part and I stare at the sun, playing chicken. I will win or I will go blind. I am happy with either outcome, both are at least quantifiable change. After a couple of minutes, my eyes water and I blink involuntarily. No. I start to cry. Something, not much but something, has fallen into place. I hang up.
           

I go to a sauna and hunt. I know exactly what I want. The first man is too timid. The second can’t stay hard under the pressure. The last though, he understands. He fucks me against the wall, into the wall. He is moulding me into something new with his cock, his body. It hurts, slammed against the brick wall but I tell him to go faster, to go harder. I swear at him, scream at him. I throw an elbow into his face. I beg for it and I am nothing but that begging. He responds. He is angry and turned on and furious and willing and fucks me harder and harder into the wall, my chest pressing against it, until it hurts, until I scream.
           

I don’t feel it, I hear it. A loud pop in my chest and my breath constricts. I start to laugh but I can’t breathe so I huff and I puff and I point him towards the door and it is finally here and out of nowhere, a soft sunlight breaks through the brick wall of the dimly lit sauna and caresses me. Sunkissed, I lay down and sleep.
           
           

I wake up and there is pain but that is what was missing. I can deal with that. I open the notebook and flip ahead. The stock characters, the thinly-veiled fiction, has been abandoned.

           

James tells me that he’s been dreaming about getting me naked all day, texting me pictures of himself the whole way home. A slow, careful disrobing documented just for me. He texts me “I’m ready for you, Robert. Get here soon.” I rush home, telling the cabbie that I have an emergency, hiding my boner with my briefcase. The door is open before I can finish turning the key. He is on me, peeling off my clothes. We are an octopus exploring our body, limbs everywhere, already becoming sticky. He drags his teeth across my lip. I bite around his neck, not breaking the skin, but almost. He is shirtless and I turn him around, push him against the door and putting my hand into his jeans, yank them down. He is moaning softly. He tells me to go harder and I push my body up against his but his voice is stern: harder. I don’t know how. “I don’t want to hurt you, James.” I can hear him smiling, even with his eyes closed. “I want you to. I want you to fuck me. To hurt me.” He looks so beautiful, like he’s almost gone, and all that is left is his wanting so I try. I drag a thumb inside and across his lips. I slap his face. He grips my hand over his. We have been here before. He will not be sated until it is harder. Until it is more. I don’t want to do this. “I don’t-” He pulls me close. He is backed into the corner. He pulls us down to ground level. I’m on my knees. He holds his thighs close to his chest. “Fuck me hard, Robert. I want you to fuck me like you hate me. Split me apart.” It’s too much. I pull away. “I can’t-” And his face softens, and he is Robert, the man I love, gently lit by the late afternoon sunlight. “Robert, it’s me. I’m fine.” I fuck him like he asks and he wants it harder, needs it harder and I give it to him because it’s what he wants. I fuck him into the wall, his arms still wrapped around his knees. His breathing laboured, from the fucking, or the pressure. “Don’t stop, please, don’t” And I hear a loud pop. Or I realise I do after he tells me, after he realises that he heard it too, but he doesn’t know until later, neither of us realising then, because our breath is short and we are cumming, our vision woozy with the blinding light of orgasm and heavy breathing.
           

James kisses me. “Thank you. That was the best I’ve ever had.” He is smiling like the force of it could break his face. He is holding his chest, wincing, but still his smile is unflappable. He laughs, and coming close, kisses me, whispering, “You fucked me so good, I think you broke a rib.” He looks so pleased, proud. He gazes at me like I am the greatest man to have ever lived.
           

I broke away and grabbing my phone called an ambulance.
           

“What are you doing?”
           

“You’ve broken a rib. You need to go to hospital”
           

His smile vanishes, like it had never been. “No, I don’t.”
           

I looked up ‘broken rib’ on my phone and started to examine him as best I can. He winced hard at every touch, despite trying not to. I relayed what the dispatcher told me, that the ambulance was fifteen minutes away due to a pile up near Mile End.
           

James got up. He was so furious he bypassed giving out to me and said “I’m going to shower before they come.” Ten minutes later he was dressed and not talking to me. The paramedics arrived and took him away. They asked if I was coming with but James told them, “No, he’s nobody.”

           

I go back to my room. I stick my phone on charge, leaving it on the dresser, which is just a dresser, which has never been anything but a dresser. Drying off, I hear a text come in. From Lewis. I’m worried about you. Will you come meet me later after I finish my shift at the café? I text him yes, and head out, bypassing the metro, figuring the walk will do me good. I still manage to get there early and, not wanting to disrupt him, I lurk outside, check my emails and notifications: nothing, everything up to date. Jim sees me and comes over.
           

“Robert mate, how are you?”
           

“I’m good, thanks. No Leo tonight?”
           

“Nah. I managed to persuade him to take a night off. His first in a month. He’s at home cuddled up with the dogs.”
           

“I’m glad to hear it. But you need to take a night off too, okay?” I move closer and continue sotto voce, “Perhaps even both of you together. At the same time.”
           

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, waving me away, smiling. “You here to see Louis?”
           

“I am.”
           

“He’ll won’t be long.” Jim disappears into the café and returns with a dessert and a coffee, leaving it down in front of me without saying a word. Another smile.
           

“You’re so good to me.”
           

“I just ask one thing, okay? You be good to Louis. He loves you. You know that right? And I know things haven’t been easy, but-”
           

I wrap my hands around the coffee cup, heating myself up. “I know. I haven’t been good and I’ve put him through a lot, too much, and I’m sorry. I really am. Things will be different now. I promise.”
           

Jim nods and goes back to work.

           

It’s a beautiful evening and whilst I wait, I take out my phone. I take a deep breath and open the call log. I scroll back, thumbs flying through a myriad of calls, back eighteen months, to when James last rang. His name there, unassailable. Talking would be too much, after all this time. I click text and write, I hope you’re doing better now but of course, I write it in French.
           

I stare out into the street and know that I need to get proper help, that I need to move on, that I need to get better, if not for my sake, for Louis’, so he’ll stay. My phone pings once, almost apologetically. A text from James, also in French: I am. I understand why you left. I didn’t then but I do now. I’m sorry who I made you into. I read it twice, three times and then text him back, You didn’t do it alone.
           

The street is shutting up shop for the evening. Everyone is going home. James texts one last time, I hope Paris is everything you wanted it to be and more. I speak aloud, “Thank you James” and Louis is there. He is squinting at me, as if to see which me he is going to get today. I smile at him, take his hand and tell him, Allons à la maison.