Page 35 of Mostly My Girlfriend
7
Therapy
Ethan
“So was it common for you to spend holidays with each other’s families?” Carol asked us.
I nodded. “We alternated between my family and hers. Except for two years. This past Christmas, obviously, and once, when I took her to Paris—”
“You didn’ttake meto Paris,” Jules corrected. She told Carol. “It was a business trip. We were trying to expand our airline overseas and we were in talks to develop a high-speed jet that could make international flights shorter. The Concord, only significantly more fuel efficient.”
I glanced at her and considered what our life together had been for the past eight years. The last twelve, actually.
Lies.
I could see that now. Our life together was nothing more than a series of lies. Hers and mine. That scared me. What it meant. If we could recover from them.
“There were no talks about a high-speed jet,” I confessed. “That afternoon I told you I would be in technical meetings you didn’t need to attend…it was because I knew you wanted to see Paris. You were with…himat the time. So it’s not like I could just invite you to Paris for Christmas. The whole thing was a setup.”
Her jaw dropped. “Why?”
“I knew you always wanted to go. And I wanted to be the one to give you that. I wanted your Paris cherry. Not him.”
“Ethan,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“Do you remember that trip, Julia?” Carol asked her.
“Remember it?” she huffed. “It was Paris!”
* * *
Two years ago
Paris
Julia
“You promise you didn’t need me?” I called out. Ethan was in his room but the door to the suite was open so I knew he could hear me.
I dropped my bags in front of my chair, kicked off my shoes, and put my beautifully sore feet on the ottoman. I had refused to wear sneakers like some uncouth American, but my flats were more about style than support.
It didn’t matter. I would have endured the pain for hours longer if I hadn’t gotten famished and Ethan hadn’t texted me that he was done with his meetings. As it was, I got to spend the entire day sightseeing and, now, we were going to take a dinner cruise on the Seine.
The perfect end to the perfect day.
“I told you I could handle it,” Ethan said, leaning against the door that led to his room. He was freshly showered and his shirt was open, exposing his chest. A year ago, for one night, his body had been mine. His chest, his mouth, his dick.
But I didn’t think about that night. It was locked in a vault of memories I didn’t touch, ever. The same place I’d stuffed the night I’d lost my virginity to Ethan.
Besides, there was no reason to think about Ethan like that. I was dating CJ now. Perfectly nice CJ. Perfectly handsome, perfectly considerate.
Perfect CJ.
I was so lucky. I was trying really hard, and after three months, things were definitely going well. It probably helped that Ethan had been spending most of his time in Europe trying to lock down cities that would let him land his airline jets at a gateway.
No last-minute meeting requests that would sabotage dinner plans. No sudden trips that would land me at the Nebraska plant for weeks while the person I was dating inevitably moved on to someone else.
CJ and I could actually have potential. And after the emotional mess I’d been following Daniel’s wedding, I decided this was good for me. This might really get me back on my feet so that I could finally stop thinking about—
