I’d carried her into the bedroom and we’d slept together, entwined. For a man who never shared his bed, it came easy with Ana. I woke with my arm around her in a protective circle, her ass against my engorged cock.
She didn’t seem to realize my state, though. Or if she did, she chose to go librarian on me and hop out of bed. There was Paris outside the window. I understood her excitement. The sun shone on the streets, calling us outside.
“Ash!” she exclaimed, hopping up and down. “Croissants!”
“Pain au chocolat,” I smiled at her, telling my boy to settle down. My girl had a city to explore, and apparently some baked goods to enjoy. Patience. He’d have his moment in the sun. Lots of them, if I had my way.
We spent the day ambling along, letting ourselves get pulled into a mixture of classic tourist attractions and random storefronts, basically anything that caught our eye. The Musee d’Orsay, a shoe store, Notre Dame cathedral, a chocolate shop, the Eiffel tower. We stopped for café au laits and, once the afternoon turned long, glasses of Bordeaux.
The bar we found was a little hole-in-the wall. The ancient bartender looked to be about 80 and he still used the black swiping machine for my credit card, with the raised numbers pressing into the purple ink on the paper. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one of those things.
We found a quiet table in a corner, just the two of us in the Parisian night.
“I have to confess something.” Ana leaned in to me. My dick remembered a confession she’d made last night. I didn’t say that, though, I merely leaned in to listen. “I just realized wine types are named after actual regions in France.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Bordeaux is on the coast.”
“And Burgundy and Champagne. They’re places!”
“I want to take you to all of them.” It had been years since I’d been in the French countryside. I’d lived in England for a few years after my parents divorced, with my grandmother. She’d taken us around the continent, as she called it, making us visit churches in obscure towns. I’d sulked and dragged my feet like a typical 13-year-old boy, too cool for school. Tours had taken me back through France, of course, but not to Bordeaux.
And I’d love to take Ana to Provence. We could rent an estate for a few weeks, just us. We could break in every room in the house, plus a lot of those places had extensive grounds. There’d be all sorts of hidden groves and alcoves where I could fuck her and fuck her again.
“Do you see what I see?” Ana gave me a mischievous smile and nodded her head behind her. Another place where we could fuck?
“What?” I asked, my eyes not leaving her face. For all the sights to see in Paris, she was my favorite. And it wasn’t just because I’d been to Paris before. Ana pulled me in like a magnet, her radiance, her excitement. She might be the first person who really helped me understand the phrase ‘beautiful inside and out.’ She was definitely making me think some pretty over-the-top thoughts. Even two weeks ago I would have rolled my eyes at a sap like me, mooning over his girl. Who he hadn’t even slept with. There it was again, on my mind, fucking. I took a sip of my wine.
“They have a piano!”
She was right, tucked in a corner by a window, they had an old but gorgeous upright. Everything in Paris looked old but gorgeous, even this tiny, hole-in-the-wall bar. Narrow and simple, there was almost nothing to it. No celebrity DJs or signature drinks served by sexy waitresses or VIP rooms admitting only a select few. This bar was all understatement, but the more you sat the more you noticed the rich, subtle details. The gilded frames on the ancient paintings and mirrors on the walls, the carved wooden legs on the bar stools, the burnished gleam of the polished brass lamps. And they had a piano.
“Should we?” She looked at me, all impish delight. As if anyone could say no to that.
“Let’s do it.” I knew I was risking some exposure going over and playing piano. I’d relished our time in Paris; thus far I’d only noticed a handful of people recognizing me. And it had been the harmless type, families on vacation over the holidays, usually one of the daughters’ or moms’ eyes going wide when they realized who I was. But they weren’t on the hunt, they didn’t have professional cameras trained in with zoom lenses, and Ana and I had successfully ducked them all. Pure heaven.
“May we?” Ana asked the bartender who was busy doing not much at all behind the bar. There weren’t many patrons, but he hadn’t been overly solicitous with us. Or solicitous at all, really.
He shrugged. “Bien sur.” But of course we could play piano. I loved the French. Simultaneously embracing the pleasures of life while also acknowledging the fleeting nature of it all, the balance of “la vie en rose” with a dash of ennui.
Me, I was a more simple guy. I knew what I wanted and I liked to indulge. Right now, I wanted to sit next to my girl and play piano.
We sat together on the bench and it was all so easy, our fingers finding the keys, in sync as we noodled around. Then she found a melody and I followed, a lilting tune I didn’t think I’d heard before.
“You make that up?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Not really. It’s a Russian folksong my parents used to sing to me.”
“Sounds like more than that.” Her fingers played and danced along the keys, giving it twists and twirls, fanciful and light.
“I’ve added on.”
She was so modest. I wondered if she even knew how talented she was. So many people I knew, famous in the music industry, could barely play a note. A camera-ready face, a hot body, sexy dance moves and an active social media following went a long way to promoting your music career. Where vocals failed, auto-tuners could correct, and professional songwriters and studio musicians could always be hired in cheap to fill the gaps. Ana’s technical expertise and lyrical creativity really blew me away.
I took her melody and blended it into something I was working on, morphing it and transitioning it into the chords I kept hearing over and over in my head. It really stuck with me, this theme, and I knew it was going somewhere but I didn’t know how it would come out, yet. She heard it and joined in, recognizing it from what we’d played together in Santa Clara. She read it as easily as if she had sheet music with it in front of her, yet her eyes were closed. She felt it, the same way I did. Something moved inside my chest, something that had lain dormant my whole life. I looked at her by my side, so lost in the music. I was lost in her.
“Oh! Look! It’s started snowing!” She’d opened her eyes, looked out the window, and it was true. Fat, lazy flakes came drifting down out of the sky, a perfect accompaniment to our evening. Unhurried, languorous, enjoying their spectacular moment in free fall.
“Oh, the weather outside is frightful,” I couldn’t help but begin singing, quietly, just to Ana. It was only three days after Christmas. Holiday songs could still be sung. By the time I got to the chorus, Ana joined me, looking up with a full smile on her face.
“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.” Oh, man, she had a lovely voice, too, just like the rest of her. Sweet and soft, she sounded like a classic crooner from the 1950s, melting hearts with her candied notes.
A few more people came into the bar as we sang, but I didn’t mind. This was too much fun to worry about getting spotted. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had fun like this. Connor and I used to mess around with music together, him on bass and me on guitar or piano, but we hadn’t in who knew how long. It had been practice, perfect, perform, driving hard into the next show, for a couple of years now. Those early days of exploring and creating, getting a spark and fanning it into a flame, that hadn’t happened together for a while. I hated to admit it, but we’d even cribbed a few songs from a ghostwriter for our last album. I’d made sure they were well-compensated for their work, but it wasn’t the same.
But now wasn’t the time for feeling guilty and reflecting on how I’d failed to live up to my own musical standards over the past couple of years. Now was the time to sit next to my girl and
sing, our fingers playing over the keys.
That song ended, and I started up the familiar notes to another holiday song. She smiled up at me and picked up my cue like we’d been doing this together for years. With a shy, sexy lilt to her voice, she started in.
“I really can’t stay.”
“Baby it’s cold outside.”
“I’ve got to go away.”
“Baby it’s cold outside.”
We flirted through the lyrics, her demure and resistant to my relentless seduction. We were speaking other’s words, but they rang out real and true.
“I ought to say no, no, no sir.” She shook her head, an adorable pout on those luscious lips.
“Mind if I move in closer.” I gave her a slow smile and did just that, our thighs pressed together, the heat traveling right through our clothes into each other. Did she know how husky she was making her voice, how perfectly sexy she sounded? She was like a pro, giving all that emotion into her vocals. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was getting turned on. Wait, was she?