Paris in the spring. The city had emerged from winter into blooming flowers, mild air, and sudden rain showers. Not like England, where winter still clung stubbornly to everything.

If I returned to Paris, Charlie had insisted that he should be the one to take me. It was the city where he had grown up, where his family still lived. But to Charlie’s frustration, he had not been able to come. He had recently landed a job as a nightclub DJ—something he had wanted desperately and had then come to hate.

“No, Charlie, you’ve only been here a few weeks. You can’t take a holiday.”

His anger and frustration were matched only by my hidden delight.

“You cannot go to Paris without me,” Charlie had pleaded.

“It is work, not pleasure,” I told him, adopting a serious tone. “I’m being paid to write about an art gallery.” It was an elaborate lie.

“But you’re not an art expert. I would have been able to tell you what is good and what is bad.”

I shrugged this off, quietly pleased at my good fortune.

“There’s no choice in the matter. I must go, and that’s that.”

Before I left, Charlie looked me straight in the eye.

“You must promise that you won’t see Thomas.”

“Charlie, I’m going to be busy. I won’t have time to see anyone—least of all Thomas.” 

He was not placated.

“Promise me. Cross your heart that you’ll have no contact with him.”

“I promise I won’t see Thomas,” I lied. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Thomas was Charlie’s older brother, of dubious parentage, and I had met him only once, years earlier, when he stayed at our apartment for a few days. Charlie was convinced that Thomas had tried to seduce me.

That part was true.

Nothing had happened, but Thomas had left an impression.

We messaged each other regularly. More accurately, we flirted—quite shamelessly—and Charlie had no idea.

It was the same with Bianchi in Verona. Charlie had no idea that he existed either.

I climbed the steps from the Métro at Rue du Bac and found the bar on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Bar Dieudonné stood on a corner, occupying the first two floors of a traditional Haussmann building. A striped, blue awning ran along the façade, beneath which stainless-steel tables and matching chairs spilled onto the pavement. A handful of people sat outside, lingering over drinks.

This was the bar that Thomas managed, though I couldn’t see him. A young waiter took my order and raised his eyebrows slightly when I asked for a café crème—it was well into the afternoon.

I have always thought the best parts of this neighbourhood were the little streets that slipped away from Boulevard Saint-Germain: narrow cobbled lanes with outdoor cafés and dusty curio shops. But there was no work to do, and there would be plenty of time for wandering. For now, I sat back and watched the passing crowds—bohemians and tourists alike—talking loudly, smiling, drifting past in loose, cheerful hordes.

A small Algerian boy approached and held out his hand.

My French is about as good as my Italian, and I struggled for something to say. In the end I muttered “fuck off,” which only earned me a puzzled look. I waved him away instead, and he slunk back into the crowd, looking dejected.

I assumed I must be close to the house where Jean‑Paul Marat, one of the more notorious figures of the French Revolution, had been stabbed to death while writing in his bath. Yet this elegant corner of the 6th arrondissement had attracted many other ghosts over the years—Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, Ernest Hemingway, Jean‑Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir, among countless others. Shadows from earlier lives, but still somehow present.

A pair of hands suddenly covered my eyes from behind.

“Ah,” a voice said. “I see my intended lover has finally arrived.”

It was Thomas—tall, slender, delicate, with skin as pale as snow. A baseball cap hid most of his blond hair, which seemed to have been cut short. He kissed me lightly on both cheeks and then pulled me into a hug that felt surprisingly strong for someone with such an elegant frame.

“I hope my brother isn’t hiding somewhere, ready to appear and ruin everything.”

“I’m alone,” I said, “though Charlie has an uncanny ability to know everything that goes on—even when he isn’t there.”

Thomas sat opposite me and smiled, revealing perfect white teeth.

A small pang of guilt drifted through me.

“Where does Charlie think you’re staying?”

“An Airbnb,” I replied. “That way he won’t be able to track me down quite so easily.”

For a moment I wondered what I was doing here. Why was I willing to jeopardise everything with Charlie?

There was only one honest answer: sex.

My friend Levi says I have an addiction to it, and he may be right. On the Eurostar to Paris I had looked up the symptoms, and the similarities with my own life had been unsettling: continuing despite knowing the consequences; using it as a coping mechanism for something missing; an inability to control the urges; risky behaviour; escaping shame through sex; living a secret life to hide things from partners; compulsive pornography; confusing sexual attraction with intimacy.

The list had felt uncomfortably familiar.

I loved Charlie, and I had good reason to believe that he loved me. He was the perfect pin-up boy—French, handsome, with a body people envied. Everyone said they were jealous of us. The perfect couple.

Yet I also knew that Charlie would happily sleep with anyone who offered, while somehow maintaining an aversion to sleeping with me. That hurt more than I cared to admit. It was an awkward conversation we had both avoided.

Which meant I was always looking elsewhere.

Charlie, I suspected, probably was too.

Thomas, I decided, was the next closest thing to sleeping with Charlie. The same genes, the same beauty—though expressed differently. He possessed an allure that was quieter, more evocative.

And impossible to ignore.

“I must work until late,” he said, “but you can stay in my rooms upstairs.”

I slung my bag over my shoulder and followed him through a large doorway beside the bar. We climbed several flights of marble stairs, the walls decorated with faded mosaic patterns, until we reached his door.

“I should apologise,” Thomas said as he unlocked it. “My rooms are untidy. I’m not as particular as Charlie.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.

The place reminded me of the many student apartments I had visited over the years—not dirty exactly, but nothing seemed to belong anywhere.

The main room was dominated by an enormous television fixed to the wall. Beneath it sat what could only be described as a gaming command centre, surrounded by controllers, headsets, and cables. A huge brown leather sofa occupied the middle of the room.

Unopened boxes were stacked in three corners, while the fourth had become a kind of tech graveyard—a tangled nest of charging cables, old headphones, and abandoned power banks. The window ledges were crowded with pot plants, some thriving, others clearly beyond saving.

The small kitchen counters were cluttered with dishes and coffee mugs—clean, but apparently without a cupboard willing to receive them. In one corner sat the remains of several breakfasts: croissants, chocolatines, pain aux raisins, brioche, alongside fresh bread, ground coffee, and hot chocolate.

It seemed Thomas lived almost entirely on whatever the pâtisserie across the street happened to produce.

The bedroom was no better.

A floordrobe of clean and discarded clothes spread across the wooden floor. He had adopted the “bare mattress” aesthetic: no sheets, the bed unmade, pillows scattered in all directions except where they were meant to be.

“Throw your bag in here,” he said casually. “Like I warned you—it’s a bit of a mess.”

The bathroom was clean, though untidy. Half-empty bottles of shower gel and shampoo lined the edge of the shower, alongside an assortment of deodorants and colognes. Toothpaste tubes lay scattered near the sink. Two toothbrush holders stood side by side, each containing a single toothbrush.

The toilet and bidet had been recently cleaned with pine disinfectant, and a full roll of ‘papier toilette’ had been folded into an elegant point, as if in a luxury hotel.

The illusion was spoiled, however, by the pile of discarded cardboard tubes that had accumulated beside the waste bin.

I had the impression that Thomas wanted to impress in certain places, though for the most part the effort had fallen short.

The contrast between the way Thomas and Charlie lived could hardly have been greater. Still, I wasn’t too concerned. I had stayed in places far worse than this.

Charlie had insisted that Thomas had a girlfriend, although the tone of Thomas’s messages to me had suggested otherwise. Flirty, flirty French boy.

But one small detail gave me pause: the two separate toothbrushes.

Almost as if he had read my thoughts, Thomas chose that moment to complicate matters.

“My girlfriend, Ambre, will be along later,” he said nonchalantly. “She’s bringing my friend Léo with her. They’ve promised to take you out this afternoon.”

I was left alone and cleared a small space for my neatly folded clothes. There would be no confusion about what belonged to whom. I also placed my own toothbrush beside the others.

That meant there were now three toothbrushes in the bathroom.

I made myself a strong coffee and waited for the arrival of Ambre and Léo.

They arrived in a burst of energy. Like Thomas and Charlie, their English was excellent, and although they often slipped into French when speaking to each other, they were careful to translate whatever they had said.

Ambre was a slim brunette who seemed to radiate personality. Bright and bubbly, she swept through the rooms with an effortless charm that felt distinctly French.

Léo, by comparison, was quieter.

He looked about twenty: dark-haired, reasonably handsome, with the faint beginnings of a moustache that might have taken months to achieve.

“Thomas was right,” Ambre said with a wink. “You are a very handsome homo boy. So, we must take you to Le Marais and let our boys decide for themselves.”

I couldn’t quite tell whether Léo was gay or not, but he appeared perfectly happy to be included in the plan.

They were easy to get along with, and before long it felt as though we had known each other for years. We wandered through several crowded bars, drinking pastis and mimosas, before eventually stopping at Joe le Sexy—a shop that might best be described as a kinky gay boutique, selling everything from books to toys and explicit magazines.

Ambre bought several bottles of Rush poppers and dropped them into a brown paper bag that did little to disguise where they had come from.

Léo grew visibly embarrassed when I began leafing through several issues of Le Pénis, a magazine that contained exactly what its title suggested. He peered over my shoulder, offering approving or disapproving noises depending on the size and shape of the appendage on display.

Up to this point I had become so caught up in the carefree afternoon that I hadn’t checked my phone. When I finally glanced at it in the shop, several messages from Charlie were waiting.

They followed a familiar pattern: polite curiosity slowly hardening into anxiety once I hadn’t replied.

“Where are you?”

“Did you find the art gallery?”

“What are you doing this afternoon?”

“Answer me.”

“Make sure you do not go to find Thomas.”

I carefully composed a reply.

“All good, Charlie. Found the gallery. Busy talking. Call you later x”

Almost immediately a thumb-up appeared

I felt strangely comfortable with the small fiction I had created. The sunshine had put me in a carefree mood, and the alcohol had washed away any lingering doubts that I might be behaving like a bit of a skank.

When I put my phone away, Léo was still browsing through Le Pénis. I rested my chin lightly on his shoulder, and he seemed perfectly content for me to share the explicit photographs with him. He smelled faintly of Bleu de Chanel and something musky beneath it.

I decided that I really did like French boys.

He turned the pages idly, but suddenly something caught my eye, and I stopped him at once.

“What is it?” Léo asked.

“Turn back a few pages.”

He flipped slowly through the magazine until I told him to stop.

I froze.

Léo stared at the page, trying to understand what had unsettled me.

Unsettled wasn’t quite the word. It felt more like a bomb going off.

“I can’t believe it,” I said quietly. “These are photographs of Charlie.”

Léo looked puzzled. I later forgave him for not recognising him—he had apparently never met him—but there was no doubt in my mind.

Several glossy colour images showed Charlie completely naked, proudly demonstrating that this magazine truly deserved its title. In Charlie’s case, it might more accurately have been called Grandiose Le Pénis.

The penis was magnificent.

A rush of conflicting sensations flooded through me. Mortification. Confusion. Disbelief.

And anger—enough to make me want to tear someone’s head off.

“Fuck me, Léo,” I muttered. “That’s my boyfriend.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that this enormous dick shouldn’t be in here.”

Léo didn’t seem to know how to respond and called Ambre over for support. He spoke rapidly in French while she gave short replies that sounded increasingly disapproving.

“Let me see,” she said.

Léo held up the magazine while she studied the photographs of Charlie, although what this was meant to accomplish remained unclear to me.

“And you did not know?” she asked.

“No!” I snapped.

“Maybe it is AI,” she suggested thoughtfully. “Maybe this zizi does not belong to him. Maybe it has been… enhanced.”

“The point isn’t the size of his dick,” I said. “The point is that he’s showing it in a magazine—especially when…”

I stopped myself.

“Especially when what?” Léo asked.

“Especially when I have absolutely no idea what size his dick is,” I said. “Because I’ve never seen it.”

Ambre and Léo exchanged a quick glance. Neither seemed to know what they were supposed to say.

“Ça va aller,” Ambre said gently. “We must speak with Thomas. Perhaps he knows something about this. I will call him now.”

She stepped outside the shop and spoke quickly into her phone.

“Poor thing,” said Léo softly.

Ambre returned a few minutes later, slightly out of breath.

“I spoke with Thomas. He knows nothing about it.”

By that point I had slipped into a strange kind of numb shock.

Ambre bought the offending issue of Le Pénis and dropped it into the same brown bag that already contained the bottles of poppers.

“And now,” she announced firmly, “we are going to find another bar and get you extremely drunk.”