Sleeping with Paris Page 2

  “And these websites? All of your online profiles? How long have you been doing that?”

  Jeff shook his head in silence, his eyes darting frantically around the room as if he was desperate to escape. Desperate to jump out of his skin and be anywhere but here.

  “Answer me.”

  “Charlotte, I love you. I didn’t mean to hurt you, really,” he pleaded as a couple of stray beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.

  “You sure have a sick way of showing your love.” I couldn’t take any more. I had to get out of there. I pivoted on my wobbly legs and bolted for the door.

  “Charlotte, don't go. We’re leaving in two days. We can work this out. We can get through this!” Jeff grabbed hold of my arm, but I yanked it back and smacked the champagne bottle in the process. The tall bottle of Veuve Clicquot flew through the air in slow motion, then shattered all over the shiny hard wood floors. I stared at the shards of glass and fizzy bubbles that circled our feet, my heart aching for what should've been a celebration of our love, but what had now become the aftermath of Jeff's deception.

  I lifted my eyes to his, knowing that this was it. No matter how much I'd loved Jeff, I couldn't stay. “We are not leaving in two days. I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m not marrying you, and I’m not moving to Paris with you.”

  With that, I left him bewildered in his office and stormed outside into the stifling DC heat.

  Two

  vendredi, le 24 septembre

  Wine and girlfriends—don’t leave home without them.

  I stumbled over the red brick sidewalks of Georgetown in a daze. How was it that my life had taken such a hideous turn in a matter of an hour? How was it that the man I thought I knew, the man who I thought loved me more than anything, could be someone else entirely, someone who cheated on me? Someone who was stupid enough to broadcast himself on online dating sites and think that I would never find out?

  I felt like a complete idiot. Had there been other girls besides Brooke? Was Jeff still going to go to Paris? Without me? With that red-headed porn star on the website? Was he ever planning on telling me about her?

  Suddenly, all I could see was the grotesque image of Jeff and Brooke having sex. In Jeff’s bed. The same bed I had slept in with him only two nights before . . . and the bed where they had apparently slept together just last night. The thought of it made me want to double over and heave. He was mine after all, not hers or anyone else’s. I was the one wearing his ring, I was the one he had invited to go to Paris with him, and I was the one he loved.

  At least I’d thought he loved me.

  I hadn’t even realized which direction I was walking until I turned the corner of Prospect and 33rd Street, just a couple of blocks away from the university and down the street from my best friend Katie’s house. Katie and I had grown up together in Ohio, shared our college years as roommates, and now Katie was in her fourth year of medical school at Georgetown. I knocked on her door, praying she was home.

  “Hey lady,” Katie greeted me in her usual cheery tone as she swung the door open. But once she took a look at my red, splotchy face, she ushered me into the living room. “What’s the matter, Charlotte? What happened?”

  I sank into Katie's cushy gray couch and spilled all of the nasty details while she stared at me in disbelief.

  “He put himself on three online dating sites? That's disgusting. I mean, he's thirty-two for God's sake and he was the one who was so intent on getting engaged after only a few months! This just doesn't make any sense. I'm so sorry, Charlotte.”

  “Why does this keep happening? Why does every single guy I date cheat on me? What is wrong with me, Katie?”

  She grabbed my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “There's nothing wrong with you, Charlotte. You're wonderful. You're the best thing that ever happened to Jeff. He didn't deserve you.”

  “This never happens to you though. There must be something with me, something that I do, that makes men want to run around on me.”

  Katie shook her head. “I haven't had as many long relationships as you have. And the guys I've dated . . . well, they're just different than the type of guy you usually date.”

  “You mean they're not assholes.”

  “I don't mean that you purposely choose assholes, Charlotte. What I mean is that you've had bad luck with the guys you've fallen for. You did the right thing though. You can't marry that lying sack of shit.” Katie’s pale cheeks turned cherry red in her fury.

  “But what am I going to do now? I gave up my teaching job and my translating job, and in two days, I won’t even have a place to live.”

  “They already rented out your studio?”

  “Yeah, like five seconds after I told them I wasn’t renewing my lease.”

  “And your school already found a new French teacher?”

  “They hired some girl straight out of college. It’s too late to get it back.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, I know. And I loved that job too. I would’ve never, ever given it up if I had known . . .” I buried my face into my hands, hoping Katie could give me some answers to this catastrophe. “I’m going to have to move back to Ohio with my parents like some pathetic failure.”

  “You’re not moving back to Ohio,” Katie asserted as she stood and paced back and forth across the living room, the way she always did when she was trying to figure out a solution to a problem. “You can stay here as long as you need to, you know that. I just can’t believe he did this. I really can’t. We'll figure everything out, but right now you need to breathe and have a drink.”

  She went into the kitchen and came back with a huge glass of red wine. “Did you hear from the Sorbonne yet?”

  “Yeah, I got in, but I’m not going,” I said before letting a huge gulp of smooth red wine roll down my throat.

  I stared out the window and tried to imagine what it would be like to move to France by myself. Over the past few months, I’d imagined every single detail of what my life would be like in Paris with Jeff. With Jeff being the operative words there. Finally, after months of waiting, we were going to live together, and I was going to take graduate level French teaching courses at the Sorbonne—an absolute dream come true for me.

  But I was no longer the fiancée of Jeff Dillon, a high-powered DC lawyer whose firm was paying for our lavish Parisian apartment while I went to school full-time. I was back to being Charlotte Summers, the meagerly-paid high school French teacher. And hell, I wasn’t even an employed French teacher anymore. I had even given that up for him. So, the thought of moving to France on my own with no plan and barely any money didn’t sound too appealing at the moment.

  Katie sat back down next to me and looked me in the eye. “Charlotte, this is what you’ve always wanted to do. You love France. You’ve been saving your money since we graduated just so you could move to Paris, study at the Sorbonne and teach over there. You’ll regret it forever if you don’t at least give it a shot. Screw Jeff. I know you loved him and never imagined things would turn out this way, but maybe going to Paris will get your mind off of him and help you move on. And it will be all about you this time, not about some asshole guy.”

  “But what if Jeff goes to Paris too?”

  “He doesn't deserve to go, that bastard. Paris is yours!” Katie declared, as if Paris was one of our communal possessions, and it now belonged to me since Jeff was the reason we were breaking up. “Is he still going?”

  “I don't know, I didn't ask him. I didn't want to know at the time. All I could think about was that disgusting girl and what he probably did with her.”

  “Don't even go there right now. It's not going to do any good. Either way, whether he’s going or not, it doesn’t mean you couldn’t still go. It’s a big enough city, I doubt you’d run into him.”

  I took another gulp of wine, hoping the numbness would set in soon.

  “It’s just a thought,” she continued. “Maybe it’s a bit much to worry about right now though. I think we
need to get you another glass of wine and watch a movie. Something to take your mind off of this.”

  Just as I was about to agree to spending the afternoon at Katie’s and drowning my sorrows in wine and television, Katie’s phone rang.

  “Shoot, it’s the hospital. I have to go. I’m so sorry. Are you going to be okay by yourself tonight? Maybe we should ask Hannah to come over.”

  “No, please don't tell Hannah yet. This is so humiliating. I mean Hannah and Mike are the ones who introduced me to Jeff in the first place, and we just agreed to be in their wedding next spring. Jeff's the best man.” I downed the last of my wine as I stood up. “What a mess.”

  Katie hugged me once more. “Don't worry about the wedding. I'm sure Hannah will disinvite Jeff all together once she finds out what he did to you. I won't say anything to her yet though.”

  “Thanks Katie. For everything.”

  “Of course. Think about what I said though, will you?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  “It’s about you this time Charlotte, not about him.”

  Katie gave me one more squeeze, then sent me back out into the oppressive heat. I trudged down to M street to catch the bus home to my modest studio apartment off of Dupont Circle where I had been living alone since I graduated from Georgetown a couple of years earlier. As I took a seat on the bus, I glanced down at my watch. It was already four p.m. One hour since my life had taken the plunge from engaged bliss to pathetic singledom.

  It hit me then, like a ton of bricks—I was single again. I wouldn't have the comfort of saying, “my fiancé and I” anymore. Waves of sadness and rage flowed through me in spurts as I rode home in silence, staring out the window of the bus, realizing that my world didn’t look nearly as shiny as it had only a couple of hours before.

  When I made it back home to my Massachusetts Avenue apartment building, I walked through the shabby, maroon-carpeted lobby and into the mailroom. I opened my mailbox to find one thin, white envelope from the Sorbonne.

  I didn’t have the energy to find out what was inside, so instead of tearing it open like I would’ve done if the past hour had never happened, I took the elevator up to the eighth floor, walked into my sweltering studio and tossed the envelope in the trash. What did it matter at this point anyway?

  I made my way through the large stacks of boxes to crank up the air conditioning. As I passed by the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My big brown eyes had evolved into two mascara-smudged, swollen messes, and strands of my long, dark brown hair were plastered to my face and sticking up in every direction. I was normally so put together—never a hair out of place, and never crying in public. Ever. But as I stared at myself in the mirror, I realized this wasn’t exactly a normal situation. It wasn’t every day that I discovered my fiancé was a nasty, sleazy, cheating piece of crap.

  After I emerged from the bathroom, I took off my three-inch heels and envisioned shoving them up Jeff’s perfectly toned ass. Instead I hurled them across the room. I ripped off my sweaty black skirt and my stupid, uncomfortable thong and threw on a pair of cotton underwear, a tank top and some comfy shorts. I grabbed a bottle of red wine off the kitchen counter and curled up on my couch.

  Unwilling to face the prospect of my now unsettled life, I chugged the last half of the bottle in desperation (who needed a wine glass?), lost myself in the television until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, and finally fell asleep wrapped around the empty bottle. Pathetic, but I needed something to hold onto.

  Three

  samedi, le 25 septembre

  It’s time to throw love out the window for good.

  I woke up the next morning with a raging headache and the shocking realization that everything that had taken place the day before was real. That my fiancé whoring himself out on an online dating service wasn’t a bad dream. It had actually happened. Unbelievable.

  I checked my phone to see if Jeff had called. He had. Three times. Wow, I must've really passed out. I listened to my messages to see what the pathetic liar had to say for himself.

  “Charlotte, I don't know what to say. I screwed up. I really, really screwed up bad. I love you, and I know we can get through this. It will never happen again, I swear.” Damn right it won’t. “Please call me when you get this.”

  Yeah right. I wanted him to sit and smother in his misery. I knew he would miss me, no matter what was going on in his gross online dating life. My anger rose as I mulled over the situation.

  Since I was thirteen, I'd had a never-ending string of long relationships, one folding right into the next, barely leaving me time to breathe in between. And as I scanned through my dating history, I thought again about the fact that every single guy I had ever dated had cheated on me, right down to my first real boyfriend in junior high. It was an epidemic! I had truly believed that Jeff was different, but he was just like the rest of them. How many guys cheating on me was it going to take for me to realize that men don't commit?

  My friends were no strangers to heartbreak either. With the exception of my two closest friends, Katie and Hannah, nearly all of my other girlfriends had dated at least one, if not several, scummy cheaters. We’d all had our hearts torn apart by men, yet we willingly jumped into the next relationship, hoping, believing that this guy would be “the one,” that he would be different from all the rest.

  Meanwhile men, especially gorgeous men like Jeff, were able to have a constant string of women coming in, so that even if they got their feelings hurt by one of them, the hurt was insignificant because they had ten more women waiting in line, or waiting online in Jeff's case. If I was ever going to make it in this world without experiencing continuous heartbreak and endless dramatic break-ups, I needed to treat them the way they'd all treated me!

  I sat down at my computer with the intention of spilling all of my anger onto an empty page when I remembered the blog I’d created to keep in touch with family and friends back home. As I pulled up the website, there at the top of the page was a picture of me and Jeff, our heads pressed together in that annoying pose that couples do when they’re totally in love. Or at least when they appear to be in love. I’d titled the blog “Charlotte and Jeff’s Parisian Adventures.” It almost made me gag to look at it. I needed to delete everything on this page immediately.

  Just as I was about to hit the “delete” button though, I stopped. Katie’s words from the day before resonated in my head. I’d already given up both of my jobs, I was about to lose my apartment, I had a plane ticket to Paris leaving the next day, and I’d already been accepted to the Sorbonne.

  I could still go to Paris.

  I jumped up from my desk, ran over to the trash can and fished out the letter from the Sorbonne. I tore open the envelope to find a note from my new advisor, Madame Rousseau, letting me know that we had our first meeting in three short days.

  I had to go.

  Back in college, when I was studying abroad in Lyon, a city a few hours south of Paris, I’d traveled up to Paris for a week to visit a friend who’d just started this exact teaching program at the Sorbonne. That week, I fell in love with her life. Morning classes at the Sorbonne. An adorable apartment on the left bank of the river. Afternoons spent drinking wine with friends at cafés on beautiful cobblestone streets. I’d made the decision right then and there that after college, I would save every spare dime, get into that program, and move to Paris.

  The problem was, as a private school teacher in an expensive city, there hadn’t been too many dimes to spare.

  I signed onto my bank account and felt my stomach drop as the $5,000 balance on the screen mocked my life dreams. My meager savings might get me through two or three months at best, but what was I supposed to live on for the rest of the year as a full-time student? As I racked my brain trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to pull this off, my eye caught the stack of wedding magazines in the corner of my apartment.

  And then I remembered it—the joint bank account Jeff had open
ed to put money aside for the wedding, and more specifically, for the gorgeous designer wedding dress I’d fallen in love with.

  I pulled up the bank website and typed like a madwoman to sign in. To my relief, a beautiful balance of $10,000 remained untouched. I began to set up a transfer to my personal account when my conscience nagged at me. Technically, this was Jeff’s money. Did I really have the right to take it? Some of this money was supposed to go toward my wedding dress, so what was the difference if I just transferred it into my account? But, the whole $10,000? No, I couldn’t take all of it . . . could I?

  I tapped my pen against the desk and stared at the screen. I thought of what he’d done to me—how he’d trampled on my dreams to move to France with him. How he’d betrayed me. How he’d been sleeping with another woman and telling me he loved me all in the same day.

  I couldn’t contain myself. I hit the transfer button and sent the entire $10,000 straight to my bank account. Screw him. I was going to Paris. With the low exchange rate, $10,000 more wouldn’t even stretch that far . . . unless I found a really inexpensive apartment and lived on bread, cheese, chocolate and cheap wine. I could manage that.

  So, with a plane ticket, an acceptance letter, $15,000, and a broken heart, I was still on my way to Paris.

  I pulled up the blog again and stared at it for a few minutes. I thought about the cheating epidemic and how horrible it was that I had to go through this. That any woman ever had to feel this low, this unloved. Why should we all keep making the same mistakes? There had to be a better way.

  Instead of hitting the “delete” button, I hit the “edit” button. I trashed the picture of me and Jeff and hoped I’d never have to look at it again. Then I deleted the cheesy title and typed:

  Rule # 1: Men are bastards.

  Rule # 2: Do not fall in love with one of these bastards. Ever again.

  Rule # 3: Date like a man—use men for sex when necessary but do not get attached.