Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
He scrubbed the pan with unnecessary force, focused on it, looking grim. “I’m not the one putting you down, Laura.”
“Your countrymen are! And I’m so sick of them.”
“I didn’t force you to come here.”
“No, but what other choice did I have? Do you think we would have managed if I’d stayed over in the U.S. for years to finish my degree and we only visited? It was either I move, or you move, or nothing. And you wouldn’t move, and I didn’t want to choose nothing.”
“This is exactly what I was afraid of. This is why I told you to make sure you really wanted to do this. I didn’t want you feeling you’d sacrificed everything for me.”
“I did sacrifice for you! And claiming you didn’t ask me to is just a cop-out! Would you have come to the U.S.? Would you have preferred to let us just die a natural death through separation?”
“It would have been better than watching us die through you learning to hate me!”
I gasped and took a deep breath, wanting to cry. “Tell the truth, Sébastien, would you have come for me?”
He looked grimmer and grimmer. “I just started my career. I have to get some experience before I try the U.S. market! I have to build a portfolio, for God’s sake.”
“You don’t really love me, do you?”
“Putain de merde.” He shut off the water and opened the floor-to-ceiling windows, leaning over the rail as cold air flooded into the already chilly apartment.
In a split second, I was screaming at him, screaming out all the cold, wet days and the humiliation and the uselessness, all the times I went to museums to try to find the silver lining in this situation, to try to fill my empty, lonely days. I grabbed my jacket midscream.
“Where are you going?” he asked, pale and frighteningly grim.
“Just leave me alone! I don’t want to be near you! I don’t want to talk to you!”
I ran out of the apartment, slamming the door behind me. I ran down all those flights of stairs, up which I daily trudged after fruitless job searches, carrying sacks of groceries or laundry to try to give myself some use in our couple. Out in the street, all the stores were closed for the night, locked behind grills and corrugated metal panels.