“Okay,” I replied, finally.

Nine

Lille lost her way

The rest of the day was a flurry of activity, and I was proving my mother right by walking around with my head in the clouds. It was all Jack’s fault. His attention made me feel constant flutters and giddiness, and I was sure I had a perennial dreamy look on my face.

I went to see Bea and give her the finished painting. She squealed with delight when she saw it and proceeded to pester her dad to hang it up on her bedroom wall in their camper. Her dad, Aiden, was a single parent and a general labourer for the circus. He had a decent, unassuming sort of personality. I was constantly seeing him lugging heavy equipment about. It certainly didn’t look like an easy job, but I still had this itching need to tell him that he shouldn’t let Bea run around by herself all the time. I tamped the need down, because I didn’t want to come across as judgemental.

When I was leaving their camper, I saw Julie walking my way. She took me in, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. I thought she was going to say something mean, but then she surprised me when she plastered a polite though obviously fake smile on her face and said, “Hey, Lille, is Aiden in there?”

“Yeah, he and Bea are watching television,” I answered. She only nodded and walked by me before disappearing inside the camper.

Once the show started, I was busy painting faces outside by the entrance. I found that the more French people I interacted with, the better I became at speaking the language. This trip was doing all sorts of great things for my life. I was speaking a second language, doing art every single day, and receiving orgasms from the sexiest man alive. Well, one orgasm, but I had high hopes for more.

I slept like the dead that night and awoke early to the noise of the men taking down the Spiegeltent. My bed was on the side of our tiny room with the window. I wiped away the condensation and peered out to see Jack vaulting up a pole as he assisted with the dismantling of the tent. It looked like doing such a thing came so easy to him. Well, he certainly wasn’t afraid of heights. I watched him for longer than normal, fascinated. Plus, he was so sexy when he was working.

Finally dragging myself away, I had a quick shower, making sure not to use all of the hot water for fear of facing the wrath of Violet, then dressed in some jeans and a yellow knit jumper. Violet was sitting by the table, eating toast, one leg thrown over her shoulder (I know, weird) and wearing a T-shirt that read, “Warning, Gymnast: Could flip at any moment.” It made me smile.

“What’s with the top?” I asked. “I thought you were a contortionist.”

“An ex-boyfriend bought it for me. He thought it was a funny jibe at me having a short temper. Well, it was ironic that I did flip when I saw he didn’t even get my profession right. I have a mean left hook.”

“So you punched your ex-boyfriend and you’re still wearing the T-shirt?” I said, amused.

She shrugged. “Pretty much.”

I gave her a wide-eyed look. “Fair enough.”

Lola came out of our room then, scratching her head, her short hair sticking up in every direction. “Shit, it’s moving day today, isn’t it? I feel like absolute crap, Vi. Could you drive this time? I don’t think I’m up to it.”

“You do realise the only reason I let you live here is because I hate driving this thing, right?” Violet threw back, one eyebrow arched.

Lola coughed, then sniffled. “Seriously, I’m not faking just so that I can beg off. I think I have a temperature.”

Violet made a huff of annoyance but didn’t respond. I walked over to Lola and put my hand to her forehead, only to find she was burning up.

“She’s not lying,” I said. “She definitely has a temperature.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Violet groaned. “It better not be the flu. I can’t afford to get the flu. Get back in your room, Lola, and stay there. We don’t want to catch what you’ve got.”

Okay, so it was official. Violet had just about the worst bedside manner I’d ever encountered, and I grew up with the ultimate ice queen mother who never gave hugs or cups of cocoa or petted my head when I was ill.

“Come on, let’s get you back to bed,” I told Lola. “I’ll make you some soup, and you can try and sleep it off.”

And that’s how I spent the rest of my morning, taking care of Lola and making sure she was comfortable. I was just washing my hands when I saw Jack pass by the window of our camper. He was pulling along a large trunk full of equipment. When he saw me watching him, he raised a questioning eyebrow, as if to ask, Are you riding with me today or not? I got a fizzy sensation in my belly to think he’d been waiting for me to come over.

“Lola’s all settled. She should be fine until we reach Orléans. I’ll be riding with Jack,” I told Violet, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, drinking a cup of coffee.

“Cool. Just make sure you don’t let him talk you into a blowjob on the drive. We don’t want him crashing,” she teased, and I gave her a narrowed-eyed but amused glare.

When I got outside, I practically raced all the way to Jack’s camper. I knocked on the door and heard him call, “It’s open.”

Stepping inside, I found the place clean and tidy, the same as before. There was something that warmed my heart about how lived in and threadbare everything felt. I’d grown up in a house with expensive carpets and designer couches, where you had to take your shoes off as soon as you stepped in the door. Mum never let me eat in the living room or in my bedroom. It was always so tense. Everything had to be perfect.

Jack’s camper felt like pure comfort in comparison; it was the kind of place where I could sit back and relax, completely be myself.

“Hi,” I said, going to take the passenger seat beside him at the front. “What time do we leave?”

He glanced up to look at me, his eyes moving from my face to my chest and then down. I relished how he completely soaked in my appearance like that. There was something so…excessive about it.

“Good morning, Lille. Five minutes. I was beginning to wonder if you’d show.”

I let out a sigh. “Sorry about that. Lola’s fallen sick. I think it’s a cold. Anyway, I had to get her something to eat and tuck her into bed.”

Jack seemed perplexed by this. “Who are you? Her mother?”

“Definitely not. In my experience, that isn’t how mothers act.”

He stared at me for a long moment before looking away again. There was a faraway tone to his voice when he said, “No, nor in mine.”

“Ah, something we have in common, then? Though I take it your mum never tried to track your location against your wishes using GPS.”

I winced when I remembered that his mother had died in a house fire when he was little. How fucking tactless could I be sometimes? Christ.

Jack contemplated my statement for a while. It was probably only seconds, but it felt like forever. “Well, I only have a handful of memories of my birth mother. She was loving, caring, you know, everything a mother should be. Unfortunately, I have more memories of my foster mum. She was the exact opposite.”

My lips turned down in a frown. “I’m sorry.”

He glanced at me and seemed genuinely confused as to why I would say that. It was what anyone would say, but I was learning that Jack wasn’t like everyone else. He dealt in blunt statements of fact, not platitudes and empty expressions.

“Why would you be sorry? You weren’t there,” he said plainly.

“It’s just something people say.”

Bea’s father, Aiden, walked in front of the camper then and waved his hand in the air to signal it was time to leave. I watched quietly as Jack started the engine and began to pull out of the campsite behind the truck in front of us. Watching him drive was kind of sexy. He was so big and muscular, and even though his camper was one of the larger ones, it felt small with him in it. The mid-morning sun warmed my face as I sat back and got comfortable. Deciding to make the most of three hours in Jack’s company, I pulled out my sketchpad and began to draw him.