Dating Game полностью

“Jean-Pierre, I can't marry you. I love you, but I just can't. The future is too uncertain … and you deserve so much more than I can give you … kids, if nothing else.” And he deserved to be a kid, if he wanted to be. The problem was, she needed an adult, and she wasn't sure he ever would be. Or not for a long time at least.

“Will you live with me in France, unmarried?” he asked in a strangled voice. His heart felt like a rock in his chest, just as hers once had. She knew it only too well, and hated doing it to him. But it was better this way in the long run. Better now than later. Better a terrible pain now than a total disaster later on, for both of them. She silently shook her head, and he walked home alone.

He said almost nothing to her that night, and he slept downstairs. He would not sleep with her again, would not touch her, would not beg her. And in the morning his bags were packed. She did not go to work that day, and they both cried uncontrollably when he left.

“I love you. I will always love you. If you want to come, I will be there. If you want me to come back, I will.” She couldn't have asked for more, and she was throwing it away. She felt insane. But right. At a terrible, terrible price. For both of them. “Je t'aime” were his last words.

“Moi aussi,” she whispered, and sobbed when he was gone. It was almost beyond bearing, but she bore it, because she knew it was right. She loved him. Too much to make a mistake. And enough to set him free, which was the greatest gift of love she could give him, and the right one, she believed.

She didn't go to the office all week, and when she did, she looked like death. She had been there before. She knew it well. She didn't even call Anne Smythe this time. She just gritted her teeth and lived through it. And on the second anniversary of the day Peter had left her, all she could think of was the double loss. And this time she knew that she had learned yet another painful lesson. That she could not give her heart again. Ever. Peter had taken the biggest part of it with him. And when Jean-Pierre had left, it had cost her the rest.

Chapter 27

Peter and Rachel's baby came the day after Wim's birthday, on the seventh of May. Three days after Paris's. She was numb by then, and almost didn't care. Almost. But some part of her still did. All she could think of were the moments she and Peter had shared with their babies. A time when life was beginning, not over for her as it was now. It just added to the bleak landscape she saw all around her, and a sense of utter despair.

Although she said little to them, and never mentioned Jean-Pierre, her children had no idea how to console her, and worried about her. Meg talked to Richard about it every time she spoke to her mother, and finally called Bix.

“How is she really? She sounds awful, but she keeps telling me she's fine. She doesn't sound fine to me.” Meg sounded worried, and sad for her mom.

“She isn't fine,” he confirmed, much to Meg's chagrin. “I guess she just has to get through it. I think it's a lot of stuff on top of each other. Your father. His new baby. Jean-Pierre. It all hurts like hell.”

“What can I do to make it better?”

“Nothing. She has to get through it herself. She'll find the way back. She has before.” But the road back was more arduous this time, and seemed to take longer. Although nothing would ever be as bad again as when Peter had left her, except death. This time she did not die. But she crawled back slowly, on her own. And the only thing that kept her going were the plans for Meg and Richard's wedding in the fall. They were having three hundred guests, and she and Bix were handling it all. Meg had total faith in them, and was leaving all the decisions to her mother.

It was in June, two months after Jean-Pierre left, that Paris finally couldn't stand it any longer, and sat for an entire night staring at the phone. She had promised herself that if she still wanted to call him in the morning, she would, and do whatever he wanted her to do, if he still did. She couldn't tolerate the agony anymore. She had been lonely for too long, and she missed him more than she ever knew she would. At eight o'clock in the morning in San Francisco, five in the afternoon in Paris, she called Jean-Pierre. Her heart pounded waiting to hear him, as she wondered if she could be on a flight by that night. If he still wanted her, she knew she would go. Maybe the age difference didn't matter after all.

The phone rang, and a woman's voice answered. She sounded very young. Paris didn't know who it was, and she asked for him. The girl said he was out. Paris spoke to her in French. She was able to now, thanks to him.

“Do you know when he's coming back?”

“Soon,” the girl said. “He went to pick up my little girl. I have the flu.”