Janey
I went home that afternoon, my heart and brain so at odds with each other, I could hardly think. My heart ached for what I now knew of Adrien’s father. Adrien had said he wanted to be a hero for his dad, but what did it mean for him if he couldn’t play the biggest game of the season? What would it mean for Paris Central?
“Hey, Antoine, how’s that for an angle?” I muttered as I fit my key in the door of my flat. “The star striker gets red carded ahead of the final.”
In my small place, I sank down on my couch. On the coffee table, arrayed in front of me, were the photos I’d been taking of Adrien. I’d spent hours in a darkroom at the university developing them. Dozens were of Adrien on the pitch in action. Hair flying, his face darkly handsome, smudged with sweaty grime and drawn with determination.
I fanned those photos out beside the few I’d taken of Adrien not playing. One at his home, in the backyard reading with a shaft of light falling over him. Another of him dancing the soccer ball over his knee, his expression free of worry or pressure—just him and the ball, messing around for the hell of it.
The last photo I drew toward me was of him and his father—though I hadn’t known it was his father at the time I snapped it—walking down the side street. A son helping his dad make it home safely.
My eyes filled with tears.
“What do you want, Adrien?” I whispered.
I had no idea, but I knew what I wanted, and it had nothing to do with any article or big story. I grabbed my bag and headed out.
I took the Metro to the 16th Arrondissement, to Adrien’s home. The late afternoon sun cast an amber glow over the neighborhood, like an old, sepia-toned photograph. Two girls—the same two girls I’d seen bounding down the stairs the first time I’d come to interview Adrien—were coming out the front door as I stepped onto the stairs.
“Oh, hi,” I said, stopping them in their tracks. They were about my age, and looked like college students dressed to go out. “You’re Sophie’s friends, yes?”
They both gave me a funny look.
“Not really,” said one.
“We live here,” said the other, and they hurried past me.
I frowned. They live here…?
I knocked on the door, and waited patiently for Sophie to answer. Instead, it swung open and Mme. Rousseau was there. She looked tired, her eyes red-rimmed and her bouffant hair looked a tad deflated.
“Ah, it’s you,” she said, tightening her housecoat tighter around her waist. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Adrien,” I said.
“Adrien is not here right now,” Mme. Rousseau said, and while her refined manners wouldn’t let her shut the door in my face, I could see she was itching to. “I will tell him you stopped by.”
“Wait, please…”
“Don’t you feel you’ve done enough damage?”
I gaped. “Me? What did I do?”
“Robert told me everything,” Mme. Rousseau said. “Adrien attacked Olivier because of something crass he said about you.”
My heart crashed against my chest, then plummeted to my feet. “Something about…me?”
“Oui,” Mme. Rousseau snapped. “If you hadn’t stuck your nose into Adrien’s business, none of this would have happened. He’d still be playing in the finals, and we’d…” She bit off her last words and shook her head.
I spotted Sophie lurking in the hallway, holding to the wall for support.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Mme. Rousseau. “I didn’t mean—”
“They lost, young lady.”
I gaped. “They…lost? But they were up two, nothing…”
“Lyon rallied and with only ten players—and without my son—PC couldn’t hold. They lost and the fourth-ranked team won their match. PC is now fourth place again and out of contention for advancement. If they don’t win their final game…” Mme. Rousseau’s face paled and then she drew herself up. “As I said, Adrien’s not here right now. Have a good day.”
And then Mme. Rousseau did shut the door in my face. I stared at the elegant but old, peeling paint, half in a daze.
Adrien got red carded for me.
The notion gave me a little thrill that he would defend my honor like that, but it was fleeting. To think of what he might lose…How they did lose.
I sat down on the front steps of his house. It was possible Adrien had been delayed helping his father settle into the pension, and he was on his way back right now. Or maybe he’d gone out after. Even if it took hours, I was prepared to wait. Late into the night if I had to.
But a few minutes later, the front door opened and Sophie struggled out onto the stoop. Adrien’s sister clutched the railing of the front stairs of her building with both hands; the twilight sun glinting dully off her leg braces. I rose to my feet.
“Sophie…”
“Adrien doesn’t live here,” she said, almost in a whisper.
I blinked. “He doesn’t live here?”
She shook her head. “We rent his room and the guest space to two girls. University students.” She brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “We need the money.”
“Where is Adrien, then?”
“He lives at 23 Rue Cassis, in the 18th arrondissement. He won’t like that I told you, but he likes you.” She smiled shyly, and looked to the ground. “And I know you won’t mind.”
“Mind what?”
“About our situation.” Sophie glanced back at the house. “I have to go. Maman is resting but she won’t be happy if she knows I told you.” She turned back to me, not able to meet my eyes. “Our secret?”
“Of course.”
Sophie stumbled, then caught herself.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“I can do it. I can do more than Maman thinks,” Sophie said with more strength behind her words than I’d ever heard. At the door she turned. “Tell Adrien I’m sorry but…No.” She shook her head and laughed softly. “I’m not sorry. I like you. For him. And I have to watch out for my brother, don’t I?”
“That’s right,” I answered, strangely proud of her. It was odd to think of that frail woman as anyone’s protector, and I know most people felt the same. Including me, up until that moment.
Sophie let go of the railing to give me a wave and then retreated back into the house, leaving me with an address and more questions. I exited the Metro and as soon as I stepped foot onto Rue Cassis, another current of shock jolted through me.
I know this street…
I recognized the street because I had just been there hours before with Adrien and his father. The address Sophie gave me was for the same ramshackle pension with a maroon awning that Adrien had helped his father into.
The front door stuck a little from too many layers of paint over the years. I opened it on a front foyer that was cramped and dim, but homey and warm. I felt comfortable immediately.
The carpet and walls were both the same maroon as the front awning, that dark color making the small space feel even smaller. Black and white photographs that looked dated from the 1940’s hung on the wall, and a pall of pungent cigarette smoke.
A rotund woman with a head of short, graying curls, stepped up to the little office from a back room. She looked to be in her sixties, and wore a worn cardigan over a housedress, and rested her arms over the ledge. Behind her, a wiry, darker-skinned man with gray hair emerged to lean against the back wall, smoking the cigarette that gave the foyer its fog.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked in French, though with an accent I didn’t recognize.
“I’m looking for Monsieur Rousseau?” I said.
The woman narrowed her eyes at me. “You are American?”
“Oui.”
The woman’s heavy jowls lifted at once in a smile and she said something to the man behind her in a foreign tongue. It sounded like Arabic, but I couldn’t be sure.
The wiry old man came to the desk. “New York City?”
“Uh, no. California.” I glanced at the rows of numbered hooks on the wall behind the lady, most empty, some with keys dangling from them.
“This is a residence?” I asked.
The woman nodded. “You are visiting M. Rousseau, the older or younger?”
“The younger,” I said. “They both live here?”
The woman’s smile was kind but sad. “Oui, both have rooms here. The father is not well. The son, he takes care of him as best he can. We try to help, but M. Rousseau likes his drink and we can’t very well lock him in.”
I nodded, my heart more full that ever.
Oh, Adrien…
The wiry man spoke again.
The woman listened, nodding. “My husband reminds me of a saying we have in Algeria: no beauty shines brighter than that of a good heart. That is the young man. A good heart.” She beamed at me. “You are such a pretty girl, I am happy you are here to see him.”
“I am too,” I said softly.
“Second floor. Number six.” She indicated the small stairway to the left of the lobby—such as it was.
“Merci.”
At number six, I knocked on the door, my heart pounding in my chest.
“Who is it?”
Adrien sounded wary, and I suddenly felt horrible for intruding. If living here is a secret, he wants to keep it.
While I stood there, caught in a tangle of my emotions, the door opened.
“Janey?” Adrien immediately froze. He then closed the door tight to him, so that I couldn’t see beyond him to his place. “What are you doing here?”
“I went to your home. Or what I’d thought was your home,” I said gently. “Your sister told me you were here.”
Adrien rubbed his eyes. He’d changed out of his uniform and wore plaid pajama pants and a white V-neck undershirt. His hair was still damp from a shower, though he looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept in days.
“So now you know the truth,” he said bitterly. He pushed off the door and stepped back inside, leaving it open. “Is that why you came? To finish your story?”
“I don’t know what the truth is,” I said, stepping inside and closing the door behind me. “And no, I don’t give a damn about my article.”
I glanced around his small place that was cramped but clean. A bed next to a desk; the desk under the window, cluttered with papers and medical textbooks, still open. A little nothing of a kitchen area was on the left and beyond that, a door that I presumed was a bathroom.
Adrien leaned against the edge of his desk, facing me, his arms crossed.
“This is the truth,” he said, indicating his place with a jerk of his chin. “My family is broke. My father supported us with his art until Vietnam ruined his mind. He hasn’t painted since. Without his work, we’ve been living off my small pay from the football club and the sale of his remaining paintings. But the last was sold three months ago. There’s nothing left.”
I stood, my back pressed to the door. I felt he wanted to tell more, tell me everything and unburden himself. “Okay,” I said slowly.
“My father lives downstairs,” Adrien said. “The government-run home they put him in after he came back from the war was a nightmare, so I moved him here to keep an eye on him. My mother refuses to sell our house, so making it to Ligue 1 or 2 is how I fix everything. My dad gets the proper care he needs, and my mother and sister don’t become homeless.” He held up his hands. “There you go. Now you know the whole story.”
“That isn’t the whole story,” I said quietly and swallowed hard. “What about med school? What about your dream of helping people on a grand scale?”
“It doesn’t matter, Janey,” he said, his voice tight, like a band ready to snap. “I have to play.”
“But now you can’t. Not in the final.” I moved a step closer to him. “Did you red card yourself on purpose? To get out of the final? To try to get out of soccer?”
Adrien stared a moment, a thousand thoughts swimming in the dark blue of his eyes. Finally, he gave an angry, bitter laugh.
“That’s the fantastic irony, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter that I was carded. The scouts will come for me anyway. But the team can win without me, even though they don’t believe it.”
“They lost today,” I said in a small voice.
Adrien pressed his lips together. “Fantastique. Then I fucked everything up for…”
“For nothing?” I asked, my voice a whisper.
Adrien raised his eyes to meet mine. “Not for nothing.”
I swallowed hard, past my pounding heart. “Your mother told me you hit Olivier because he was talking about…me.”
Adrien glanced away, his hands gripping the edge of his desk. “You should go. I have nothing to offer.”
“I don’t want anything from you, Adrien,” I said, taking another step. “Nothing that can be bought, anyway.”
“No? Not an exposé on the footballer who’s secretly destitute, trying to keep his family afloat? Isn’t that why you’re here?”
I flinched, but took another step. Adrien’s harsh tone was only to protect himself and his family’s reputation…and I loved him all the more for it.
I think I might love him. God help me…
“No,” I said, moving closer, my lips trembling. I was right in front of him now, my body inches from his. “That’s not why I’m here.”
He gazed down at me, his hard defenses crumbling. His hand came up to brush a lock of hair from my face. “Then why?”
“For you.” I swallowed hard, tears stinging my eyes. “I came here to be with you.”
“I have nothing, Janey,” he said, his eyes full of longing. “Women want to be taken care of…”
“Not all women,” I said, leaning in to his space. “Not me. I want to work. I want to have a career. I want to make something of my life. And I think you do, too.” I let my arms go around his neck, my fingers tangling in his hair. “You’re a good man, Adrien. That’s what any woman wants. What I want. I want you…”
Without another word, his arms wrapped around me, hauling me to him, and his mouth crashed to mine. I parted my lips to take his kiss, my knees weakening as his tongue explored my mouth, demanding and urgent. With all the heavy secrets of his life no longer hidden, I knew he was kissing me with his truest self. All of him, all of his goodness was in that kiss, even as it quickly heated into something desperate with need.
Adrien’s hand slid up my back, to my hair, where he made a gentle fist that sent tingles of electricity shoot down my body. He angled my head to deepen the kiss, and held me closer, so that there was no distance between us.
I have everything.
The desperate lust I’d seen with Lucie and Thomas, and the deep emotion between Brigitte and Robert. I felt both from Adrien, and I moaned softly into his mouth.
“Janey…” Adrien broke our kiss with a gasp, like a man coming up for air. He laid kisses along my jaw, my neck, to the hollow of my collarbone. “I want you…”
“Yes,” I hissed in English, as he went lower, his mouth finding one hard nipple under my top. My fingers tangled in his hair as he nipped it through the material. His hand found my other breast, and I gasped as he rolled the ball of his thumb over that nipple too.
“I thought you didn’t like me,” he murmured against the material of my blouse.
“I do,” I whispered back, my fingers raking through his hair. “I always did. I’m just bad at flirting, remember?”
Adrien laughed and then kissed me so that I felt the smile on his lips. Then he lifted my blouse off altogether. I watched his eyes flare and darken with want, as he took in my small, bra-clad breasts. I wasted no time, but found the hem of his T-shirt and hauled it off of him.
“My God,” I whispered, my eyes drinking in the masculine perfection of his body. Planes of smooth skin over his pecs, the tight lines of his abs, and the narrow waist that made a perfect V. His erection strained at his pants, and I stared at that too, amazed at how badly I wanted all of him.
He pulled me to him, enveloping me in the strength of his muscles over warm skin—strength and heat and hard kisses that had the whole of his heart behind them.
“Janey,” he whispered, pulling back to hold my face in his hands. “I need you… Now. But I…don’t want to hurt you. I can go slow…”
“It’s okay,” I whispered back. “It’s not my first time. I wish it were.”
He held my gaze a moment longer, and I saw only myself reflected there. Then he kissed me hard, sweeping me up in the power of his want for me. My words had been the permission he’d needed, though I knew if I’d been a virgin, he would have done everything in his power to be gentle.
Our kissing began again, this time with urgency. Adrien spun me around and lifted me to set me on the edge of his desk. He kissed me harder, ravenously, pressing me back, yet holding me tight with strong arms.
I wrapped my legs around him but there was too much clothing between us. My jeans felt rough and coarse, when I wanted to feel his skin against mine. I stroked the hard length of him over his pants, as his hands went to the clasp of my bra in the back.
Still stroking him, I moaned at the touch of his hands on me, feeling their weight and bending again to put his mouth on one taut nipple. I gave him a squeeze and he answered with a groan and a bite that sent of flush of heat straight through the core of me. Finally, with a grunt of frustrated need, Adrien lifted me again and carried me to his bed.
I sank back on a clean bedspread that smelled of his cologne and green grass and him. Adrien lay over me, and the weight of him on my body was a new kind of ecstasy. Every muscle he had honed over the years in service to his sport was now mine; its magnificence and strength were all for me to touch and be touched. He propped himself on his elbows to kiss me, cradling my head in his hands even as our bodies below the waist strained for the other desperately.
“Janey, I have to… Now.”
I nodded mutely, and he sat up, kneeling on the bed beside me. He pulled my jeans off leaving me in only my panties.
“Please,” I whispered, not caring how desperate I sounded. I was desperate to have him, over me again and inside of me.
Adrien bent over me and trailed kisses between my breasts, down my stomach, below my navel, to the hem of my underwear.
I shook my head from side to side. “No, I can’t. It’s too much. It’ll be too much.”
“Have you ever?”
I shook my head no.
A sly grin spread over his lips. “Do you want to?”
I started to say I wasn’t sure, but my head was already bobbing yes.
He laughed a little. “But Janey,” his voice lowering, “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”
“I know,” I whispered. “But I want everything. I want all of you. Please.”
“Thank God,” he said, grazing teeth along my skin. “I want this so much.”
He took my panties down to my knees, and tore them off. I shivered with longing and anticipation as he bent to me and licked the sensitive skin with a gentle flick of his tongue.
My hips jerked at the incredible sensation, and then lifted to offer myself to him without conscious thought.
“Oh my God, Adrien…”
“All mine, now…” he said. “I’m going to take care of you.”
Then he put his mouth on me in earnest. His tongue swirled then sucked until I was writhing, grasping at the headboard as Adrien brought me to a fast-rising swell of pleasure that crashed almost immediately, and left me shuddering and wanting more.
“Come here,” I moaned. “God, please...”
Adrien stripped naked and I stared at the size of him, my heart pounding. He lay over me and my legs spread for him without me having to do a thing. I thought I’d be nervous—he was only my second—but everything about Adrien was different. Better. Perfect. I arched my back, my nails clawing into the flesh of his shoulder blades, to let him sink inside me.
“Jesus, Janey…” He growled against my neck. “So good. So perfect…”
He pressed slowly inside me until our hips were joined. I held him tight, arms and legs wrapped around him possessively. This man, this good man was mine; giving himself to me and I took all of him in every way.
He began to move slowly at first, but it was too much. The need between us was a desperate hunger that needed to be satiated immediately. We’d both been starving for each other, and now that we were here, we couldn’t get enough. Not enough touches, or kisses; I couldn’t get enough of him inside me—pulling back and sliding in as much as the tight knot of my legs at the small of his back would allow.
Finally, Adrien propped himself on his palms, arching himself over me, his thrusts so fast, I was delirious. English and French words fell out of my mouth: yes and more and his name. But especially yes. The word was a whisper, then a cry, then a scream as another swell of pleasure in me broke, this time a tidal wave. The crash was long and slow, meeting the shore of him as he ground his hips deeper into mine, shuddering hard and spilling his release inside of me.
Adrien collapsed on top of me, heavy and warm and perfect. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to the side so that we lay tangled up; arms and legs, and skin slick with sweat. Our breaths came hard in between kisses because we weren’t done kissing. In that moment, I didn’t think I would ever be done kissing Adrien. I didn’t want to kiss anyone else ever again.
It was too soon to be thinking thoughts like that, but the way Adrien looked at me when we finally came up for air let me think I wasn’t alone. He brushed the hair from my forehead and I traced the strong line of his jaw with one finger.
“Thank you for being here,” he said to me, his gravelly, bedroom voice sounding exactly as it was meant to be heard.
I smiled and kissed him gently. “Thank you for letting me in.”