Page 13 of My French Love Affair

Not guilt. Not second-guessing. Justpure, reckless excitement.

Monaco, here I come.

Chapter Four

Poppy

Ishould have known things were going too smoothly.

The moment I step inside Nice Côte d’Azur Airport, whatever magical, cinematic illusion I had about my grand arrival in the South of France shatters.

The heat inside is stifling, thick and claustrophobic as though the airport has been converted into a very expensive greenhouse. The air conditioning - if it even exists - is doing absolutely nothing to help.

People areeverywhere, crammed into queues that don’t seem to be moving, talking loudly, sighing dramatically, and, more than anything else, absolutely losing their minds.

I pull out my phone and scroll aimlessly through my socials, catching up with some of my more recent comments and casually eavesdropping as I stand in line.

“We were stuck on the plane for over an hour before they let us off,” one man grumbles.

“My colleague landed two hours ago and she’sstillwaiting for her bag,” someone else complains, voice clipped with irritation.

A woman in sunglasses and an obnoxiously large hat huffs from where she stands slightly in front of me. “I don’t know why we’ve got to listen to these people complaining. They said there’s a technical issue with the systems. Nobody is getting through quickly.”

Great.

I glance around, noting the general aura of extreme impatience.

This is not a crowd that’s used to waiting. There’s a lot of ‘do you know who I am?’energy happening from men in tailored suits and women in designer sunglasses, all one-upping each other with their levels of VIP self-importance.

None of it is working.

The French airport police look deeply unimpressed by the attempted power plays. They’re simply repeating the same phrase over and over again:

"You have to wait like everyone else."

So. We wait.

By the time I finally make it through baggage claim and customs, I’m half-melting, my hair clinging to the back of my neck in the least glamorous way possible.

I brace myself for the next battlefield: the queue for a taxi.

I should have known this would be a disaster, because every single person who has just been held up for ages is now apparently in full-blown survival mode. We’re all crammed into the same stretch of pavement, with suitcases everywhere and tempers fraying dangerously.

It’s absolute chaos.

I hear actualshoutingup ahead - grown men arguing overwho has been waiting the longest. Someone’s waving a wad of cash at a driver, while a large group of tourists are gesturing wildly and insisting that they should have the next three cars between them.

The last thing I want to do right now is drag my suitcase and bag through a mess of sweaty, sunburnt and impatient people who are all apparently willing to throw hands over a car.

I glance around, weighing my options -

And that’s when I spot it.

A sleek, expensive-looking car pulling up near the edge of the arrivals area.

It’s far enough that no-one has noticed it yet - at least that I can tell - and I instinctively steer my body towards it. It’s clearly a higher-end taxi, which means it’ll be more expensive, but given the current hell-hole that I’m in, I’d say it’s definitely worth the extra fee.

Before anyone else clocks onto my discovery, I make my move, cutting through the crowd with laser focus.

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