Chloë and Harry

Chapter 11

APOCALYPSE – CIGARETTES AFTER SEX

MMMH, THE BAND HAS A WONDERFUL TITLE, THOUGH I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE SEX WITHOUT CIGARETTES AFTERWARDS. BUT I HAVE TO ADMIT, THOSE SCENES IN MOVIES WHERE THEY SHARE A CIGARETTE AFTERWARDS AND TALK ABOUT LIFE ARE VERY EROTIC, ESPECIALLY IN BLACK AND WHITE. BUT WHAT ABOUT WE HAVE LONG MIDNIGHT CONVERSATIONS WITHOUT SMOKING? YOUR HEAD RESTING ON MY CHEST AND I PLAY WITH YOUR HAIR AND LISTEN TO YOUR VOICE AND CLOSE MY

EYES AND WISH YOU'D NEVER LEAVE.

The first text I ever got from Harry was on the morning two days after he left. It was a Thursday.

concept: me cuddling with you in Paris

our bodies close together under the sheets

i don't just mean close i mean closer

and my lips litter your face with a whole lot of kisses -

are you in? xx Harry

I texted him back. I wanted to meet him again, and hell yes, I wanted to go to Paris. I had never been there before, and I could hardly concentrate imagining him and me sharing a bed, it made me nervous, and I was afraid it could turn out to be awkward or pretentious because he realised that I was not that special.

sure. i'm in. but when?

What if he – after a couple of days – would realise that I was not as sweet, as pretty or whatever he believed I was. It could quickly turn out to be really, really awkward and I didn't want it to be. I wanted to jump on a plane or get into his dented white vintage old-timer, and I wanted to drive over endless streets with him, right now. Strangely, the thought of us storming off to Paris head over heels didn't frighten me as much as the thought of us, pretending to be civilised, departing from a plane and heading towards a hotel.

i thought about tomorrow? i could pick you up and we could

take a plane at 9:00, because it's driving me insane

how i can't have you right now.

I had to stop myself from screaming at my phone. I pressed my fingers around it and breathed in heavily to control the excitement that welled up inside of me.

perfect.

What a stupid thing to write. It looked so dumb compared to his words, somewhat too angelic, too short. I pressed send. Maybe Rachel was right. It was too much about me. I racked my brain about everything I did and wondered when I had stopped trusting my gut instincts. It was because he intimidated me. There was something about his manner that made me seek perfection, though it had never been an expectation of mine before. Maybe it was his age, or how god-damn romantic and serendipitous our first meeting was, or the fact that he had both feet on the ground while I was wandering about in the endless width of studies without having any idea of what exactly it was that I wanted to become.

I had told Rachel about our plans to go to Paris for the weekend, which lead to her giving an unbridled soliloquy about the importance of Paris in the existentialist philosophy, because there'd be so many places that Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir spent their time at, and we'd have to go to hundreds

of cafés and sit at the same places and imagine the discussions they had, and we'd have to go to museums and visit little book shops and maybe go to the university and I finally told her to shut her mouth and help me pack my things, which we did. At this point, it seemed as if she was more excited than me. Maybe, she was just less nervous, because a) she was born in Paris and b) she was French and c) she spoke French and d) she was just effortlessly sexy in a very Parisian way and e) she had nothing to lose and f) she wasn't even going, so she could dream and philosophise and fly on rose-coloured clouds while thinking of a wonderful romantic weekend in la ville de l'armour et de la philosophie existentialiste et des bises et des fucking croissants et macarons et je ne sais quoi.