Paris, He Said Read Online Free

resident. He was a CPA and liked his job most of the time, although some of his firm’s wealthy private clients did get on his nerves, and Jayne’s too, when they interfered with her and Colin’s plans to see each other. He played basketball two nights a week and tennis every other Saturday morning with a college friend who lived off a trust fund, which Colin did not appear to envy. Sometimes she admired this; at other times his broadmindedness about his rich friends irritated her, as did his uncritical love for New York, which seemed at times to verge on idolatry. (“The traffic, the noise, all the crowds,” she’d grumble. “Well, it’s New York,” he’d say. “You have to pay to live here. But everything you need is only a block or two away. How could you not love that?”)
    Still, his optimism was also one of the things she found most endearing about him, along with his sweet tooth, bigger than her own, which was a first for a boyfriend; also, the fact that he took stand-up classes at a comedy club near his apartment. He was always trying jokes on her, some of them so awful ( Did you hear about the blind horticulturalist? She got arrested at a funeral for trying to deadhead all the bouquets! ) she found herself laughing harder at the whoppers than at the good ones. She admired too his habit of visiting used bookstores, where he looked for the scruffy old biographies and novels that he kept in a bookcase in the dusty living room of his apartment on East Twelfth Street, which he shared with another friend from college, this one without a trust fund. A first edition of Catch-22 was the book he valued most, one he kept intending to reread, but it was Jayne who did, on the sly at the shoe boutique when her boss wasn’t there.
    After they’d been together for three months, Colin gave her two books that she’d had on her to-read list for years, Anna Karenina and Endless Love . (“ Endless Love !” cried Melissa when Jayne told her about the gift. “That book broke my heart. Colin must be in love with you. But what’s he trying to say? It didn’t end so well for David and Jade. Or for Anna.”) One thing he hadn’t said was that he loved her. She hadn’t said it yet either, but the week before she met Laurent, Colin had talked about introducing her to his parents when they would be in town over New Year’s.
    Melissa and Liesel thought Colin was good-looking and sweet, and if he made her happy, this was what mattered most, but didn’t it bother her that he wasn’t interested in going to art galleries with her? He might tolerate museums, but wasn’t this true of most of the people she knew?
    She didn’t mind very much because she didn’t go to galleries as often as she used to. If she hadn’t met Laurent, she would have continued dating Colin, even if she wasn’t sure he was the man she’d been waiting for. That man seemed to be Laurent.

    The sky outside Laurent’s bedroom was cloudless, the west-facing window open a few inches, its dark blue curtains parted to let in a breeze tinged with cold humidity from the nearby river. She would be late for work but didn’t care, her heart buoyed by this defiance of a rule she had always observed without question. They were still in bed, the mattress smaller than she’d expected, but Laurent was subletting an acquaintance’s apartment and had explained unprompted that he hadn’t bought a bigger bed for his brief stay in New York because there was no space to store the owner’s. A queen would also have crowded the room more than it already was. That he worried about this at all touched her.
    “I’m not being silly,” he said, kissing her bare shoulder. “Only honest. I must be one of many men who have told you they are crazy about you, un vrai coup de foudre , Jayne.”
    She shook her head, lacing her fingers with his. “No, no one I’ve gone out with before you spoke French, at least not very well.”
    His laughter was subdued. “Whatever language