“The city, then,” he muttered to himself, standing up and drinking half of his coffee in one swallow. It was late, like his sister had said, and he didn’t have anything to do. Taking a walk across the Seine would kill some time, and maybe he could find some place to people watch.
He’d only been walking for a few kilometers when he ended up near Le Select, which was a café, he’d never even thought of eating at, but it wasn’t the dozens of wicker chairs and wide-eyed tourists that stopped him in his tracks. It was the man across the street from the café, the man with bleached blond hair and a scowl on his otherwise flawless and beautiful face.
Who, Leonidas wondered, could be anywhere in this city with a frown like that? He lingered across the street, watching the man to see if his reaction changed, but it didn’t. He just stood with his arms folded across his chest and a frown marring his features. His eyes moved, watching people cross the street and form a line, waiting for seats, watching people eating and drinking and laughing together, watching people pretend to be Parisian…
He didn’t know anything about this man, but in that moment…
He wanted to.
3
Andy
Andy stoodon Boulevard du Montparnasse and frowned.
He hated everything about Paris so far, and he’d only been there for a handful of days. He’d come from Bruges, where he’d sent a few postcards back to the States before he’d left from Brussels on a train to Paris. Charlie would like that he’d gone to Bruges because he was obsessed with the movie and, if Andy was being honest, it was the only reason he’d gone that far west.
Belgium, on the whole, was absolutely beautiful. One of his favorite stops from his travels, but Paris…
He hated it.
Paris was loud and busy and crowded, and the weather was unpredictable and he didn’t think he’d stopped sweating since he’d gotten to France. The sky was mostly blue, but the clouds that hovered held so much precipitation in them, Andy found himself praying for rain just so the air could dry out when they’d emptied.
He stared across the street at Le Select which had, of course, piqued his interest because it was in Montparnasse, because Miller and Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald had been there before, and he was thirsty for things and places and moments that held history like that. But as he studied the cramped couples and groups at the tables on the street and counted the people in the line that wrapped around the block and into the crosswalk, he worried that he’d been fooled.
Paris was glitz and glamour and somehow all the history of the city drowned in the modernity of the bustle that came with transportation and technology. He loved the internet, he loved mass transit, and he lovedthe rightpeople. This was not right, though. At least at the small hotel he’d booked a kilometer or so away, there was a quiet garden courtyard where he could sit on a wicker chair that looked just like the ones at the cafe, and drink coffee he assumed probably tasted the same, but cost a lot less.
He didn’t have tickets out of Paris yet, but he only had a couple months left before he intended to go back to Colorado. It had been almost a year since his dad died, and his brothers had been managing the hotel he’d left them, but he was tired. He’d bought out of the hotel and left for Europe because he’d been working behind a desk since he was in his twenties. Nearly fifteen years he’d spent working for other people, just to be allowed two weeks off a year that he never even took because he was always so busy with work.
Andy hadn’t ever wanted to tap into their father’s money—not in the way Cameron, his youngest brother, had—so he’d insisted on paying his own way for everything. His apartment was small, but his. His car was mid-range, but his. His clothes, not designer, but also his. So when his father passed and Andy was given the opportunity to become a millionaire with a quick signature and a few initials on some dotted lines, he barely thought twice.
Charlie had tried to talk him out of it, but for as much as Andy loved his oldest brother, he wasn’t interested in buying into doing anything for their father. He’d manipulated them their entire lives, casting Charlie in the role of unwitting father by being so absentee, Brad in the role of Charles Motel Jr, even though he wasn’t the namesake…they all had their parts to play. And they had, going along for decades with little complaint.
This was his out and he was going to take it and if it made him selfish, then so be it. Cameron teased him the most, asking if he was going backpacking across Europe to find himself or to get fucked. But Andy had no intention of backpacking anywhere. He had millions in the bank now, and he used them. He didn’t always book the most luxurious hotels. He chose to stay in the places that appealed to him the most, but money was no longer an object for him and that…fuck, it was freeing.
“Vous avez l'air miserable.”
A voice beside him drew his attention and Andy turned, sizing up the man who’d come to stand beside him. He was attractive, there was no doubt about it. Tall and slim, but somehow also muscular and defined. He wore a tight black t-shirt that stretched across his chest and a faded black beanie sat high on his head, exposing a mess of black curls that framed the sides of his face.
“Pardon?” he scoffed, taking in the way the man’s long legs filled out a pair of tight, dark jeans.
“You look miserable,” the man repeated, but this time in English, even though his voice was thick with another accent that definitely wasn’t French.
“I speak enough French,” Andy said, turning his attention back across the street to Le Select. “I understood you.”
“Milas Hellinika?”
The man’s voice sounded like sweet honey as it dripped out of his mouth in whatever language he’d just spoken.
“Je ne comprends pas,” Andy answered.
The man chuckled, another deep and rich sound. “Maybe we should stick with English then.”
Andy bristled, hating the assumption that he couldn’t hold a conversation in a language that wasn’t his own. He might not be able to identify the second language this stranger had used, but he could manage French well enough to end this conversation.
“I know enough French.”
“I do not.” The man smirked at him, then followed Andy’s stare across the street. “Are you interested in an overpriced pain au chocolat?”
