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"If we hadn’t been drunk and crazy and ended up htwould you have come with me to France?" he asks "Just for the adventure of it?"

"I don’t know" But the answer is, I ht have I don’t need to move to Boston yet; I plan to because I had to leave my campus apartment but don’t want to move back in with my parents for the entire summer Paris--with Ansel only as a lover, maybe even just as a roommate--would be a wild adventure It wouldn’t carry the sa in with hi because we’reas a lover is i a twenty-three-year-old woman should do

He s to s while he’s lost in pleasure, but this is the first time I’ve requested it, and I don’t knohy I do it It seeerous, with his mouth, his voice, his accent like warm chocolate

"Do you speak any French?"

"Besides, ’cerise’?"

His eyes fall to e Chateau Croissant"

He repeats "croissant" in a s voice, and when he says it, it sounds like a completely different word I wouldn’t kno to spell the word he just said, but it ain

"Well, in that case I can tell you, Je n’ai plus désiré une fetemps ?a n’est peut-être même jamais arrivé" He pulls back, studies my reaction as if I’d be able to decode a word of it "Est-ce totaleically translate the words, butwildly inti?"

He nods "Of course"

"Why won’t you just annul it?"

He twists hishis eyes "Because you wrote it into our wedding vows We both vowed to stayseconds before I get over the shock of that I sure was a bossy little thing last night "But it’s not a real e," I whisper, and pretend I don’t see it when he winces a little "What does that vow mean anyway if we plan to break all the others about ‘until death do us part’?"

He rolls over and sits up at the edge of his bed, his back tohis hands onto his forehead "I don’t know I try not to break promises, I suppose This is all very weird forjust because I’ firm on this one point"

I sit up, crawl over to him and kiss his shoulder "It seehs, but then stands, ain I can sense he needs distance and it pushes a small ache between two of o

He pulls on his underwear and leans against the closet door, watching s, and they’re still wet froh the wetness feels cold now Changing my mind, I drop them on the floor and put on my bra and my jersey dress and step into my flip-flops

Ansel wordlessly hands me his phone and I text myself so he hasbut each other for a few painful beats

I reach forhis hands upon my mouth the way he seems to like soue, my lips, my teeth "I like this soat my collarbones, and to where my niles press up fro them into his mouth until the fabric is soaked It’s black, so no one but us will know, but I’ll feel the cool press of his kiss even after I walk out of the room

I want to pull us back to the bed

But he stands, studying ood, cerise"

It occurs toon my husband if I slept with so this ht at all, and I wonder if that’s the same fire I see in his expression

"You, too," I tell him