I've oft complained about the lack of hugs in the Parisian lifestyle.
But when I needed them, they were there.
Yesterday afternoon, quiet and lazy with people stopping by to see about my knee and point and laugh at the multicoloured bruising, the phone rang.
It was daddy.
Reminding me that I'm a worthless shit, yada yada, that associating myself with a divorced man with children is a sign of failure, that they want more from their daughter.
"You'll never be able to have a real family if he already has children".
That hurt.
And then it began, dual-tone yelling and I left the kids to download mp3s for us to sing and sat with my head in my hands as the telephone thundered with pain.
They want to pay for a plane ticket to Montreal to see the Gilbert and Sullivan show in spring.
On their terms.
That I don't go out nights, save my time to spend with them, after all they're paying and they want to keep me away from "that guy". For my own good. If I can't do anything useful with my life, they will.
I said no.
And the volume rose, obscenities about what kind of girl I must be to spend my evenings out on the town if I spend a week in Montreal.
A monstre, I said. I'm a monstre.
Not good enough. Failure. Failure. My mother, the doctor, upon hearing about my knee in an attempt to distract away the conversation...
Was already off an running and in her mind all this "rollerblading nonsense" is just going to ruin me and I won't be able to do anything with my life.
That's when the spell broke, when I realized just how ludicrous the noise had become.
The phone call ended, and I tiptoed back in to the living room, put down the phone, and perched on the edge of the couch.
And they noticed. Cristal, Guillaume, Seb, they saw my gritted jaw and reached out their arms instantly.
Later, bellies filled with indian food, too late for the jazz show at the "Blue Navy", we hopped the metro, coffee and hazelnut liqueur in our veins, and sang all the way to the "Academie des Billiards".
A brilliant girl with a red scarf in her hair and the shining skin of someone who's never worn any make-up but the warmth of the sun, thanked us as she got off at her station.
Other people hummed along, others stared, and we laughed and sang and mumbled words and invented others, Edith Piaf and Brassens and the Beatles and various musical tunes.
At the Academie, turns out Guillaume had a hidden talent, and his patient reminders to splay my fingers like this, hold my head like this, my elbow like that, how to break how to do rebound shots...
...and I was sinking them, two balls in a row for the first time ever, then three...
I've always sucked at pool, the one time I play every couple of years.
Seb and I might just be making a pact to go back and learn a little harder.
On the way home we were too tired to sing, too tired from laughing.
Stumbling into bed my abs ached more than my knee.