Chicken Skin – Chapter XII

It’s only two days before the end of the month of August that Antoine finally resolved to talk to Christine.

They were at her home, sat on the couch of the small living room.

They had just have dinner. Christine, once she had had cleared the table, had joined Antoine who had switched on the television to keep himself busy while waiting for her.

She cuddled up to Antoine whispering in his ear that time was flying when spent by his side, that she was sad to reach the end of their solitude, the return of his wife and his son, and the one, more distant, of Benjamin.

Antoine had seized the opportunity. Indeed they both had to think about the way they were going on together in the future. Of course, Judith was coming back and regaining her place by his side, but he didn’t want to sacrifice Christine for all that. He wanted to go on seeing her as often as possible, which could mean every single day.

Christine wasn’t expecting Antoine to talk to her that way anymore. They had made the most of every evening of the whole month they had spent together without he broach the question of the future of their relation a single time. As he had waited so long, she had ended up not thinking anymore about what their relation would become and simply lived with him from day to day.

She let him talk without saying anything at first. She was attentive and open.

Obviously Antoine had a plan in his mind.

He offered Christine to move and live in a flat that they could rent in the city where the premises of his firm where located. That way, as soon as he had a moment, and even if she wasn’t in, he would be able to come and take refuge in a place where he knew he would always find some peace.

Christine agreed. She liked that idea a lot; she just couldn’t imagine anymore to spend two days without seeing Antoine.

This is precisely when and how began to root and to be constructed a relationship that could as well have been without any future.

Antoine, though he thought he would not have to come to it, didn’t absolutely rule out the idea of speaking to Christine about Benjamin, and ask her openly the question that burnt his lips. He didn’t feel very at ease: when it came down to it, what allowed him, after all, to ask her to leave her boyfriend when himself wasn’t thinking at all to separate from his wife? Actually, in principle, to have a one-way requirement with regard to Christine didn’t really make him uncomfortable. That is more the idea that Christine might reproach him with a selfishness of which, confusedly, he was aware, and refuse quite simply to put an end to her affair with Benjamin, that made him hesitate to broach the subject directly. He wanted at all costs to avoid to find himself f in a dead-end , pushed to begin with Christine a ratio of power that would finally spoil their relationship, or even possibly lead it to its end. He had such knowledge of that type of traps that he wouldn’t have taken the risk to be caught in them again. He also knew well the inflexibility he was able to show, not to hesitate to face a possible refusal from Christine. At the same time, he wanted to be sure.

Christine, just as he had hoped, spared him the difficulty he would have had to express his request. She talked about Benjamin on her own initiative. She just couldn’t imagine anymore, while their relationship was twisting the way it did, to go on her relationship with Benjamin on the same note.

She explained to Antoine that she had been hesitating till then because she wasn’t sure he really wanted to commit himself with her.

Of course, she hadn’t anything to reproach Benjamin with, so she hadn’t actually seen why she would have broken up with him without being able to allude to a genuine excuse that is, in fact, a new meeting.

She wanted to keep friends with Benjamin and therefore spare his self-esteem. Just as well would he understand that she leave him for another man, just as well could he had been hurt and got away from her forever if she had left him, at the very beginning of her relationship with Antoine, invoking a nondescript story.

In truth, she just hadn’t wanted to take the risk of finding herself emotionally and sexually alone.