The Taste of Bad Decisions

The orange leaves of the tall trees in La Fontaine Park bring a smile to my face. Autumn is definitely my favorite season.

“Alix? Yoo-hoo… are you with me?”

My attention pulls away from the window and returns to the woman sitting in the beige armchair across from me.

Brunette, somewhere in her fifties, with round glasses and a pinched expression that makes me want to tell her to loosen up.

But I hold back.

After all, my mother is paying for the session.

“Yes, Michèle. I’m listening.”

“I’d rather you answered me. What brings you to my office?”

I raise an eyebrow.

“To be honest? My mother. If she hadn’t made me promise to see a therapist, I never would have come.”

“I appreciate your honesty.”

“It’ll be the death of me.”

The corner of her mouth twitches slightly.

Well. She does know how to smile.

Michèle lowers her eyes to the little notebook resting on her knees.

“And what if you told me a little about yourself? You’re twenty-four, is that right?”

I nod. She quickly scribbles down a few words before looking up at me again. She pushes her glasses back up with her index finger in a small gesture that, for some obscure reason, already annoys me.

“You’re French, aren’t you? How did you end up in Montreal?”

My body tenses slightly at the mention of France. The country where I was born, where I grew up, and that stood by and did nothing while I was being destroyed.

I cross my legs.

“By plane.”

Silence.

Michèle stares at me over the top of her glasses.

“Nice reaction. I think we’re going to have a great time together.”

This time, I smile at her properly.

I appreciate that she doesn’t take offense.

“More seriously,” she continues, “when you took off your jacket earlier, I noticed some marks on your forearm. Bruises that have almost faded. Does that have anything to do with why you’re here?”

My smile disappears.

I swallow with difficulty.

She saw them.

I spend my days wearing long, loose clothes to hide the remnants of my old life, and all it took was a few seconds in an overheated office for a stranger to notice what I’ve been exhausting myself trying to hide for weeks.

I instinctively pull my sleeve down over my wrist.

“It does. It has something to do with it.”

She says nothing.

And somehow, her silence irritates me almost more than a question would.

I can tell she’s waiting for me to elaborate, but there’s already a lump forming in my throat. My eyes burn.

No.

Not here.

Not in front of her.

“Alix, you don’t have to tell me everything today. Maybe you can just give me a starting point. Something that helps me understand the situation without digging any deeper.”

I stare at my hands.

Where do I start?

With the first insult?

The first time he checked my phone?

The first time he told me to stop seeing a friend because, according to him, she was a bad influence on me?

Or should I go straight to the first slap?

“I’d been in a relationship with a man for a year.”

My voice sounds foreign to me.

“I loved him.”

I pause.

“Probably too much.”

Michèle takes a few notes.

“Is he the one who did this to you?”

The images come back before I can stop them.

His face.

His clenched jaw.

His raised hand.

The sound.

Then my body reacts.

My breathing quickens. My fingers begin to tremble. The room suddenly feels too small, the air too heavy. I try to breathe in, but something catches in my chest.

I pull my knees up against my chest and close my eyes, unable to hold back my tears this time.

“Alix.”

Michèle’s voice reaches me from far away.

“Look at me.”

I shake my head.

I feel her presence move closer, then her hand gently settles against my back.

I flinch.

“Okay. I won’t touch you again.”

Her hand disappears immediately.

I open my eyes.

Michèle is crouching a few feet away. Not too close. Not too far.

“You’re here, Alix. In my office. In Montreal. Look at me.”

I focus on her round glasses.

“Breathe with me.”

It takes several minutes to regain something resembling calm. Several minutes of fighting against my own body, reminding it that the walls around me aren’t the walls of my old apartment.

When my breathing finally slows, I angrily wipe the tears from my cheeks.

I’m ashamed.

And I hate being ashamed.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“That’s true. But I’m paid to do this.”

A strangled laugh escapes me despite myself.

This time, Michèle really smiles.

“Our session is over for today. And I think that’s more than enough for a first meeting.”

I nod, drained.

Before I leave, she reminds me that I can contact her if I have another episode. I nod without the slightest intention of doing so.

Wouldn’t want her to think I’m starting to like her.

I leave the office with a strange feeling, as if a still-fragile scar has just been ripped open again.

I put in my earbuds and head toward my apartment. Usually, I like taking in this city I don’t know yet. The brick facades, the outdoor staircases climbing up the fronts of some buildings, the trees that seem to have decided to catch fire before winter.

Today, I barely look at anything.

I want to go home.

Close the door.

Disappear.

When I reach my building, a small dark-brick apartment house wedged between two almost identical buildings, I quickly punch in the entry code before climbing the stairs to the second floor.

No elevator.

Of course.

The moment the door closes behind me, a meow catches my attention.

I turn around just in time to see Bella trotting toward me.

“Hi, you little monster.”

She’s the only piece of my old life I decided to bring with me.

Her small white body rubs against my legs, purring loudly, and something in my chest finally loosens.

I’m home.

Nothing can happen to me here.

I head toward the bathroom, determined to drown this day in enough hot water to forget even my therapist’s first name.

But my reflection in the mirror makes me take a slight step back.

Fuck.

My blonde hair looks brittle, dull. The dark circles beneath my hazel eyes betray the exhaustion of the past few days, and my complexion would make a corpse look well-rested.

I force myself to smile.

The result is so grotesque that a genuine little laugh escapes me.

“Beautiful, Alix. Irresistible.”

Bella meows from the hallway.

“Thanks for the support.”

I undress and slip into the bathtub. Hot water runs over my body, and I remain still for a long moment, eyes closed, until steam completely fogs the mirror.

My thumb absently brushes over my left arm.

The bruise has almost disappeared.

The pain is still there.

Somewhere.

In the background.

Eventually, I doze off.

When I open my eyes, the water is cold and my skin is covered in goosebumps.

“Great.”

I quickly rinse myself before getting out of the tub.

Shit.

I put my towel in the laundry this morning, and the clean ones are still in my bedroom.

I sigh and leave the bathroom naked, still dripping wet, leaving a lovely trail of water across the hardwood floor behind me.

That’s when an unfamiliar sound catches my attention.

I stop.

My entire body goes rigid.

I search for Bella with my eyes. She’s curled up in her bed, but her ears are pointed toward the front door.

A second sound follows.

Like someone scratching at wood.

My heart speeds up.

I’m not imagining this.

There’s someone on the other side of the door.

I stand frozen in the middle of the living room, unable to breathe properly.

The handle lowers slightly, but the lock holds and the door doesn’t open. My blood runs cold instantly.

Fuck. Mathieu found me.

The thought hits me with such force that my legs nearly give out. For a second, I’m not in Montreal anymore. I’m back in France, standing in front of him, unable to know whether the next blow will come in a minute or an hour.

Then reason slowly finds its way through the panic.

No. That’s impossible.

Mathieu is in prison.

He doesn’t know where I live. He doesn’t even know this address. He knows nothing about my new life, and an entire ocean separates us now.

I grab the first thing within reach—a small empty vase sitting on the kitchen island. And that’s how I find myself standing naked, dripping wet, and completely panicked in the middle of my living room, ready to murder someone with a decorative object I bought three days ago.

The handle moves again.

“Hey! I know you’re in there!”

A deep, calm male voice, with the Quebec accent my French ear still hasn’t gotten used to. The vowels stretch differently, certain inflections catch me off guard, and in another situation, I probably would have found it attractive.

Right now, all I want to do is smash my vase over his head.

I grip the vase so tightly my fingers hurt. My heart pounds against my ribs, and when the handle goes down a third time, something snaps inside my head. I cross the room, turn the lock sharply, and throw open the door, raising my makeshift weapon over my shoulder.

Everything happens very fast. A curse, a large figure in front of me, and a hand closing around my wrist before the vase can come crashing down on the stranger’s head.

My body stops obeying me.

My lungs seize, and the hallway around me blurs. All that remains are those fingers around my wrist, that unbearable pressure, and the feeling I know far too well.

“Let me go…”

My voice barely comes out.

The man frowns without loosening his grip. Tall, with slightly messy dark hair, a sharp jaw, and dark eyes fixed on me, he looks caught somewhere between anger and confusion.

“Let me go!”

This time, my voice breaks enough to make something shift in him. His gaze drops to his hand, then slowly rises back to my face. He understands that something is wrong. I can see it in the way his expression changes.

Yet he doesn’t let me go immediately.

He watches me for one second too long, as if trying to understand my reaction before deciding what to do with it. Then, finally, his fingers open.

I stumble backward until my back hits the wall.

“Don’t touch me!”

“With pleasure.”

His voice is calm. Far too calm for a man who just narrowly escaped being knocked unconscious with a vase. I clutch the vase against my chest like a shield and see his gaze slowly travel down me.

Shit.

I’m naked.

Completely naked.

In front of a stranger.

A very attractive stranger, of course, because if I’m going to live through one of the most humiliating moments of my existence, the man standing in front of me might as well look like he stepped out of an absurdly expensive advertisement.

His eyes return to my face, and I could swear I see a spark of amusement in them.

“Are you planning to hit me or get dressed? Because I have a preference, but I’d like to know what to expect.”

I stare at him, speechless, for a few seconds before humiliation gives way to anger.

“You’re trying to get into my apartment!”

“No.”

“I saw my door handle move!”

“Congratulations.”

I frown.

“Excuse me?”

“On your eyesight.”

I hate him.

It’s immediate, visceral, and almost refreshing after the fear that just tore through me.

“Get out of my apartment.”

“Technically, I’m in the hallway.”

“Then get out of my hallway.”

He tilts his head slightly, and his calm makes me want to pick up where my vase left off.

“Your hallway?”

“You’re seriously playing semantics when you just tried to force my door open?”

For the first time, genuine irritation crosses his face.

“I wasn’t trying to force your door open. I’ve been knocking for five minutes.”

“With what? A crowbar?”

His gaze drops to the vase still clenched in my hands.

“That’s pretty ironic coming from the woman who just tried to crack my skull open.”

“You were messing with my door handle!”

“Because you weren’t answering.”

“That’s generally the point of a closed door.”

His jaw tightens slightly, and I savor that tiny victory far more than I should.

“Now leave.”

He doesn’t move. Instead, he stares at me with an intensity that gives me the unpleasant feeling he notices everything: my still-too-fast breathing, the way I instinctively protect my wrist against my chest, and the yellowing marks slowly fading from my forearm.

His gaze lingers there for a fraction of a second.

I immediately pull my arm against my body.

Something changes in his expression, and I hate it. I hate that he saw.

“You’re still naked,” he points out.

I look down on instinct, then realize my mistake and immediately raise the vase again.

“Look again and I’ll finish what I started.”

A smile appears at the corner of his mouth. Not a kind or reassuring smile. More like the smile of a man who’s just discovered something amusing and fully intends to enjoy it.

“You opened the door like that. Don’t blame me for your questionable decisions.”

“You son of a—”

A cold drop suddenly lands on my shoulder.

I stop and look up. A second falls onto the hardwood, then a third, as a dark stain slowly spreads across the ceiling above my entryway.

“What the…”

The stranger sighs.

“That’s why I was knocking.”

I stare at the stain, then at him, then back at the stain as if it might have the decency to disappear on its own.

“There’s a leak in my apartment,” he continues. “And apparently, it’s coming down into yours.”

As if to confirm his words, another drop falls between us.

I close my eyes for a few seconds. I left a therapy session in tears, fell asleep in a bathtub, nearly murdered a stranger while naked, and now my ceiling is leaking.

What a day.

“Where do you live?”

He simply points one finger toward the ceiling.

“Upstairs.”

Of course.

Naturally.

The gorgeous psychopath who messes with door handles and insults naked women had to live right above me.

“Great.”

“Feeling’s mutual.”

I shoot him my darkest look, and he returns it without the slightest difficulty.

“A towel might be a good idea,” he adds.

I push the door closed, but he blocks it with his hand. Panic immediately rises back into my throat, and this time he sees it without needing to analyze me for two hours. He pulls his hand away at once.

“Don’t ever do that again.”

My voice is low and icy, and his smile disappears completely.

For a few seconds, we stare at each other in silence.

“Then don’t slam a door in my face when water is coming through my floor.”

“Fuck you.”

“Charming.”

“Asshole.”

This time, I slam the door shut, and he doesn’t try to stop me. I immediately lock it before leaning against the door, the vase still clenched in my hands and my heart beating far too fast.

The stranger’s voice suddenly comes through the door.

“Nolan.”

I frown.

“What?”

“My name is Nolan. If you’re going to insult me every time we run into each other, you might as well know who you’re talking to.”

I remain silent, and a short laugh reaches me from the hallway.

“Have a good evening, neighbor.”

His footsteps fade before I hear him climb the stairs to the floor above.

I wait a few more seconds before setting the vase on the floor and looking at my wrist.

Bella comes over and rubs against my ankle.

“I hate him.”

She meows.

“Don’t start. You too.”

I finally retrieve a clean towel from my bedroom and wrap it around myself before returning to the living room. The dark stain continues spreading across the ceiling, and somewhere above my head, I can hear muffled footsteps.

Nolan.

Just thinking about his infuriating smile makes me want to grab the vase again.

My phone vibrates on the kitchen island.

I pick it up without thinking.

Unknown number.

A message.

Did you really think an ocean would be enough?

My heart stops.

For several seconds, I stand frozen, unable to process the words on the screen. Then an image appears beneath the message, and all the air leaves my lungs.

It’s me.

I’m wearing the same clothes I had on this morning. My black jacket, my jeans, my earbuds hanging around my neck. Behind me, I immediately recognize the orange trees of La Fontaine Park and the facade of the office I left a few hours earlier.

The picture was taken today.

In Montreal.

I zoom in with trembling fingers, searching for a reflection, a figure, anything that might make sense of what I’m looking at.

Nothing.

Just me, photographed without my knowledge.

An icy sensation slowly travels up my spine.

Mathieu is in prison.

I know he is.

So who just took my picture?