“I should go,” Antoine said. “I didn’t know. I’m intruding.”
“It’s fine, really,” Veronique assured him.
“Parle-t-il français?” He was asking her if I spoke French.
“Oui, un peu.” She told him I spoke a little.
“Ah, ok.”
It was obvious he had more to say, but didn’t want to say it in front of me. That led to an awkward silence.
“Grey, maybe you could give us a few minutes?”
“Sure.”
“We’ll need some wine. There’s a dépanneur across the street and down a bit. Think you can grab some?”
I’d just showed up and was already being asked to leave. At least one thing was certain, this definitely wasn’t something Veronique set up.
I took my time getting the wine from the corner store. I turned a ten-minute task into a twenty-minute one. I wasn’t sure if I was giving them time or if I needed it for myself.
When I got back to Veronique’s place, she came running to the door and pulled me into the kitchen as soon as I walked in.
“I told him about us. Everything. He gets it.”
“Okay, so umm…”
“We’re just going to hang out and have some wine,” she said, reaching for my hand. “Then we can have the rest of the weekend to ourselves.”
I didn’t know if she was lying to me or to herself, but I think we both knew a lot more was going to happen that night if she had her way.
One of the things I remember the most about Antoine was how normal he was. For someone who had been a pro athlete, he didn’t seem to have much of an ego. Maybe getting released humbled him a bit, but I didn’t get that impression. I think he was just a good guy.
It helped that even knowing about the arrangement that Veronique and I had, he didn’t play into it. Other guys would have started putting on an act or taken the opportunity to flip a switch, getting all macho in a performative way. I’d been there before, and those guys always ended up coming across as cringy. Antoine knew better.
He was quietly confident. He didn’t feel the need to prove anything. Instead, he treated us. He ordered dinner from one of the top restaurants in Montreal and got them to deliver it, which wasn’t something they normally did.
As the night went on, it felt like we were three friends, just hanging out. Nothing about it felt weird. I actually liked him. He came from a poor country and made something of himself. He was smart, too. He loved history and told us about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution. I got so caught up in his stories that I barely even noticed when Veronique slipped away for a bit and left Antoine and me alone to talk to each other.
“What about football?” he asked. “You watch football?”
“Um, not really, no. Sorry,” I told him. “Hockey and soccer mostly. A bit of basketball, too.”
“Soccer? You know Wagneau Eloi?”
I didn’t. I hadn’t even heard of him before.
“I grew up with him in Port-au-Prince, before his family moved to France. He plays for Monaco now.”
I was about to ask him more, but Veronique returned. She’d changed and was now just wearing a silk black camisole. Antoine and I looked at her like we were both the luckiest guys in the world.
She smiled at us, then went over to Antoine and sat in his lap. She was looking at me the whole time. Not nervously like I might have expected. Provocatively, like she’d run this scenario through her head a dozen times and was excited that it was finally happening.
“This feels like an occasion,” she said, placing a hand on his chest. “So I’m going to break a rule.” With that, Veronique leaned in and kissed him. She wanted this to be something special, and with a kiss, she elevated Antoine to more than ‘just a guy for fucking’ as she referred to the other men in her life.
Antoine’s hand went to her hip, and the camisole rode up her side. She wasn’t wearing any panties. He kissed her back, maybe as surprised as I was. For whatever they’d done in the past, that might have been the first time they’d actually kissed.
It’s hard to remember exactly what I was thinking at the time. The image I have in my mind is Veronique looking Antoine in the eyes, smiling through her kiss, as her hand moved from his chest down to below his waist.
His hand was between her legs, and she opened them just enough for me to get a glimpse. He wasn’t gentle with her at all. He had big, strong hands, but not a soft touch. Veronique loved what he was doing, though and couldn’t hold back her moans. He knew what she liked. More than I did.
She pulled her lips away from his mouth and tilted her head back toward me. He brushed her hair aside and began kissing her neck. She didn’t say a word, just stared at me as I watched her rub his growing cock through his pants while his hand kept working between her legs.
She pulled away a bit to give herself some room and reached for his belt. She started to undo it, then there was a moment of hesitation from him. He took hold of her wrist, stopping her.
“No,” he said, looking at me. “Not here.”
She said something directly into his ear, and he shook his head.
“No,” he repeated, then looked down the hallway to her bedroom, motioning with his head.
“Okay,” she said.
She stood up, and he came up with her. They took a few steps together, then she stopped and came back to me. Veronique put her hands on my face.
“Don’t jerk off,” she said. “Save it for me. I want it.” And with that, she gave me a kiss, as Antoine nudged her toward the bedroom.
They fucked for the next hour, and it wasn’t quiet. She lived in an old building. I’m sure the neighbours heard everything. I know I did.
It’s hard to put into words what that’s like, sitting there, a room away, knowing exactly what was happening. When you find out someone is cheating on you, you tend to block out the details and try not to think about the sex. Your mind focuses on the hurt and betrayal, not the fucking.
This was the opposite of all of that. There was no betrayal. It happened right in front of me. I didn’t even try to stop it. There was no hurt or anger to distract me. All I could think about was the sex. I couldn’t stop my brain from matching the sounds I was hearing to positions I imagined them in. I knew exactly what he was doing to her.
What hit me hardest was how much she was loving it. I couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t. Veronique didn’t moan and beg or scream like that for me. Not even close. When she was with Phillippe, the muffled phone protected me from the worst of it. Now I was forty feet away, hearing every little thing.
It ended with Antoine breathing hard, almost gasping for air, as he made a series of loud grunts.
“Hooooly fuuuuck,” Veronique said slowly, dragging the words out. “Oh, my God.” She sounded surprised or shocked. “Jesus Christ.”
“I’m sorry.” Antoine’s voice almost sounded like a laugh.
They didn’t stay together much longer after that. Antoine came out of the room, mostly dressed but still putting his shirt back on as he came down the hallway to the living room.
He looked at me, but didn’t say anything at first. There was just an uncomfortable nod and a half-smile. I’m not sure what he could have said, or what I would have been able to say back. He gathered a few things, making it clear he was on his way out. I kept looking to the bedroom, wondering if Veronique was going to join us, but she didn’t.
“She’s a good woman, Grey. Take care of her.”
He sounded like a father handing his daughter off to a new husband on their wedding day. Not someone who’d just spent an hour fucking the shit out of her.
Once he was gone, I stared down the hallway at her bedroom, thinking I had some idea of what was waiting for me. I took a deep breath and forced myself to take that first step.
I know how absurd this is going to sound, but when I came to the bedroom and saw Veronique lying there, she looked like a modern-day Renaissance painting. Albeit an X-rated one. She was naked, legs spread, on top of a white bed with white sheets. Her skin was pale, and her blonde hair was splayed out across a couple of pillows.
Her eyes were closed. She had one hand on the inside of her thigh, and the back of the other pressed against her forehead. The whole scene looked like a twisted version of the Birth of Venus. There should have been trumpets playing.
As she heard me approaching, her eyes opened slowly, and a smile crept over her face. She wasn’t worried about me, and I think she knew she didn’t have to be. If I’d panicked, I’d have been long gone. Once she saw me, she knew we were good.
Out of everything in that room, my eyes went straight to the enormous load of cum covering Veronique’s stomach and chest. It was everywhere, almost comically so.
She saw the expression on my face, and didn’t even have to ask what it was about. She just laughed. “I know, right?”
“Was that—”
“Yeah. One shot. He held it right to the end, then… all this.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Veronique laughed again. It’s strange how something like that can tie you to the moment. It grounds you to what happened, but also breaks whatever tension there might have otherwise been.
“I wanted you to see me like this,” she said. “I had to know.”
“Know what?”
“That you wouldn’t freak out, or look at me like I was trash.”
“Veronique, I’d never—”
“You don’t have to say anything. I know now.”
She grabbed her bedsheet and began wiping her stomach. “Come here,” she said softly.
I sat down beside her and kissed her forehead. She smiled and put the sheet in my hand. “Do the rest.”
She wasn’t trying to humiliate me. She was making me part of what just happened. I realized that. I also realized the top sheet wasn’t going to work. “Let me get a towel or something,” I said.
As I cleaned her up, she looked at me in a way that I hadn’t seen before. She had a subtle smile on her face, but what caught me more was the look in her eyes. She was awestruck.
“Did you jerk off?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You told me not to.”
“I think what I said was save it for me.”
“I think what you said was I want it.”
“Still do, but not right now,” she said. “I want to cuddle.”
I stripped down and climbed in beside her. The bed was still damp. She was still sweaty. And I couldn’t have cared less. I took her in my arms and held her close.
“This is what this is then, right?” she asked.
“I think so, yeah.”
“You’re really impressive, you know that?”
“Um, thanks?” I wasn’t sure what she meant.
“I mean it,” she said. “Most guys couldn’t handle this. They always want to think they’re the first and the best. Those ones never are.”
She rolled over onto her side to face me. “You’re not weak, Grey. You’re a different kind of strong.”
Her saying that wasn’t some giant revelation in the moment. But years later, when I started looking back on things, re-examining my relationships, and writing my first stories here… those were the words that echoed in my head and gave me the courage I needed to keep going.
At the time, we shared a split second looking into each other’s eyes, and it was one of those ones that felt like a lifetime. I knew that I didn’t have to run from my past anymore. And as much as Veronique needed assurance that I wasn’t going to judge her, until then, I didn’t know how much I needed the same from her.
In true Veronique fashion, though, she deflated things before they got too real.
“That kind of strength is pretty sexy,” she said. “Not as sexy as the ten inches that just destroyed my pussy, but, you know.”
“Let me know when you’re ready for five more,” I said, only half kidding.
“Know what I really want?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “I want you to go down on me. After what just happened, something soft would be –”
She started to explain herself, but stopped trying to make a case for it when I moved myself lower in the bed.
“It doesn’t bother you that I just got fucked?”
I just shook my head and kissed the inside of her thigh. Veronique moaned and arched her back a little, which caused her legs to spread wider for me.
“A girl could get used to this…”
We lay in bed for a bit after that. Veronique was still in the afterglow of coming from two different men, no more than an hour apart. We didn’t say much, just laid there, side by side, staring at the ceiling, occasionally looking over at each other and smiling, laughing, or giggling. Something about that made me feel like a teenager, or at least the kind of teenage years I wished I had.
It was easy to forget that this was only the third time that we’d seen each other in person. There was the day we met, then when she came to see me weeks later in Kingston, and now this. It somehow felt like we’d known each other longer and were much closer than we actually were at that point.
All of the promises I made to myself, and Angela, and everyone else who warned me about Veronique were gone now. We called it an arrangement because we were too afraid to call it anything else. But it was more than that. At least for me. I wasn’t falling for her. I already had.
We spent the weekend doing the things normal couples do in Montreal. St. Viateur had just opened a new location in Monkland Village, so we headed there for bagels on Saturday morning. Then walked the neighbourhood until we found a nice café for lunch around noon. We were trying to figure out what we were going to do that night when a girl Veronique worked with gave her a call. She was looking to get rid of two pre-season hockey tickets.
“I’ll ask him,” she told her friend. “He’s from Toronto and might be a Leafs fan.”
I wasn’t. Even though I lived in Toronto way longer than I lived in Montreal, I stayed loyal to the team I grew up with and jumped at the opportunity to see a Canadiens game.
Her friend met us at the café and dropped the tickets off. When she saw us together, the girl, having been told I was from Toronto, assumed I couldn’t speak French.
“I wasn’t expecting a white guy,” she said to Veronique in their native tongue.
“Neither was I,” she laughed.
The girl gave us a ride back to Veronique’s apartment. The game started in about five hours. We figured we’d give ourselves two hours to get to the arena and get some dinner beforehand, so we had about three hours to kill.
We were cozied up on her couch when Veronique brought up what happened the night before for the first time all day.
“You were really good last night,” she said.
“I told you, I know what I’m doing down there.”
“Not just that,” she said, smiling. “With everything. How you handled it all.”
“I know this is a weird thing to say, but Antoine kind of made it easy.”
“It wasn’t hard?” she smirked, looking down at my crotch.
“That was very hard.”
“And you still went down on me, without even hinting you wanted to get off too.”
“That’s um… usually how these things go, in this kind of thing.”
“Well,” she said, putting her hand on my lap. “I think good behaviour should be rewarded. Stand up.”
I did, and Veronique moved herself to the edge of the couch and worked my pants down. She started kissing my cock through my underwear and watched it grow.
“What was it like, listening to me get fucked?”
“Good.”
“Just good?”
“Incredible.” My mouth wasn’t cooperating with my brain.
“He pounded me so fucking hard,” she said, pulling down my boxers. “I can still feel it.”
She gave my cock a single stroke, as if she was testing it to see how hard it was, then dragged her tongue from the base to the tip before wrapping her lips around the head.
“On my fucking God, Veronique…”
She smiled and started sucking. I was with her for two years, and I never got used to how my cock felt in her mouth or how good she looked doing it.
“I tried to get Antoine to let you watch,” she said while giving her mouth a brief rest. “He wasn’t into it, but we’ll find someone.”
And with that, she took me back in her mouth. I tried not to think about the night before, of the sounds I heard coming from the other room. The look on Antoine’s face when he came down the hallway, or how much Veronique looked like a cum-covered goddess lying in bed.
Now she was putting new ideas in my head. Talking about me watching it all happen next time, like she was already mentally planning it, maybe running down a list of guys she knew.
I was doing my best to hold out, but I made the same mistake as I did the first time she gave me head. I looked down, and when I saw my cock in her mouth, it was almost over. Her lips were gliding along the length of my shaft as she worked it with her hand. She was making little grunts and moans. Veronique knew that I wasn’t going to last much longer. She didn’t ease up. She doubled down. When I came, I put both hands on her head and held her in place. She gagged a little, but I knew she was used to taking more.
Veronique pulled away and settled back into the couch. I just stood there with my pants around my ankles. My cock was still bobbing and twitching on its own. I wanted her to keep going. I knew that I could have come again, but she’d been so impressed by how unselfish I’d been that I found the willpower to reach down and pull my pants back up.
I don’t remember the hockey game or whatever else happened that night. Veronique’s blowjobs had a way of rewiring my brain. I vaguely remember the next day, some shopping, more restaurants, and I think meeting up with a few of her friends for Sunday night drinks. That might have been the first time I heard them talking about Joël and his famous Halloween parties. You’ll hear more about that soon.
What I do remember is leaving much later than I wanted to. It was nearly two in the morning by the time I got back to Kingston, and I had an 8:30 class the next day.
I sent Veronique a text, letting her know that I got home safely and that I was still thinking about her. I waited, but she didn’t text back. As late as it was, I didn’t think she’d be sleeping. She’s the only person I’d ever met who stayed up later than I did. I thought maybe she was thinking about how to reply, or just hadn’t seen the text yet. I gave it another ten minutes or so, and when she still hadn’t responded, I gave her a call, but she didn’t pick up. I guessed that she had fallen asleep.
When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I did was check my phone. Veronique sent me a series of texts at four in the morning.
Sorry, I wasn’t around.
I’m at Antoine’s.
It wasn’t the same without your tongue after.
I sat there staring at my phone. Somewhere between Montreal and Kingston, I started thinking like a boyfriend while Veronique was still thinking like Veronique.
