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It’s a day that calls for second skins and double worlds.
When Gabriel dismisses her early from their office in the city with a lazy reminder that Nathalie half-listens to, she is already mentally slipping away, but checks herself to dutifully nod along. She clicks her pen with each passing building, watches with a voyeur's interest as fellow commuters walk ant-like to the metro or pick their teeth in their car mirrors, all heading home; just as she.
In exchange for giving the chance at life for her benefactors, her upcoming master’s degree is paid in full, along with any other necessities, of which include a room in their house and a title for their payroll.
In the back of Gabriel’s town car that she’s unexpectedly become used to, Nathalie taps her heels in staccato. It’s a deal she couldn’t have refused, for more reasons than one. But it’s not the waived tuition and allotted study time she’s thankful for today.
(Or the last nine Fridays, for that matter. All of them disguised as a time Nathalie spends studying her upcoming term's materials and not how his wife has taught her to coax little sighs when they kiss the way she loves, the way she taught her.)
Closing the door to her room, she flings her pumps off in a rush, steadies herself with one hand on the wall as she peels blister tape from the back of her ankles. When she divests her jacket so fast she hears her shoulder pop, she laughs to herself—then again, to her reflection, when she fiddles with the invisible zipper of her branded slacks. It would be easier, of course, if her hands weren’t so eager, and it should be easier still since Nathalie’s hands have always been this way. Nearly begging to touch or be touched; trembling with it, really. Tugging—and at last, tension successfully parts the seam and she shimmies out of them quickly but with care as to not ruin her uniform, hastily half-folding and throwing them onto her bed. She hooks her mandated manicured nails under her sweater but stops. Feels the incoming wall of which she was speeding straight for, but shoves it down deep, buried. She keeps her long sleeve red sweater and compromises instead with an old companion pair of khaki shorts, frayed at their hems and pockets in places that Emilie will know by rote.
(She's only seen them every week for three months. Commented on how much worse the holes were getting as she slipped her fingers into them, touching skin underneath.)
Touching her face in the mirror, Nathalie decides the blue eyeshadow will have to stay—she doesn’t want to waste the stolen time washing it off. She rolls excitement between her lips and teeth as if it’s something she can taste, something bright with static. It’s new, this body-wide bubbling of happiness, and it’s urgent—knowing now what she’s been missing, she can’t open the door fast enough to invite it in.
She hurries into her pair of faded leather boots and leaves her first skin behind.
Arriving at the kitchen, she must touch her smile and smooth it away; just a brief disguise. The modern space is redolent with aromatics—garlic, shallots, rosemary, rendered chicken fat and wine—but Nathalie doesn’t have the stomach for it, a tongue with a particular taste today.
When the chef on duty emerges from the pantry, a cigarette precariously ashing from his lips and a powdered-white bag of flour dusting his arms, his face drops precisely as Nathalie’s hardens.
She would usually reprimand him for smoking in the house. Threaten Gabriel. With Emilie expecting, the act is prohibited.
He motions with his chin at their quid pro quo on the kitchen island, freshly wrapped in thin deli paper. Next to it, a few slices of fresh baguette and hard cheeses.
“Made as soon as I heard the car pull up,” he says, shuffling to set the flour down on the counter. He dusts his hands. “Cornichons, salted butter, peanut butter.” He does not conceal his overt disgust.
She nods. Eyes his cigarette, but she stopped five months ago.
“You forgot the honey and marmalade.”
It's an important component for today: they once had this during their late night rendezvous, nearly going through a whole jar the latter while they talked.
He huffs, billowing out smoke. “Right.” He reenters the walk-in pantry and retrieves a small yellow jar from the top shelf. When he drops it into her hands, she blinks. He’s ten, fifteen years older than her and yet Nathalie is the staff steward, their boss as far as they’re concerned.
“I seem to recall a basket somewhere around here,” she says, stepping back and grabbing a spoon from a nearby drawer. “If you would gather these things up, please.”
He does, clearly showing his irritation, and Nathalie doesn’t try to remember his name in turn. She loops her arm through the basket handle and makes for her second skin, her dreamed double life.
Opening the door for the garden stairs, she pauses. Unease lets itself in, flooding her and rooting her feet to the floor. Emilie has this effect, even all these months later—she is on the cusp of her twenties all over again, the juvenile shiver of a crush overtaking her. What if I say the wrong thing?
It’s the little moments: a dinner where sauce drips from her fork-speared meat and stains her shirt and she laughs—it’s the way she carries herself when she thinks no one is looking, when it’s only her and Nathalie’s eyes taking in every second, a film reel in motion—it’s how she plays classical piano when Gabriel is home but pinches her eyebrows together when she performs showtunes, ragtime, playful baroque for Nathalie when they’re alone.
In all these moments, Nathalie wonders when. When will the hand around her chest rest? Her heart acts as if it’s the first time seeing Emilie, every time. When will the adrenaline high stop, the blood rush from a heart overworking itself? Still, be still, she tells it and yet, when their eyes meet, Nathalie wants to laugh in the face of her last name, so painfully hammering and telltale against her ribs.
(Maybe in two years, when her degree is complete and she's worth something so much more than their assistant.)
And they say it’s true when they bring out a new side of you. They say it’s true when it’s patient and kind and doesn’t hold score—Nathalie’s never been particularly good at any of these, but around Emilie, she can be. She can smile when Gabriel takes Emilie into his arms and Emilie kicks her heels in the air; she can wait out the clock and linger in the kitchen past midnight and act surprised, act demure, when Emilie tiptoes down for a late night snack. Adrien’s craving yogurt and chips tonight. Nathalie even tells herself to not count the minutes that come to pass as they sit and watch the stars from the kitchen window. Not to tease Emilie on her slipping French accent, thick with sleep and English intonations and quiet, so quiet as they whisper and giggle in secret in the dark. Not to remember how Emilie prods her to try her horrible snack concoctions and the way she licks the spoon after Nathalie, a slow lick of the metal concavity and the way her lips close around the tip.
Nathalie does, of course.
Of course she does.
But she can learn. She can be trained. In patience and prudence—anything Emilie would demand.
When Nathalie commits and opens the door into Emilie’s domain, a gust of wind blows her bangs back and warms her forehead, eyes, cheeks. A caress that feels like an invitation, a greeting from an unseen hand. Basket in hand, she bounds down the stairs, careful not to slip on sun-bleached leaves or the rain spots drying themselves on the stone. The air, thick with ripe florals and dewy grass, swells within her. Landing with a jump from the penultimate step, Nathalie turns with the wind.
Across the way and dappled under a swaying canopy of branches sits Emilie, content in her world. She’s reading a book and Nathalie wonders at this change; she’s never been one just to sit still. Her hand swoops in dainty motions across her stomach and the serenity in her face, the knowledge of how that bump came to be, makes Nathalie blush. Embarrassed, too curious for her own good, and the nagging jealousy that feels more like a heady drug than something sharp. A kestrel sings overhead, harmonizing with another.
Lost in her thoughts, Nathalie realizes in delay that Emilie is looking at her.
“What a surprise,” she calls, and Nathalie’s feet follow the sound on instinct. Emilie lowers her book and reveals a pair of headphones funnily stretched out of her stomach. She flashes a smile. “Is it really Friday already?”
Arriving in their realm, this alcove of silver linden and roses, Nathalie presents her offering with mock posterity: bending at the waist, one hand politely behind her back and the basket poised in front of her with the other. “It seems so. Have you missed me?”
“Oh, terribly,” Emilie giggles. She slips her thumb from the book, tosses it on the lawn and sits upright to grab at the hem of Nathalie’s shorts. “I was positively in tears waiting, love.” She hooks her index finger through a hole in Nathalie’s seam and pulls, bringing her so obediently to her knees.
“I wouldn’t take your crying to mean much,” Nathalie says, untangling herself from the basket and moving to bracket Emilie’s body with her arms. She leans in; Emilie leans back. “What did Gabriel say again? You’re ‘dramatic’ ?” Nathalie teases, tilting her head against her shoulder.
Emilie glances at the watch ticking away on her slender wrist. “You’re early.” Sunlight catches in her accusing eyes. “Surely our secretary is not wasting the education so generously gifted to her.”
They’re so close they’re sharing breaths, and Nathalie, sucking in one last lungful, pulls away. Emilie was right—she was meant to block out this time to meet with her advisor at the university, confirm her thesis proposal. It’s what she told Gabriel, anyway.
“You’re right, Madame. I let myself get carried away.” She looks behind her at the mansion with a frown. “Should I be—?”
Stunted is her sentence, with Emilie’s hand latching onto the back of her neck and lips crashing against hers. Nathalie inhales through her nose, holding onto this moment and the way Emilie always presses in like a wave before retreating from Nathalie’s shore—but Emilie kisses her again, soft and slow, only the fingers playing with her ponytail mixing pleasure and pain. Her held breath gives way to a gasp, maybe a little teasingly—keeping her lips open if Emilie wants more, her body still for Emilie to play with.
But Emilie moves back, just enough to meet eyes, and Nathalie must look as dazed as she feels because Emilie beams like she’s won something.
“Feel free to leave now, if you wish.”
“I pushed my proposal to Monday,” Nathalie confesses. “I’m all yours today, Madame.”
Emilie scoffs. “You lay it on so thick with the titles." She searches one blue eye, then the other, narrowing her own suspiciously. “One might think you even get off on it.”
Nathalie raises her eyebrows. “I believe it was you who enforced the rule.”
“For when you’re working, yes.”
Nathalie hums. Tips her head so their noses brush. “And what are we calling this,” she asks, quiet and low, “Emilie?”
Another kiss. Chaste, quick, then Emilie licks it from her own lips and readjusts herself, pushing back against the linden tree. “I call it our lovely assistant bringing me lunch,” she says, eyeing the picnic basket. “What have you brought this time?”
Nathalie, leaned back on her haunches, flips open the basket’s lid and, retrieving the sandwich, unwraps it enough to reveal what’s inside. “If you remember, you were talking to Gabriel the other day about a certain craving.”
Emilie gasps and awkwardly lunges forward, snatching it from Nathalie. Before Nathalie can even laugh, Emilie is holding it with both hands and stuffing her face. She moans with the first chew while Nathalie’s own stomach lurches at the contents. It’s two more eager bites Emilie can even stare in disbelief, fingers touching her lips. “This has to be the best-worst thing I’ve ever eaten,” she laughs, knitting her eyebrows together. “Where did you even get this?”
Nathalie nods towards the house. “I had the chef make it.” Emilie stuffs her face while Nathalie’s own twists in delight and disgust, frowning at the sound of slick peanut butter against crunchy pickles. “I have to look away,” she laughs, turning her attention to the ground. “I can’t stomach seeing you eat that.”
Emilie shakes her head, shooting a pleading glance at Nathalie. “Believe me,” she says, swallowing, “I have been dreaming of this sandwich. Gabriel said I was insane, that I should pop a vitamin instead.” She rolls her eyes and wipes the corner of her mouth. "He doesn't quite understand the whole thing."
Nathalie knows this. She heard it from the foyer in passing: wafting pillow talks from their bedroom door left ajar.
“I hope you’re aware that it smells awful.”
Emilie leans forward on the grass, puckering her lips. “You don’t want to kiss me?”
Nathalie defends herself with her hands in front of her. “Not a chance.”
“What if it’s the last time you’ll ever get to kiss me?”
Nathalie makes a show of rolling her eyes. “You’re the one that pulled me in. I wouldn’t believe you.”
Emilie cocks an eyebrow before taking a huge bite, making Nathalie stick her tongue out in disgust—a horrible decision, as Emilie grabs Nathalie’s sweater and pulls her in for a awful, sickly sweet kiss reeking of vinegar and peanuts. Their lips slide horribly with the softened butter spread.
Nathalie wrestles herself away, laughing and wiping her mouth on her sleeve with a playful retch. “Christ, Emilie. There’s no way a baby wants that.”
Emilie shrugs and pops the rest of her sandwich in her mouth. Nathalie retrieves a napkin from the basket and Emilie takes it with a smile and dabs her lips. Nathalie takes out the bread and cheeses as well, eager to wash the stained taste in her mouth.
“I read it isn’t unusual to crave charcoal during pregnancy. Dirt, even! Something about minerals and texture.”
Nathalie, mid-assembly of her snack, blanches at the idea. “Please don’t do that. I think that might be my breaking point.”
“I saw you eat worse in Tibet. You and Gabriel.”
Nathalie takes a bite, then another, stuffing down the remnant taste of Emilie’s sandwich. “We were hiking and camping in dangerous conditions. We had to take what we could kill.” Nathalie dusts her fingers of crumbs. “I wouldn’t necessarily call common pregnancy a life or death situation.”
“You never know,” Emilie counters. “I could be one one of the lucky eight in 100,000 women for whom childbirth is life or death!”
Nathalie coughs, harsh around the bread she swallowed. Emilie’s always had a streak of black humor, always coming out when Nathalie least expects it, and something like a nervous laugh, too hollow, shakes out of her chest. “What?”
“Did you know that previous infertility is linked to a higher chance of complications during birth? Not to mention our…unique methods.” Emilie brushes hair back nonchalantly. “Just something to think about.”
The shade suddenly feels too dark, the birds too loud, and Emilie’s face far too calm.
“Not after how far you’ve come,” Nathalie says, redirecting her unease to grab another slice of bread. Popping the lids off the marmalade and honey, she drizzles both onto a slice and splits it, offering one half to Emilie. Two birds swoop from the tree above, another kestrel and a moorhen, diving for the food. Nathalie waves them away. “We wouldn’t let you. Gabriel or me.”
Emilie snickers before taking a bite. “Oh? Care to enlighten me on how you would intend to stop death?”
“We—You made life from, ostensibly, nothing. From magic.” She breathes through her blunder and hopes her blush isn’t visible. She thinks of the recovered artifacts, safe in Gabriel’s atelier. “If you worked around the impossible, so could we.”
Nathalie expects another question, but Emilie merely chews and nods. Something passes through her eyes, a cloud eclipsing the sun on a summer day. Nathalie tries to follow where her eyes are trained in the middle distance, but it’s all Emilie’s imagination.
Dread coils tight in Nathalie's gut, turning the dessert bitter as she bolts it. It only leaves her nervous hands empty.
“That won’t happen, though,” she assures, picking at a frayed hem on the legs of her shorts. “It’ll be just how you planned. ‘Perfect’, I think, is how you described it.” Her eyebrows flit together. “Why are you even thinking about that?”
Emilie’s eyes flutter back to life. She smiles and nods toward the abandoned book in the grass. “Oh, it was only some statistics from a book Amelie sent over. You’re right—common advice isn’t applicable here, is it?” She licks honey from her thumb. “She’s hardly in a position to understand.”
She readjusts the headphones on her stomach and Nathalie, happy to change the subject, plucks them from off their perch.
Putting it to her ears, she gives Emilie a scalding look.
“You’re kidding me. StatioNation?”
She isn’t truly surprised: the band’s second album had arguably been the soundtrack of their summer.
Emilie feigns offense, wide jade eyes glimmer with a sheen of tears. “And? They say playing songs for the baby can help foster a love for music—it’s good for development!”
Campy pop music blares through the foam earpads.
“I would argue they mean classical music,” Nathalie says blankly. “Something educational, perhaps?”
Indignant, Emilie flicks her wrist as if proving something positively instrumental. “I would argue StatioNation is a modern classic.”
“Aren’t they defunct now? Have been for a few years?”
“Sure, but you should have seen how packed those concerts were.” Emilie slouches against the tree with a sigh. “Some of my best memories are sneaking out to see them when I was still at the manor.” She holds up two fingers braided in a promise. “Perks of having a twin.”
Nathalie twirls the headphones around her finger. “Didn’t you miss Amelie’s seventeenth because you were so hungover?”
She overheard this story during their travels. Tibet, second week, when Emilie was already bemoaning to Gabriel the absence of her Discman.
“She insisted I go,” Emilie says. “If she truly didn’t want to spend her birthday covering for me, she would have told me! You’re acting as if I didn’t invite her. She was happier to see me go instead.” She bobs her eyebrows. “Or stay at home, who knows. I never quite understood that about her. I’m relegated to reading half my days away, and I don’t even like reading. It’s just something I can write to her about.” She rests her hand on her stomach, expression going moue. “All the photoshoots have to be here, all the business meetings, all the luncheons, our time together—and no one wants to cast a pregnant woman. I feel as if I’m close to tearing my hair out, and I’m only five months!” She stretches with a groan. “And my back is killing me, on top of it all.”
Nathalie tries not to take her words personally. It’s never been Emilie to stay in one place for long, of course this routine of theirs would grow old, too.
“You could always join a lecture or two of mine,” Nathalie tries, going for levity and coming up desperate. “It would get you out of the house, at least.”
Emilie scrunches her nose. “Isn’t that just more reading?”
Nathalie half-smiles. Readjusts her glasses, a nervous tic. “I’ll be traveling soon. For internship requirements. It won’t be for another year, though, so…” Nathalie trails off. The incongruency in their timelines is something she’s tried to ignore, but it’s becoming clearer the more she talks. This inevitable end, the last stitch in whatever they’ve sewn together these last few months, no matter how differently she’s dreamed of things panning out.
She told herself not to do it. Just bedtime stories to lull herself to sleep.
God, she told herself not to do it.
Nathalie offers the headphones back to Emilie with half a heart.
Instead, Emilie knocks them from her hands before covering Nathalie’s with her own, guiding them to her stomach. Nathalie forces her face to be neutral—before, it seemed perverse, profane, that she should want to feel her stomach; it’s something she’s avoided, even when Emilie has laughed about a random kicking fit, or bemoaned Adrien’s hiccups. Nathalie felt it might be one more thing to add to her dreaming.
“So?”
Nathalie gulps. Shrugs and lies. “I don’t know. Nothing.”
Emilie’s frown is comical. “You’re so obvious at times, darling, it’s almost painful.”
“So, I’ll be leaving,” Nathalie relents. “At least for a while.”
“Oh,” Emilie breathes, but her eyes are challenging. “You don’t want to whisk us away somewhere?”
The implied us makes a blush spread past Nathalie’s turtleneck.
“What if we want to keep you?”
The implied we makes Nathalie laugh, even as Emilie squeezes her hand so hard her wedding ring leaves an imprint.
"Don't laugh; Gabriel and I are very fond of you."
“It’s required to finish this degree,” Nathalie says. “What, do you expect to keep me here forever?”
It’s more bait than Nathalie’s willing to admit—and when it lands in Emilie’s water, she holds her breath for the bite.
“You make it sound as if you’ve thought of something better.”
Truthfully, the future has been hazy since meeting the Agrestes. She’s contractually obligated to see that the pregnancy is viable and that Emilie completes a full forty weeks with the result of a healthy baby. If not, she’s liable to continue searching on behalf of the family until a suitable resolution occurs. With twenty weeks under her hands, it has grown increasingly harder to untangle where her future lies outside of the house.
“It’s good to have a five year plan,” Nathalie mumbles. Body betraying mind, she watches her thumbs brush across Emilie’s linen shirt. As if her hands belong there at all in the first place. As if her eyes don’t wander to where a hint of skin peeks out, where a few pale purple marks gleam silver.
“Stretch marks,” Emilie says, following Nathalie’s eyes. “Gabriel bought me this oil, but I—”
“They’re beautiful,” Nathalie blurts. She reels back, throwing her hands in her own lap in reprimand. “I mean, it’s—I hadn’t noticed them before and—they’re natural, Emilie. It shows this is really happening, for you and—”
Emilie’s giggling is a saving grace, cutting her sputtering off. From the end, she begins unbuttoning her shirt up to her navel, and Nathalie feels her heartbeat pick up so rapidly she’s lightheaded. The marks feather out from uneven ridges and follow her stomach's curve like artfully scored bread.
“Do they hurt?” she asks. Her right index finger pokes out from her fist to tap impatiently at her thigh.
Emilie’s head lolls to the side. “No, not like you would think. Feel for yourself, if you want.”
Nathalie does want—she reaches out and lightly traces a particularly bruised looking epicenter. Crepe-paper soft.
“They are getting darker though. Much darker than I’ve seen depicted in Amelie’s book.”
“That’s good,” Nathalie says, absentmindedly lost in touching the scars. They nearly match the ones that cover Nathalie's own torso, the cuts and scrapes and gashes earned from their Tibet trip that never healed properly.
Now that the barrier has been broken, she can’t help but let her hands roam, thumbing each of the stretch marks as if they’re a language she’s reading carefully with her hands.
Emilie screws up her face.
“About it not hurting,” Nathalie amends quickly, blushing profusely.
“Just my back,” Emilie says, leaning forward and wincing. Her side-swept hair falls like a curtain, but Nathalie catches the look in Emilie’s eyes that she knows well: the beginning of a favor. “If you’d be willing to help me, I’d be willing to listen to how you plan to leave me.”
Nathalie’s heart skips, a painful little quirk, and she nods with a smile. Kissing is one thing, something they’ve both indulged in and learned what the other likes, what coaxes a sigh, a gasp, a moan—but domesticity is the intangible thing her hands want to grasp, if she’s honest. It’s what burns with sickly, heady envy when Gabriel spins her, or when Emilie cups his head like someone delicately holding water.
Nathalie glances back at the mansion. “Sometimes I wonder if you want to be caught.”
“And ruin our fun?” Emilie pouts. “I’d say we’ve been good at keeping our secrets until now.”
From her knees, Nathalie ambles and situates herself behind Emilie, letting her legs fall on either side of Emilie, who in turn brushes blades of grass from her shins.
Taking a breath through an open mouth, Nathalie slides her hands to Emilie’s waist, slipping them under her shirt. In turn, Emilie wraps an arm around Nathalie’s thigh, the other lazily tracing a scar on her knee. In their space of draped limbs and little talks, it’s almost perfect. Honeyed ylang-ylang incenses Nathalie’s brain, fogging it with a terrible, nostalgic clench of her heart. It’s odd, she notes, because it’s a nostalgia of daydreams and not reality. This warmth, this position, this calmness—it’s a well-worn path in her mind only.
“It’s not a plan of leaving you,” Nathalie starts. “But it does involve us leaving.”
Emilie tips her head back over Nathalie’s shoulder and it’s the only time Nathalie regrets keeping her sweater on—not feeling her down-soft hair falling over her own bare shoulders feels like a punishment. Nathalie digs her thumbs in harder, just above where she’s spied two lower back dimples, and Emilie’s lips part into a sigh. She rolls her head to face Nathalie, her smile tickling the column of Nathalie’s throat. “So you do plan to whisk us away. Very ambitious, isn’t it? Stealing into the night with a married woman?”
Nathalie’s lips twitch. “You’re not technically married when it happens.”
Emilie hums, sending a thrill down Nathalie’s spine. “It sounds as if you’ve given it thought.”
Nathalie turns her head just enough to ghost her lips over Emilie’s forehead. “If I’m not mistaken, you employed me to plan.”
“So tell me about it, love.”
It’s Nathalie’s turn to smile. Taking a deep breath of the wisteria and roses, she gathers her thoughts in line like shuffling papers. Too many variations from dreams and little talks, too many ways she’s crossed out timelines to accommodate any hesitation, any whim. She lowers her eyes to watch Emilie’s snow-quiet face.
To start, she chooses the end.
“In five years, there’s a house on the water. Adrien’s fumbling with the rope knot keeping our sailboat tied to the dock. You’re watching him from the sand.” A pause, and then: “Alive, I might add.”
Emilie’s face is cold, unimpressed. Eyes closed. “Your plan is to keep me secluded somewhere?”
Nathalie shakes her head. “No. It’s a summer house. You said we needed a port for a summer home—somewhere accessible, fun.” She looks across the landscaped garden and from the limping leaves knows fall is soon approaching. “Usually we’re gone before the end of August, but you were interviewed and they had to see where you spent your holiday.”
Emilie’s lip twitches up. An eye pops open. “Interviewed?”
“Filming for your second movie just recently wrapped up. They’re begging for details.” Nathalie, hands light from applying so much pressure, slides the back of her knuckles up and around Emilie’s waist, just under her stretch marks. “They wanted an update on him, too. Of course they did.”
Emilie’s glowing. “Of course they did,” she repeats. Her eyes shut again; like she’s really picturing it, Nathalie thinks.
“And what is my wife doing?”
Nathalie could kiss the word off her tongue. “Wife?”
She lifts her ring finger, light catching fire on the silver. “They’re a pair, darling. Have to stay within the family. It would be quite odd to wear only one half, or both myself.”
It’s a point that makes Nathalie feel weightless. “Well, your wife is hoping to be known as an artifacts appraiser, or completing some sort of preservation work.” She takes a long breath. “I can’t say that’s not a long shot, though. I’d have a better chance at teaching.”
“What’s so terribly difficult about the prospect?”
Nathalie frowns. Thinks about the colleagues whose messages she’s ignored in favor of working for the Agrestes. The missed lectures and social circles she was meant to be in. The appointment she pushed until Monday.
“It’s about who you know to get you in,” Nathalie says.
“Gabriel and I have plenty of connections. I’m sure one of them would take interest in you.” Emilie opens her eyes again to cheekily add, “You haven’t let us down yet. Pretty glowing recommendation.”
“How generous of you to say.” Nathalie’s hands travel up the length of Emilie’s spine, but her fingertips brush softly over her sides and Emilie’s back arches suddenly, a bark of laughter surprising them both.
“I was teasing, ” Emilie tries, but Nathalie repeats the motions, even lighter in touch, and Emilie digs her nails into Nathalie’s legs as her own kick at the ground. “You’re absolutely perfect —”
When Nathalie stops, Emilie blows her bangs from her eyes with a huff.
“You're incorrigible,” she says, exasperated.
“I could also publish some of my research,” Nathalie continues. Her theories on ancient artifacts and the possibilities of lost divination were what attracted the Agrestes in the first place. She blushes at her own achievements, briefly wondering when she’d become unsure about them when once she wore them with pride. “That would allow me to work from home more often.”
“So you’re a writer, an archaeologist, a mother, and my wife?”
Nathalie sweeps her thumbs down Emilie’s spine. “So it’s a long shot. Did he have realistic goals starting out?”
She covers her laugh with her hand. “Goodness, no. Frankly, sometimes I wondered if Harry had a better shot at fame than Gabriel.”
Nathalie groans. “Please don’t mention Harry.” She circles a particularly painful spot for Emilie with her knuckles. “I feel like tearing my hair out when I have to call his agency to invite him to your dinners. He has this joke voicemail—”
Emilie looks up with a little gasp. “You actually fall for that?”
“Every. Time,” Nathalie admits, and Emilie laughs harder, spurring on Nathalie’s own. “It’s realistic! He says his greetings and then waits and I can’t wait to get off the phone soon enough, so I start talking, and then it beeps.”
“To think we entrust so much to you,” Emilie teases, clearing her throat. “I’ve seen you skin wildlife and here you are falling for pranks.”
Nathalie lowers her head and kisses Emilie’s shoulder. “Have I completely ruined my chances with that one?”
Emilie’s breath tickles her ear, her voice so wonderfully close. “Mm, not at all. It reminds me why I fell for you in the first place.”
“Because I’m gullible?” Nathalie jokes.
“So,” Emilie says, tapping Nathalie’s thigh with each bullet point. “We’ve two houses, a boat, and we’re able to give Adrien the best tutoring? All on your professor’s salary?” She points her finger. “Remember, my second movie hasn’t even finished.”
Nathalie bites the inside of her cheek. Maybe Emilie was picturing this a little too realistically. Did she even really want to leave?
“Solitude was more of a favor than anything,” Emilie says. “Not exactly something that brought in a steady cash flow. Is being a writer or a professor something that is?”
“I thought we’d use the divorce money to settle down,” Nathalie mutters, the word divorce one too real, too sharp for their dreamscape. “Maybe it’s actually your third movie. Maybe you use your family’s money—I don’t know.”
Emilie goes stiff. Nathalie’s hands still.
“My family’s money?”
Nathalie thinks of her own office and the tech she uses that’s even better than the institute’s; she thinks of the models and the factory workers that spin Gabriel’s dreams into reality; she thinks of Emilie coaching him on etiquette before galas and the way she also fixes his cufflinks and tie; a muse all spent. Nathalie thinks of old and new money.
“I don’t see how an upstart created this all himself,” Nathalie remarks, a little more accusing than she means.
Emilie’s voice is eerily quiet. “That’s your plan, leeching off of me?”
Jealousy. An oily, festering thing bubbles inside and Nathalie can’t reign it in.
“You did it for Gabriel.”
“No, I did it for Adrien.” Emilie pushes herself forward, turning sharply to stare at Nathalie. “And I distinctly remember telling you how miserable that was for me.”
Nathalie tries to match her stare, but the daggers cut at her confidence. Instead, she watches Emilie’s fingers clutch at grass.
“If they disavowed me for him,” Emilie hisses, “what do you think they’ll think of you? ”
Nathalie winces. Swallows back acid.
“At least Gabriel had a small business. Had clients. You have… School?” She laughs, an acrid sound. “What are they funding, exactly?”
Nathalie readjusts her glasses, pushing them a little too hard against the bridge of her nose for pain. “Okay, fine, Emilie, I get it.”
“Really, Nathalie, I expected you to be smarter than that. You said you gave this thought.”
Nathalie puts her hands up, but not her gaze. “I take it back. Forget I said anything.” Her throat tightens at the wrong time. “I don’t have a plan, Emilie. It was a stupid thing to bring up.”
Long, uncomfortable beats pass and Nathalie wishes Emilie would say something— it’s taking everything in her not to make a sound, betraying her effort to not cry. From embarrassment, from failing, from not having Emilie in her arms anymore.
It’s only when Emilie cups her face, so gently it feels like a slap, that Nathalie hazards looking at her again.
“No, you do,” she comforts, stroking Nathalie’s cheek. “It just needs revision. We won’t have all this,” she says, indicating towards the garden, the mansion, “but it’ll be us. Ours.”
“You’d want that?” Nathalie asks. “Something…more simple?”
Blonde eyebrows flit together as if she’s asked something stupid.
“Why, of course.”
“It’s only that I’d have to be away a lot,” Nathalie says quietly. “If I had to travel or work outside the home. I’d be no better than… him.”
Emilie’s thumb traces Nathalie’s bottom lip. “That’s all right,” she assures. “Just take care not to hire an attractive secretary and leave me alone with her.”
She leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of Nathalie’s lip before settling back between her arms.
“So?” she inquires, as if she’s asking something obvious.
“So what?” Nathalie brushes strands of Emilie’s hair around her shoulder. She tries to hide the abject dejection in her voice, the fear of saying something wrong again. “It’ll take two years to finish my degree. I’d come back from my internship and we would…leave. I guess.”
“You’d need a house, and divorce proceedings can last such a terribly long time.”
“Yes,” Nathalie agrees hollowly. “You’re right. That might eat up the whole third year.”
Emilie only hums, and Nathalie can’t pick apart her emotions with enough clarity to understand if she wishes they would keep talking about the future or leave the issue entirely. Late afternoon and their diffused argument makes them both languid and Nathalie runs her touches up and down Emilie’s arm with no clear intentions, only comfort.
It’s only after a while that Emilie speaks again.
“It sounds nice, though, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Nathalie says, ignoring the painful tightening of her ribs around something vacant but full. Empty but like a gouging.
“I’d be happy, I think. With you.”
Nathalie must blink away a threat of tears.
“I know I would be with you.”
Another warm stretch of summer passes between them. Nathalie presses a kiss to the haloed crown of Emilie’s hair.
“It may take longer,” Emilie starts suddenly, voice thick with sleep. “That’s the thing about five year plans. They may be seven year plans in the end.”
Seven years. The analytical side of Nathalie thinks back seven years prior: fifteen and a lycée accelerate. She had friends, but their names and faces are blurred around the edges now and she can’t recall any significant moments. Seven years ago, she earned the snake bite scar over her knee that Emilie was tapping. She had plans, ones that included a master’s program and traveling, but never suspecting Tibet as a destination.
Wasn’t that her reality now?
And in seven more, would she find herself at twenty-nine in the same position? Emilie in her arms, the wave in her kiss and crashing on the rocks of their summer home?
“Seven years,” Nathalie repeats. She rolls the words with her tongue. “And I stay here in return?”
But when she looks down, Emilie is asleep.
She watches the subtle twitch of her blonde eyelashes as Emilie quietly slips into a place where Nathalie can only hope to influence the same way she has Nathalie’s nights. The tranquility of her face—is it merely sleep or can she see it, too? The nook by the bay window, Adrien is always by it—and the trinkets he plays with while breakfast is cooked, the ones they’ve collected during their travels and excursions, not to mention the gifts given to Emilie for her works, her awards and accolades, too. In the bedroom, their bedroom, sleeps Emilie, who won’t wake before ten if she doesn’t have to. And in their closet is Nathalie’s suit, permanently pressed and creased in the trousers, with ties that match all her dresses. It’s less that they match and more of how well they wrap around her hand when Emilie pulls her in for a kiss. And can she see the way Adrien lights up when she finally alights on the last step of the stairs, how he runs into her arms and hurries her because Nathalie just finished plating breakfast? Can she hear, too, how excited he is to squeeze in one last holiday before school starts, spinning an ornamental globe on the nook’s bookshelf and, stopping it with his index finger, declaring where the three of them will go?
So many questions—patience and prudence haven’t been learned, yet—she can’t help but think them, ask them silently as Nathalie envelopes Emilie whole, careful to keep herself still and steadfast as to not wake her early. Her fingers can roam, however, make little sweeps and geometric shapes over the swell that parts Emilie’s shirt like show curtains.
Late August and afternoon press in with equally gentle hands and Nathalie finds herself drifting with the sound of her own wanting, something like a mantra in her head.
Cicadas wind themselves over and over like a key turn toy, and Nathalie counts seven passes of their verses before she wills herself to open her eyes. Sunset colors their combined shadow purple and sets fire to their heaven, throwing gold on the roses. A cool evening breeze sends thin strands of hair over Emilie’s face, and in turn she scrunches her nose. Does not wake, and Nathalie hugs her closer, bony knees closing in. She’s a picture of serenity and Nathalie wants to believe this is a sign. That this is how it would be, no matter the year, first or their very last. That this is the skin she was meant for, the world that fit them both.
But goosebumps ripple down Emilie’s arm and Nathalie knows from the mansion’s glowing interior lights that Gabriel will be home any moment.
Nathalie turns slowly and presses a kiss to Emilie’s forehead. Then her nose when she doesn’t wake, and her lips when she does.
“We should go in,” Nathalie says softly. “He’ll be home soon.”
Emilie’s voice is steeped in dreams. “My, how long were we out?” She yawns and stretches, pushing the heels of her palms against Nathalie’s thighs. “I swear I take twenty cat naps a day. Being pregnant makes me so exhausted.” She turns, an awkward berth that makes Nathalie spread her arms and legs to make room, and throws her arms around Nathalie’s neck. “Carry me in.”
Nathalie’s shock comes out in a laugh. “No. No chance.”
Emilie bats her lashes.
Nathalie scoffs and looks at the kitchen window, shaking her head. “The kitchen staff will see us, not to mention the possibility of getting caught in the foyer as he opens the door.”
Emilie pouts. “All that talk about growing old together, and you won’t prove to me you’ll take care of me if something happened.” She looks to the side, disinterested. “What if I couldn’t walk? Or lost control of my legs? Our grandmother had a degenerative disease, you know.”
“Gabriel might be right,” Nathalie groans. “You really are dramatic.”
Nevertheless, Nathalie indulges her and maneuvers them both—not without a couple clumsy false-starts–and hoists her up, liking the way it feels to be on one knee for her for that brief moment. Emilie beams with a blatant, winning smile, and Nathalie tries to brand on her brain the weight in her arms, the sunlight in Emilie’s hair. She also notes that she'll have to steal away and clean up their mess.
“Father or mother’s side?” Nathalie asks.
“Hm?”
“Your grandmother.”
Emilie nuzzles into Nathalie’s neck with a contented sigh. “Can’t remember. She was my step-grandmother.” She happily swings her legs. “Married into the family after the first kicked the bucket. Old age.”
Nathalie rolls her eyes.
“What?” Emilie smirks. “It’s also not safe for a pregnant woman to be near stairs.” A finger wraps strands of Nathalie’s ponytail and tugs. “Our lives are in your hands, love.”
Through their stolen sanctuary and the glass-paneled French doors, fogged at their edges now with humidity, and up the stairs Nathalie carries her, slow and careful with her footing. Passing what is Adrien’s nursery, still under construction, Emilie hums excitedly.
When she reaches their bedroom door, Nathalie bends to set Emilie down, but she only curls tighter in her grasp.
“I told you to carry me inside.”
Nathalie thinks of the objects strewn on the garden lawn in an effort not to think of her boss’ marriage bed, or how she knows that there are white linen curtains that shape Emilie’s shadow beautifully at night, if Nathalie happens to find herself in the right position in the garden.
Emilie’s voice pulls her out of her reverie, so close to her ear. “When do you think the next time this opportunity will arise, hm?”
Something clatters at the back of the house and a voice rings out, deciding the next move for Nathalie. She awkwardly turns the doorknob and hurriedly swings it open, stepping inside and with the heel of her boot, knocking it closed; or, at least close to—mansion doors were heavy.
It’s close to a normal bedroom. Ornate, of course, with a black-and-white marbled floor, tendrils of obsidian cracking through the shimmer. The curtains Nathalie knows so well suffuse the afternoon light onto the simple bed, only grand in its scale and maybe the amount of pillows on one side. Gold pendant lights drip from the ceiling and when Nathalie spares a hand to turn them on, they’re impossibly warm. There on the long chest of drawers are Emilie’s necklaces, and two of Gabriel’s ties strewn like shed snake skins, and in the corner is a towering floor mirror that reflects back their embrace and Nathalie’s own nonplussed expression.
It’s odd to her that there’s nothing stopping her from doing this. No barrier. No resistance. The house is quiet again, holding its breath for her next move.
“It’s a bit much,” Emilie says. “Gabriel really loves black and white.”
“It’s not exactly how I picture ours.”
Nathalie doesn’t have to ask which side is Emilie’s—at one nightstand only a clock ticks away; the other, a vase loaded with flowers shooting up like colorful fireworks and a framed picture that she recognizes easily as the three of them, outfitted in crisp safari clothes before they were torn and shredded. Beside it a smaller picture, propped up alone in black and white, is Adrien’s ultrasound.
Nathalie gingerly sets Emilie on the bed, letting her hands drift to her face and linger there as she smiles.
“Thank you. For today.” Her face and neck go hot. “For listening.”
Emilie’s hand covers her own and Nathalie tries to take a mental picture of this moment. Turning to leave, Emilie squeezes her hand.
“No kiss goodbye?”
“You’re incorrigible,” Nathalie grunts, spinning on one heel to give her a peck.
But Emilie is quicker, of course she is, and her hands take fistfuls of Nathalie’s sweater to keep her close as she presses longer and more insistent kisses.
“In such a hurry to leave me?”
Nathalie pulls away, breathless. “Gabriel will—”
Emilie cuts her off, pulling her sweater so hard there’s the distinct crackling of a splitting seam. Nathalie’s forced to prop a knee on the bed, or else the whole should become unraveled.
“You’re more fun than that, aren’t you, Nathalie?”
Something else cracks, this time within: a yearning always out of reach for Nathalie to quell but fitting so perfectly in the palm of Emilie’s hand.
Gabriel’s clock seems to tick louder.
The pulse that floods her ears and cheeks, the rush of blood that makes Nathalie tumble onto the bed on top of her. Can Emilie feel it in her chest, in the swipe of her tongue, the stutter of her breath? Emilie sucks the hesitation from her as she exhales it and all that’s left is the raked and naked shore of Nathalie, stretching and wanting the crash upon the rocks that Emilie gives her. There’s nothing she doesn’t take: when Nathalie pants for breath, Emilie sucks her lower lip—when she moans, a failed attempt at playing quiet, Emile bites and makes sure the desperate sound pitches up.
Nathalie, half out of her mind with want, grabs Emilie’s hands and pins them to the bed, stretches them far into Gabriel’s side. Emilie mewls in delight, her kiss turning sloppy with a spreading smile, and Nathalie takes the opportunity to kiss the corner of her lips, her cheek, trailing down her neck. Ignoring the buzz of her teeth to bite into flesh is hard—she mouths the slope of neck and shoulder and merely teases a scrape before Emilie is hissing her name between heaved breaths.
“Don’t,” she warns, then bares her neck more. Veins reveal themselves under her skin like suggestions on where to lick, where to paint them the same bruised color. Nathalie leans down and softly sucks a spot before her will and discipline is threadbare and she must prop herself back up, mouth slack and breathing hard as she takes in Emilie’s flushed face, the green eyes that pop against the red, and the lips that are glossed so prettily with Nathalie’s own spit.
Again, the truth feels so obvious in her face: Nathalie is hopelessly, irreparably in love with her. Thinking about the words only makes her heartbeat quicken into a sickening rhythm.
“Emilie, I—”
“Stay.” Her voice is so quiet compared to the roar of Nathalie’s blood, so earnest in the face of Nathalie’s desire. Nathalie searches Emilie’s eyes, looking for confirmation. “Stay with us, and I promise.”
French stumbling into English—a lifetime of late nights and little moments like this play in Nathalie’s mind all at once, a kaleidoscope of possibilities, futures.
Nathalie squeezes Emilie’s hands. Lets her body rest on Emilie’s, soft and pliable and the swell of her stomach something that wells tears instantly. She would respond, say anything for this moment that she’s dreamed of, but her throat closes painfully.
“Mademoiselle,” comes the warning call from downstairs, loud and unmistakable who it’s for.
Nathalie seals their promise with another kiss, pressing Emilie into the sheets stained with her perfume, Gabriel’s unmistakable cologne, their shared body heat that makes Nathalie shudder under her sweater. She’s the unmarried woman but it doesn’t have to be permanent—she tastes the dream on Emilie’s spit, the salt-spray of their summer home on her sigh as Nathalie kisses her sandy hair.
It’s a mantra, a siren’s call in her head: seven years, seven years, seven years.
“Welcome home, sir.”
Nathalie releases Emilie’s hands and pushes herself away, but Emilie is faster, pushing her heel against the back of Nathalie’s knee to keep her close.
“Emilie!” Nathalie growls, throwing a sidelong glance as her head snaps to watch the door.
“We could speed things up so much faster, couldn’t we?” Emilie whispers. Her fingers scrape down Nathalie’s neck, revealing her unmarred throat from beneath her turtleneck. Nathalie’s mind struggles to be in two places at once, above and below.
When Emilie lifts up and sinks her teeth into Nathalie’s neck, she surrenders and drops her head onto Emilie’s shoulder. “Fuck.”
“Nathalie?”
Burying her hand where nape meets scalp, Nathalie forces Emilie away, stifling another moan as her teeth certainly break skin.
(Later, she’ll trace the bruise and wish she had as many of them as she does bites and scars.)
She strains to listen to the conversation downstairs, but is it her thunderous heart that makes it seem as if it’s gone silent or have the pair stopped talking?
Bolting and untangling herself from the bed that calls her name, Nathalie smooths her sweater and pads to the bedroom door. Honing her trembling senses in, she peers through the gap. Gabriel is not in sight. Nathalie keeps her breath tucked safe behind teeth and rakes her hands through her hair, sure that it's mussed beyond quick repair.
Hazarding a glance back at Emilie, Nathalie makes sure the irritation is obvious and sharp in her eyes. Hard not to falter when Emilie is glowing from within like a Rembrandt, edges soft and bright, and her blouse is unbuttoned, parted like her lips, and her eyes look at Nathalie as if she’s something to consume whole.
Emilie’s response is a tap of her index finger against her bottom lip. Nathalie touches her own and, seeing lipstick smudged on her finger, covers her hand with her sleeve and scrubs her mouth.
“I’ll see you at dinner,” Emilie smiles, and Nathalie slips out quickly, quietly shutting the door behind her.
The house is on fire. Fantastically aglow, she feels the roulette of warmth and shade of a fiery sunset from the window panes opposite her. Warmth and shade as she bounds around the banister and down the stairs, swallowing the remnants of Emilie so her words and spit may settle as wonderfully telltale as her heart.
“There you are.”
Nathalie turns, tucking her hands behind her like a secret. “Good evening, sir.”
Gabriel looks back to the kitchen, clearly irritated. He shakes his head. “He said you were in the garden, of all places.” He walks past Nathalie and she knows the implied order to follow him. “Waste of my time.”
Casting a glance at Gabriel, Nathalie wonders if he’ll figure her out. Will he catch his wife’s perfume as Nathalie works from her desk, transcribing notes and planning his next week? Will he look down at her from above and raise an eyebrow at the smiles she will no doubt have to hide behind the palm of her hand? Will he know that just above them both is Emilie, and the woman below can still taste her lips and honey in the corners of her own?
A sentinel, he gestures for her to walk in first. She notes his glassy-eyed stare at nothing, his lips turned down.
“Long day?” she hedges, slipping into his atelier.
Silence, only the click of the door behind her as a response, and it's only then that Nathalie remembers the mess they left outside.
“I shouldn’t have let you leave.”
Nathalie turns. Tries to force the color from leaving her face.
“Sir?”
He walks to his podium, face set like etched stone. “It was a disaster without you. First Harry called, which you usually field, and I completely missed the call from the production team.” He shoots a look at her, the glow of his tablet glinting off his glasses. “You didn’t drop off the fabric swatches. I even reminded you.”
Nathalie tenses. Fear roots her to the floor. She opens her mouth, but he waves his hand with a tsk.
“They sent someone in to grab them.” He writes something down with a frown. “At least you took care of your matters today—we’ll need you the whole day on Monday.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know what we’ll do without you next year.”
She exhales her tension.
“Unless you keep me,” Nathalie jokes.
But when Gabriel looks at her, it clearly didn’t land.
“I was being kind, Nathalie. I’m sure we’ll find a way to manage,” he says. “It’d be best to find someone who truly wants to be here.”
Taking her seat, her sterile white desk already full of fresh paperwork, Nathalie thinks about choices.
"And Nathalie?"
He's tapping his side with the end of his stylus.
Looking down, she realizes there's a small, fingertip-sized tear in her sweater's side seam.
Nathalie thinks about staying and leaving.