Under The Flight Path

I often find myself lusting after those hot July nights with Leo; the ones spent smoking and drinking and talking, draped, half naked on top of each other in Summer's humid breath. It was more than once that I found myself wondering, whilst perched on that windowsill in Paris' 11th arrondissement – how did I get here?

I'd first met Leo on Brighton's pebbled beaches a few weeks earlier after we were both a little worse for wear due to a “Gypsy Disco” that boasted a blurred night of alcohol, cigarettes and psychedelic trance music. Come the morning six of us ended up lying like beached whales with a carton of milk (we still don't remember how we got it) watching the sun rise over the pier, wind whipping our faces as it rolled in from France.
Leo's university holidays coincided with my next stop - Paris - and so we decided in the warm morning sun that we would meet there on the 18th of July.
"Deal?" I said.
"Deal," he agreed with a smile on his face and milk on his lips.

***


I arrived to Paris on the 17th, a day before Leo and I had planned to meet. With nothing more than 20 euros and high spirits to my name I decided that an emergency CouchSurfing request was the way to go; I had met my best friend on CouchSurfing, after all.

That night, after carefully selecting the best from a pool of rather poor candidates I also met a too-familiar medicine student named Biren who woke me at 2 o'clock in the morning asking if he could, “Sleep with you, please?”.

It was at this point that I bolted myself inside the toilet, called Leo in tears to come and rescue me and thought I would die in the city of lights. I've never been more thankful for a lock on a door, an international sim-card and the human spirit; Leo turned up out of breathe, brandishing a cheese knife and cigarettes an hour later and together we cried, smoked and ran our way to his home through the deserted streets of the city.

That was the day my French love affair began.

The following week stretched out like a lazy afternoon - hours spent sitting on the windowsill of his bedroom drinking, talking and watching the world go by. He took me to the quay's and there we lolled greedily and soaked up summer in the city. We held hands in public, jumped the barriers of le metro and ran from the rain that would begin, erratically, and soak us to the bone.

We've never spoken since but for one glorious week we were the most beautiful strangers to have ever met.