He’s standing at the Montargis train station waiting for me when I arrive. It’s nearly empty at this hour on a Saturday morning, so I spot him immediately. His hair isn’t as bright blonde as I remember – rather a faded caramel – and he seems shorter from where I stand across the train station. When we start walking side by side into the open air, I’m reminded he’s much taller than me, probably close to six feet. He’s handsome – with messy blonde hair and a drooping posture – even in his lackluster, slightly groggy state, on this overcast morning. There’s an effortless ease to the way he walks, like he could belong almost anywhere.
I met Pierre almost a month ago at a hostel in Brussels. I was traveling alone, and on my first morning there Pierre was working the front desk.
“Touring around for the day?” He asked, as I studied the array of maps and pamphlets beside him. I could tell he was older than me, but not by much; maybe he had five or six years on my twenty-two. Each evening when I returned from a day of wandering and eating fries and crepes by myself, I caught his eye and waved to him. As I checked out on my third and final morning in Brussels, Pierre asked if I enjoyed my stay.
“Very much,” I said. “Thanks for your recommendations.”
“Of course. And where will you go next? Keeping on your European tour?” He asked in French-affected English.
“I’m teaching English at a French high school. Fall break is over now, so I’m getting the train back to Paris.”
“You teach in Paris?”
“Near there. A small town called Montargis.”
“Montargis,” Pierre repeated slowly, studying my eyes and savoring each syllable in his mouth, like he was tasting the word. “I don’t know it.” He shrugged and smiled, revealing slightly crooked teeth, a trademark of French men that I found endearing.
Another guest was approaching the desk and sensing the impending interruption, I told him à la prochaine, meaning that I’d see him again, although the chances of that happening seemed unlikely.
Halfway down the block, on my way to the metro station, I heard someone behind me yell “Wait!” Pierre was walking briskly, looking a bit frazzled. Nothing like the composed, self-contained man who rattled off recommendations of cool things to do in Brussels.
“Can I have your email address?” He asked. “Maybe we can meet up in Paris, sometime. My mom lives there. Or, I could come visit you.”
Satisfied with my ability to unnerve him and make an impression, I typed my email address into his phone. By the time I was gliding towards Paris on the train à grande vitesse I’d already received a witty note from him, inviting me to chat on WhatsApp. I tried not to smile to myself as I read his email a second time, relishing each word.
“What do you want to do?” I say as we exit the train station. I hadn’t made any plans for the day, partially because there isn’t much to do in Montargis. Maybe we’d be inspired to take the train back into Paris together after lunch and a walk around town. We could go anywhere, and that was the problem. I had built up Pierre in my mind as sweet and sensitive; over the preceding weeks he had read my blog posts about life as a small-town teacher, messaging me each time I posted a new entry on Facebook. As our flirtatious texting banter increased, I dreamt up romantic excursions we could take. But now, with the living, breathing version of him beside me, I had no idea how to execute those plans.
“I need a nap,” he says exaggeratedly. The prospect of going back to my apartment with him and cuddling up in my twin bed doesn’t sound unappealing. At 22, I have little experience with traditional dating, especially the kind that would take place during the day, with a slightly older, European man, so I’m relieved he’s making the first move. Maybe physical intimacy, a kiss even, would dissipate some of the awkwardness.
“We can go back to my place first,” I say. We walk onto the main road towards the bridge over the train tracks, then onto Avenue Louis Maurice Chautemps, which will take us to my apartment at the school. I wonder why I agreed to let Pierre visit me here. It isn’t that I don’t want to see him; I do, but I feel untethered in this town.
“What do you do on the weekends here?” Pierre asks me. He’s probably taking stock of just how small and sleepy this village is. We’ve already joked that I live in a “boring” place.
“I don’t spend many weekends here,” I say. I like Montargis well enough for the afternoons when I’m finished teaching early. On those days, I walk down to the centre ville, stroll through the park and along the cobblestone pedestrian street, and breathe in the scent of freshly baked crepes from the patisseries. But something tugs me away from the town on the weekends: a yearning for adventure or perhaps only loneliness, or more likely a mixture of both. It’s more difficult to feel alone when you’re moving to catch a train or a metro or are marveling at art and architecture that is hundreds of years old.
I ramble on to Pierre about some of the nearby towns I’ve visited, like Orléans, Fountainbleu, and Tours, the dinners I’ve had at the homes of teachers, and the occasional meet ups with other teaching assistants.
A car passes us on the road as I’m recounting my first dinner at my advisor Dominique’s house.
“Hey, America!” The driver slows and rolls down his window, and I realize he’s addressing me. It’s the guy who works at the Shwarma restaurant, one of my favorite places in town for a casual meal. The locals know I’m the American assistant; Montargis is small enough that, in fact, I’m the only American here, and some of the friendlier residents have gotten to know me. I wave back at him as he drives on, past the school and down the road winding through the forest.
“Who’s that?” Pierre asks.
“He’s nice. He gave me a ride back to school when he saw me walking out of town one day,” I say, explaining how I know him.
This makes me think of another ride I accepted from a stranger. I launch into the story of how Ling Fei, the Chinese language assistant, and I hitchhiked out of Orléans the night we got stranded there. I think this story paints me as world weary and resourceful, even though I called my mom in tears an hour prior to hitchhiking. I leave that part out as I recount our late-night journey in a stranger’s car. Pierre doesn’t laugh.
“I wouldn’t be so trusting of people if I were you.” The corners of his lips curve downward slightly, and he says nothing more on the topic. A small hole forms in my stomach, and I feel like I’m failing a pop quiz on the subject of “How to be Cool in France.”
“I don’t do that a lot or anything,” I say to Pierre.
We walk in silence for a few more minutes, flanked by the tall, barren trees of the forest. At the gate to the high school, I punch in the code and Pierre follows me through. The school grounds are peacefully silent on the weekends. Often, the only person I see there is my upstairs neighbor when she takes her dog out. We walk past the library and several whitewashed buildings, until we reach my apartment.
My apartment is severely utilitarian, with hardly any furniture or decorative elements. The cavernous living room contains only an uncomfortable futon, a small television, desk, and cabinet. There are two bedrooms, one where I keep my suitcases, and the other occupied only by my twin bed. I offer to make Pierre coffee, but he declines. I don’t have any good cheese or baguette in the apartment, but I hold up a pack of Speculos cookies that I got from the Lidl market down the street, and he accepts a few of those. I’m not sure what to do with him next, and I realize, surprisingly, that despite our weeks of flirtatious texting banter, I know hardly anything about him.
Before we talk about much – or perhaps because we can’t think of much to talk about – Pierre kisses me. Not the perfunctory French kiss on the cheek, but a kiss that turns into an open-mouthed, roaming-tongued make-out session. He presses into my body, wrapping his arms around me. I pause for a moment before deciding to give in and kiss him back; it seems romantic to have a real French man here, in my apartment, who has made an impromptu trip to visit me. It sounds like the sort of thing I should be doing while I’m living abroad, but I’m unsure how I really feel about this encounter.
We continue kissing, and I try to relax into him. I feel the nubby fabric of his sweater, the warmth of his body, and his strong hands and long fingers that I’m holding. I want to surrender to the moment, but I can’t; I’m too distracted thinking about what his visit means and what the future holds. I wonder if Pierre plans to spend the weekend here or take me back to Paris with him. Would I meet his friends and his mom? Would these visits become a regular thing?
Pierre asks if he can lay down, so I lead us to my bedroom. The couch is too short for anyone to realistically nap on, and pointing him there would make me seem cold, like I’m pushing him away. We curl up on my twin bed, and it’s impossible for an entire side of my body not to be touching an entire side of his body, which quickly leads to him pressing his lips to mine again, nuzzling up against me.
Slowly, his hand moves down to the button of my jeans. I let him undo it, but as he starts working on the zipper, I change my mind and gently guide his hand away, making the excuse that I’d really like to nap. Something shifts in the way he’s looking at me, but since napping was his idea to begin with, he can’t really argue.
Time morphs into itself as our cuddling session blends into a twilight sleep. Pierre looks at his phone, finally, and realizes it is half past noon. He has to catch a train back to Paris at two thirty, and we still haven’t eaten lunch. We walk briskly outside, back down the winding road through the forest, until we get to a traffic circle surrounded by a few shops and restaurants. Lacking the time to walk into town or enjoy a more leisurely lunch, we settle on a characterless tabac, a convenience store that sells cigarettes and lottery tickets, with a small adjoining café.
“You heard about the French president?” Pierre asks me, as we come face to face with a blown-up magazine advertisement situated outside the tabac’s door. The enlarged tabloid cover features the face of the actress Julie Gayet, President Francois Hollande’s new girlfriend and the latest commotion of the media. Surrounding the aloof expression on her face, the cover dons teasers: An affair for two years! and Late night visits by motorcycle in its cheap effort to heighten the scandal’s shock value.
“Of course,” I say. How couldn’t I have heard?
“Poor guy,” Pierre says thoughtfully, as he opens the door for me.
“Poor him?” I furrow my eyebrows and squint to adjust to the dimmed light inside the café.
“Yeah, it’s his private life. Leave the man alone,” says Pierre. We sit down, and he orders us each an espresso.
“What about the first lady?”
I had read an article recently about his longtime girlfriend, the first lady, Valerie Trierweiler, who had checked herself into a hospital in “deep despair.”
“They’re not married,” Pierre says. The waiter drops off our espressos, and I rip open a packet of sugar and pour it into my tiny cup.
I wonder if Pierre has a girlfriend. Would she care that he is sitting at a café in Montargis with me? Was she in Paris waiting for him now?
“But Valerie was his longtime partner,” I say, feeling a bit dizzy. “I don’t think it was an open relationship.”
“I just don’t think the media should be prying through his personal life.”
“Does it matter?” My chest tightens. “He went behind his girlfriend’s back.”
“He found someone else,” he shrugs. Does Pierre have someone else? Or many someone elses? “Do you want to order anything? I need to eat before I get the train,” he says.
We hurry back to the train station, passing a group of teenagers. I recognize a few of them as students at the school. One of them, who is in my class, waves to me.
“Salut!” I say to her, waving back to the group.
“What are you doing the rest of the weekend in Paris?” I can’t quite figure out how to play this situation. Has he bought a train ticket back yet? Or is he planning to buy us both one? The picture of a chic Parisian girlfriend won’t leave my mind, yet I want to be invited with him. I want to be that girlfriend.
I’m feeling lightheaded; I haven’t eaten anything since my breakfast of yogurt and a croissant. I lost my appetite at the tabac and feel even more nervous after downing two espressos there.
“Meeting up with some friends for my birthday,” he says.
“Today’s your birthday? You didn’t tell me,” I say. I’m fairly certain I’ve failed a secret test. A lump forms in my stomach; he was going to invite me back with him, but now he’s decided not to.
“I don’t like to make a big thing about it. I’m getting old,” he says. “How old are you by the way?”
“Twenty-two,” I say. “And you?”
“Twenty-seven. Only three more years till thirty. I’ll reflect on that on the train ride.”
I want to go home now, but I still feel like I have something to prove. I’m certain I can’t make it back over the bridge and into the train station with Pierre, but somehow, I do, trailing a few paces behind him as he checks the time on his phone every thirty seconds.
We arrive at the one and only platform at the Montargis train station seven minutes before his train is scheduled to depart, but we’ve beaten it there.
“You don’t have to wait with me,” Pierre says quickly. My heart sinks. I should have left him while I had the chance. Instead, he’s the one who gets to leave me. I’ve waited too long, but when, exactly, should I have walked away? At what point did his indifference toward me become obvious?
“Okay,” I say. “Well, thanks for stopping by. It was good to see you,” I lie.
“Of course,” he says stiffly. It’s odd seeing him this way; he seemed so free when we met at the hostel. During out texting chats, I’d imagined he’d delighted in the history of cities and strangers. I make a move to hug him – a reflex to bridge what feels like miles between us – but he’s pointedly turning away, staring at the tracks as we hear the train rumble closer.
I walk back home with tears in my eyes. My stomach is eating a hole in itself, and I want to sleep for a thousand years.
At my apartment, I boil water to make cheese ravioli, the most substantive thing I have to eat in my refrigerator. By the time I’ve finished eating, alone at my kitchen table, the sky is already fading to grey. I open up WhatsApp on my phone and see that Pierre was last active an hour ago. I wish I had been invited to the party. If I had only been a better hostess, I could have been out in the best city in the world, experiencing a French birthday with other young people. Instead, I am wasting a weekend of my year in France sitting alone, in a too-large, too-empty apartment.
Or maybe, I should have thrown my coffee at him at the tabac.
