She spent the next couple days partly with Vinod and partly in the museums and artistic quarters of Paris, while I languished in conference meetings. I say I languished, but the truth was, I lived for international architecture, and appreciated the privilege of sitting on these panels and discussing ways to beautify the world. I attended this conference annually, but this year, Chere was with me and I missed her. It wasn’t only the sex, although I fucking loved the sex. No, it was some part of me that relaxed and unwound when she was near me. To put it simply: she made me happy. My past relationships had been full of anger and artifice, and disgust with everything to do with love. How did I feel about love now? Jesus. Fuck. The conference ended on Friday, but we didn’t fly out right away. I’d arranged a little extra time so we could walk around Paris together. Why not? We’d had so much fun exploring Oslo earlier in the year. We spent the first part of our free day in bed, grasping one another, fucking, struggling, kissing.
