Chicken Skin – Capter IX

As planned, Christine and Antoine had lunch in a restaurant.

Antoine was then perfectly relaxed, calm and happy.

They were chatting about this and that, sat down at a table of a sidewalk sitting area of a restaurant located in the neighborhood of Antoine’s firm.

Christine was over the moon. She had never had lunch alone together with Antoine, nor during her internship at his studies, neither since she went there once a week to work.

In spite of the new shift their relationship seemed to take, so far Antoine had remained silent about his real intents regarding Christine. He treated her kindly and friendly. It didn’t look like love. They didn’t exchange the gestures lovers usually exchange. Antoine wouldn’t hold Christine’s hands, he wouldn’t kiss her mouth, nor would he hold her by the waist. He was obviously feeling more released when they were absolutely alone, although he always was reserved in his words.

Of course, this reserve could be explained by the drive to being discreet due to the fact that, Antoine being married, he didn’t want the truth of his infidelity to reach his wife’s ears.

Therefore, Christine understood his reserves, his desire that the true nature of their relationship be not revealed in their entourage. She didn’t feel hurt because of it, even less so given that their relation precisely seemed to evolve and to go a way that allowed her to dream of a future in which she would have her own place in Antoine’s life. That was all she wanted, even though deep inside herself, she wanted more. She expected that would come the time when he ask her to be his without restrictions.

Strangely, she doubted not that he would come to the point that, in the secret and the twilight of her discreet female soul, she was already waiting for him.