Matthew Donovan is a self-admitted hopeless romantic who wants nothing more than to meet the man of his dreams and settle down. If you can't find such a thing in the most romantic city in the world, where can you? So Matt sets off for Paris, immediately finding himself the object of someone's attraction. But can an airplane encounter be the first step in seeking romance, or just a toss-away fling?
Upon his arrival, Matt renews his friendship with Simone, an ex-pat interior designer who may just know the sexy man he wants. But it is a young, alluring artist named Anton, peddling his Parisian scenes to tourists along the Seine, that most attracts Matt. When a serendipitous situation tosses the men together, they realize fate is working overtime to unite them. But love is never easy.
Filled with all the grand passion of Paris, Matt's journey will guide him down the tricky boulevards of love and desire, of pain and betrayal, leading him to a final, ultimate confrontation with his own heart. Only with the help of an unexpected friend can Matt again open up his heart, and no longer deny the desire that stirs inside him.
“Sally!” he exclaimed.
The group of people waiting at arrivals parted like the Red Sea, creating a narrow path for, what was assumed, the two lovers to meet, reconnect, embrace, leap into ones arms and be twirled around for all to see, all to applaud. What actually happened had everyone disappointed, because finally Matt and his so-named friend Sally connected, and yes, they did kiss, cheek to cheek, and embrace, tightly and spectacularly, but what followed was totally off script.
“Call my Sally once more and I snip your balls!”
“Bitch.”
“Whore.”
“Slut.”
“Okay, I’m out of insults,” Matt said.
“God, it’s gonna be a long summer.”
“Bitch.”
“We did that already.”
Despite their foul banter, the two once-upon-a-time friends hugged again, and the woman who went by the name Sally even though she didn’t like it, broke the embrace and pushed him back, assessing the man before her.
Matthew Donovan. Thirty-six, six feet tall, with wavy dark blonde hair, was as cute now as he’d been back in high school. He’d been as gay as they come without acknowledging it back then, made even more obvious the one time Sally had kissed him and gotten back nothing but a request for what brand of lip gloss she used. Ah, that was then, this was now. “Of course, look at you, all grown up now, I think you can even maybe shave now,” she said. “God, Matty, you remember how gawky you were, tripping over your feet all the time, like the rest of your body hadn’t yet caught up to the growth spurt your legs had gone through? That one night I had to pick you up out of the snow because you’d tripped over those over-size feet of yours…”
“Uh, I think it had nothing to do with my feet and everything to do with the vodka you’d helped to pour down my throat.”
“Yeah, fun times. I’ve got some vodka in my purse, for old-time’s sake. But of course, I always have a bottle in my purse, you never know when you’re gonna need to call in for some liquid reinforcements.”
“Hey, Sal, thanks, but I think I had enough on the plane.”
“Ooh ooh, I smell more than vodka ... I smell a story, and it better be juicy. Do tell. Oh, and for the last time, call me any derivative of Sally and I swear ...”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll grind my nuts into a peanut Thai sauce. Got it. So ... Simone ...”
“That’s much better,” she said, slapping him hard on the sleeve. “Come on, let’s get out of this terminally boring terminal and you can tell me all about the hot, wild sex you had on the plane. Was he yum? Young, old, rich, poor, big ...?”
“No wonder you go by the name Simone. You’re like a drag queen without the penis.”
She laughed. “Good one, I like that.”
Matt, bags in tow, followed quickly behind the fast-paced, reinvented Simone Richlieu, who brought them out into the bright sunshine of a Paris morning. Matt stopped.
“What now?”
“Nothing. Geez, just give me a chance to breath in a little of the French air.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Matty, if we’re gonna hang this summer, you need to lose that word pronto. That geez crap sounds positively mid-western. You want to live in the cornfields, I’m sure there’s a flight leaving in a matter of minutes. Better to crash than to land. You want to smell the fruit of the vine, then stay with me. You are in vin-central.”
Paris and its lush surroundings, Simone and her over-the-top gesticulations, this was all something Matt was going to have to get accustomed to. But hey, this was only the first day ... really, only the first hour, he had plenty of time to get acclimated. He’d get used to her forthright nature in no time.
They settled inside her tiny Renault, cruising out of the parking lot, and headed south toward Paris’s Right Bank, when Simone snuck a curious peak at her friend. Matt felt the heat of her gaze, threatening to melt him faster than the French sunshine.
“We’ve got miles to go before we hit your hotel. So tell me, was he good?”
Matt sighed. How after twenty years could she still read him like a book? Still, he started his story off the way he knew she would expect.
“God, Simone, you’re such a bitch.”
