Page 19 of The Ring
I—I feel something wet slide down my right cheek.
Then the left one.
My hands fly to my face. I’m full-blown crying, and I didn’t even notice when it started.
I don’t know if it’s the embarrassment, the way he’s looking at me, or the large amount of alcohol I’ve ingested, but my stomach twists, and I run to the loo to throw up. Annabelle follows me and catches up with me in the stall. She holds my hair while I vomit what feels like everything I’ve been holding in for the past few months.
Chapter 10
Cornelia
Ididn’t mean to have sex with Nate; it kind of just happened. I know things just don’t happen, but that’s how it felt.
It was late November, and I had already been living in Paris for a little over two months.
All my friends have come to visit me. West and Annabelle visited together once. Annabelle came alone one more time, and once with Lucian and Laurie. I don’t know how Annabelle missed me since she almost lived with me a third of the time I was in Paris. She loves any excuse to go there—she adores the city. A part of me is scared that when she graduates this year, she’ll move there permanently. The only one who hadn’t come to visit me was Nate, but I didn’t mind. He was taking his company public and had a lot of work to do. Just because I’d come to Paris and left all my responsibilities behind didn’t mean my friends could do the same.
Finally, after launching his IPO and it being a success, he and Laurie had planned to visit me the last weekend ofNovember. However, Laurie cancelled at the last minute because of something related to school.
Laurie suggested changing it to the weekend after the boys’ yearly trip to New Orleans for Lucian and West’s birthday, but Nate and his girlfriend had just ended their long-term relationship. Now that he didn’t have work to hide behind, he needed an escape, which I know all too well. So he came to visit me alone.
We had a blast. We made our way up and down the city. But on the last night of his stay, we decided to go to Bambini and order a couple of truffle pizzas to go, then eat them in my flat.
We sat on the living room couch in the centre of the room, the windows wide open, offering a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower. We ate the pizzas and drank some wine. It was really nice; we put on some music and turned on the fake fireplace.
“I think I could live here,” I told Nate, looking out the window.
He looked at me, confused. “Aren’t you already living here?”
I turn to look at him. “I mean permanently,” I clarified.
“What about university, and your brother?”
“I’m sure there’s a decent enough uni here, and Anthony can come and visit me. As all of you.”
Nate thought for a second, pouring himself the remaining wine from the bottle. “You won’t stay here forever,” he said, as if it were a simple matter-of-fact.
I used to think there was no place I’d want to live other than London, at least not permanently. Living elsewhere for a few months? It sounded fun. But forever? I wasn’t so sure.
I lifted my nose in the air, feeling indignant. “I could.” While part of me agreed with him, I don’t like being contradicted.
“You won’t,” he countered, unfazed. “You complained twenty times today about how dirty the streets are.”
I had complained—for someone who appreciates clean and good-smelling things, the streets of Paris are certainly not it. And I must admit, I’ve discarded a few pairs of shoes and some long jeans because they touched mysterious liquids on the pavement while I was walking. I genuinely believe the streets in Paris could benefit from a thorough, city-wide scrub.
“You’re exaggerating. I didn’t complainthatmany times. And I can get past that.”Maybe.
“I’m pretty sure that was the exact number,” he replied, but didn’t press it. Instead, he pivoted to a new argument. “You own about fifteenLondonandI love Londonhoodies, and you wear them constantly, unironically.”
“I only have ten,” I corrected him.Well,I did. Now I have eleven. What can I say? They’re cute and cosy, and God forgive a girl for loving her home city. “And I could always get some Paris ones.”
He looked unimpressed with my arguments. “You’re a Londoner. You love London. And you’ve proclaimed a dozen times that it’s the greatest city in the world and that anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves.”
He got me there.
“And yet,” I countered, “I was born in Switzerland, so you could say I’m actually Swiss.” Technically, being born in Switzerland doesn’t automatically get you nationality, but being born there and having lived there for five years as a minor does. Which I did. Because of that, I have dual nationality.
His face grew serious. “You know as well as I do that being here is just an escape. You love London, and you would go back to it.”
