The apartment was warm, smelling of mulled wine and Gauloises. She spotted Luc immediately by the window. He had grown a beard—a tactical one, she decided, designed to suggest depth. And beside him, a woman. Not a model, which was a relief. A historian, as it turned out. Named Margot. She laughed with her whole face, and she touched Luc’s sleeve when she made a point.
Chloé spent an hour deciding between two lipsticks. She chose the one called Rouge Insolent .
He almost smiled. “No. I didn’t.”
Chloé had ended things with Luc in the spring, which in Paris is a kind of sacrilege. You do not shatter a heart when the chestnut trees are blooming. You wait for November, when the sky is the color of a week-old bruise.
Samir was there, alone, watching the rain.
She should have said something cutting. Instead, she said, “You never learned how to fold a fitted sheet.”