Francis’s flat, pale eyes and his dorky, frizzy hair that stuck out like yellow-orange spikes were evident in every photo. His skin on his thin frame was so milky white that it looked like he’d never seen the sun, which is hard to do in Arizona. He slathered fifty SPF sunscreen on every day because sunlight made his freckles worse. He always looked like he’d been dunked in baby powder and smelled like cheap paint.
She said, “I was so stupid.” It was all her own fault. She might as well admit it. “You ready for this? This is how stupid I was. I thought Francis was going to propose to me on this trip.”
“Francis?” Augustine asked.
“Yeah, Francis Senft. It’s a stupid name—too many consonants. I’m better off staying with Clark. So, two months ago, Francis asked me about what I wanted a marriage proposal to be like, ‘in case he did something.’ He measured my ring finger with a piece of string. So,I believed himbecause I’m an idiot, and I bought us two tickets to Paris for a romantic vacation together because I thought he was The One.”
She wanted to smash then-Dree over the head for being so stupid.
So very,verystupid.
Instead, hot tears filled her eyes again, and she looked down from Augustine and stared at the half-eaten croissant on the white kitchen counter. “How stupid was I, that I believed him, that I fell for everything he said, hook, line, and sinker? I bought the plane tickets. I gave him access to everything I owned. I thought we were going to getmarried.I always thought I was savvy, that I could take care of myself, but I’m just someone who’s dumb enough to get swindled.”
A hot, wet drip drew a line down her cheek. Then another.
Dree covered her stupid face with her hands, trying to stop crying. She shouldn’t be crying. She’d gotten what she’d deserved for being so stupid.
Warmth touched her hand. Augustine’s fingers slowly slipped around hers.
She clutched his hand but kept her other one over her face.“Don’t be nice to me.Don’t encourage this. I’m not a crier. I’mtough.Ranchers don’t cry,”she ground out through clenched teeth.
God, she was even madder at herself forcrying.
She couldn’t open her eyes, but she heard Augustine say, “You loved him.”
She nodded and sucked in a gasp. She tried to steady her voice, but it came out as a stupid croak anyway. “I did. I loved him. I was stupid, and I loved him. I told him I loved him every night before we went to sleep. He said it back. Ibelievedhim, and I’m an idiot for believing him.”
Augustine’s hand tightened around hers. “It’s not stupid to believe in love.”
“I should have been smarter. I should have looked for the red flags that he was actually a grifter and just trying to get money because he totally blindsided me. Istilldon’t see anything. I still don’t understandwhyhe did it, other than because he wanted money andhe didn’t want me.”
“I know what it’s like not to be wanted and not to understand why.”
She squinted at him through her fingers. “You? No way. Anybody who likes dudes would hand you their panties.”
He smiled a little on one side of his mouth. “Not all of them. Go ahead. Finish telling me your lies about Francis.”
“This is too hard.”
“Then it’s okay. We’ll put it on hold for a while.”
She started talking again because she couldn’t stop. “And then, after all that happened, I didn’t know what to do. There was this police car hanging around outside my apartment, and they told me to get in. I thought they were going to take me to the police station to give my statement or whatever I was supposed to do to report a crime, but they drove me around and asked me a bunch of questions. Finally, at a stoplight, I opened the car door and got out of their car and called a rideshare. Typical useless civil servants, ya know? Show up too late afterward, ask a bunch of stupid questions, and then nothing happens.”
“That’s odd,” Augustine said, frowning. “Is that how your police investigate a crime?”
“I still don’t know what to do,” she said. “I still had one credit card from before I’d met Francis, so I went to where I work, took out five hundred dollars as a cash advance, and got on the plane to Paris, because what the hell. I had a gym bag in my locker with a change or two of clothes, and I had my passport in my purse because I’d wanted to show it off to my friends at work. Most of them had never seen one in real life.”
Augustine rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, and she clutched his hand more tightly.
“I didn’t realize that I’d have to pay the FlyBNB lady a lot of money because my credit card got declined, becausenowit’s over its limit. So, here I am, broke in Paris and trying not to be an idiot, but somehow, I’m the same old Dree. I wanted to be different, ya know? I wanted to be someone else. But I’m just as stupid as I’ve always been.”
He caressed the back of her hand with his thumb. “You’re not stupid. Don’t stop believing in love. When you do that, you get desperate, and you can’t stop yourself from doing foolish, self-destructive things.”
That sounded like personal experience.
She opened her fingers a little more and peered at him between them. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He chuckled and pulled back a little, looking down. “It was a long time ago.”
