He sniffed an imaginary glass. “Faint aromas of shoe leather mixed with lightly toasted tar. It’s full-bodied, velvety, and long. With just a touch of gravel.” He scoffed. “Gravel. I mean, it’s like you said with gasoline—how many people know what gravel tastes like? But people take that seriously.”
I gestured to my glass. “Well, my orange juice tastes like it came from the sunshine-kissed regions of Florida, with just a hint of tropical flavor and an extra dash of pulp.”
Bryan raised his hands, palms out. “See? Nothing to it. But you know what I’d really like to write about in a wine magazine?”
“What would you like to write about?” I took another drink of my juice.
“I’d say, I like going to Bob’s Java Hut down by the ballpark and getting an egg salad sandwich before a Yankees game. That and a two-dollar Bud. And I don’t even like Bud. But it’s good before a baseball game.”
I laughed again, but I’d just taken a drink of my non-drink.
“The complexity of the egg salad sandwich, the mayonnaise from the grocery store, the smoky balance between the mayonnaise and the eggs . . .”
I couldn’t swallow my drink while I was laughing, but I couldn’t stop.
“Sometimes I can even taste the shell from the egg. I can almost smell the chicken from where they failed to clean the egg.”
I covered my mouth, trying hard not to spit out the liquid, my eyes tearing up.
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Kat.” Bryan handed me a glass of water. I shook my head. If I couldn’t swallow the juice, what was I supposed to do with that? There were only two ways out—mouth or nose.
OJ is hell on the sinuses. I reached for a napkin to cover my face, mortified as the juice made its way out my nostrils and into the napkin. Hiding as best I could, I dropped my face onto the table.
“Are you okay, Kat?” He placed a hand on my arm.
I spoke, voice muffled by the napkin. “You can’t take me anywhere. You might as well send me back to coach.”
“I could never banish you to the land of smelly feet. I’m keeping you up here.” Bryan gently petted my hair. Even the soothing touch of his hand after my display of dorkitude felt good. “Besides, it was all my fault.”
I sat up straight. “You’re right. It is all your fault. You made me laugh. You totally did it on purpose. You sit there and launch into one of your riffs, and you make me snort juice.”
“They say laughter is the way to a woman’s heart.”
I lowered my voice. “You already have my heart. Or you will after the semester is over.”
His smile was warm. “I’ll just stake my claim on it, then.”
My heart felt warm too, and I let it out through my smile. “You’ve always made me laugh. You’ve always made me happy.”
Bryan looked out the window for a moment, at the dark of night rushing past the plane. He turned back to me. The look in his green eyes was intense and unreadable.
“What is it?”
“There’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you.”
I was wary of how sober he’d gotten. “That doesn’t sound like a good something.”
“It’s not bad, I swear.” He placed his hands on his thighs. He parted his lips but didn’t speak right away. I watched him as he fumbled for words, watched his throat as he swallowed. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them to hold my gaze, a tight, sharp line between us. I felt as if I were hanging on to something that could crash in an instant. “Do you remember when you told me you loved me the first time?”
How could anyone forget her first love not loving her back? The memory was always in reach.
“Yes.”
“And I said, ‘It’s the same for me. But we can’t be together. I have to go’?”
My face tightened, and I stared hard at the seat in front of me. “Do we need to reenact it?”
“No. Because I handled it terribly.”
I turned back to stare at him as if he’d just spoken Russian. “What?”
“I meant it when I said it’s the same for me. But I should have told you directly. Because I was crazy in love with you then. Just like I am now. I’ve always loved you. I never stopped.”
My head was spinning. My heart sputtered. I felt as if the plane had disappeared and I was flailing in the cold, dark atmosphere, not knowing which way I was tumbling.
“Why did you say we can’t be together then?”
“Because after we walked around NYU together, all I could think was that I would be holding you back. That’s why I was quiet that day. I just kept thinking it would be wrong. That it would be unfair to you if you went to college and were already saddled with an older boyfriend. I didn’t want to be the guy who dragged you down. I wanted you to go to be away from home, meet other guys, figure out what you wanted in life. I wanted you to experience life on your own terms. And I knew I was going to be leaving the country, and it seemed too unfair to you to ask you to wait for me or to be a long-distance girlfriend.”
I scoffed. “Instead, you broke my heart.”
He reached for my hand and traced a line across my palm. His touch was so soft, but I still felt raw and exposed. “Forgive me,” he said.
I didn’t respond. Instead, I looked deeply into his eyes, pools of green I could lose myself in. How I’d loved getting lost in him and being found by him again. He leaned closer, pressed his forehead against mine, and took my hands in his.
“Forgive me for lying. Forgive me for breaking your heart,” he whispered to me, his voice soft and fragile and tender.
This was what I’d always longed to hear. That he’d loved me the way I’d loved him. Not “it’s the same for me.” But I found it only reopened the wound, in a fresh way. He’d thought he knew what was best for me. But he was wrong. And if he’d thought that feeling so damn unwanted by my first love would be good for me, had he really known me at all?
I pulled away from him. “I wish you had told me that back then. I wish you had let us make that decision together. Instead, you made me think you didn’t love me, and it hurt so fucking much.”
“I’m sorry, Kat. I’m truly, truly sorry.”
He looked so anguished. But that didn’t make my heart hurt any less. It didn’t change the past, and it didn’t fix the present.
“Hey, do you want to watch a movie?” he asked, worry lining his voice. He tipped his forehead to the screen on the back of the seats. “I think I saw Love Actually on the list for this flight.”
One of my all-time favorites.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t just go back in time with him as if that would take the pain away.
“I think I’m going to read,” I said, then turned away and buried myself in a book for the rest of the flight.
30
Kat
Present Day
In the morning, I met my friend Elise at a café on a cobbled street corner near her home in Montmartre. She smiled widely and stood when she saw me, kissing me on each cheek as the French do. She was French-American and had been living there for several years, running her own ad agency. I emailed her when I knew I’d be taking this trip—I hadn’t seen her since I was last here, and I was looking forward to catching up now.
“You look stunning,” she told me.
“As do you,” I said. She was a petite brunette in cat’s-eye glasses, adorable but sexy too.
“How long will you be in town? Whatever the answer is, it’s not long enough.”
I told her just a few days, then we ordered breakfast. Over eggs and baguettes, she shared her latest news, then mentioned a man she’d been seeing.
My eyebrows rose. Her last relationship ended in one of the worst ways possible, so I was thrilled to hear she’d found a new one that was making her happier.
“His name is Christian. He’s British, charming, brilliant, and he makes me laugh and swoon,” she said with a grin. “As you can imagine, I have no clue if I should run for the hills or run to him.”
I l
aughed. “I can understand the dilemma. Once you find a good one, it can be terrifying to move forward, only because you know what the other side of heartbreak is.”
She nodded sagely. “I know it far too well.” She sighed, but then smiled again. “Enough about me. Tell me more about you.”
I gave her a brief overview of Bryan, and we concluded that navigating relationships was often harder than learning a new language.
Then I said goodbye and headed on my first expedition.
The last time I went to the markets of Paris, I strolled indulgently through the wares, lingering over anything that caught my fancy.
This time I was efficiency personified as I tackled Porte de Vanves a few days later, powering through table after table, row after row. I scanned quickly, writing off the items I obviously would never use on a necklace—candlesticks, picture frames, goblets.
I ignored the old clothes for sale, the chipped sets of china, and the antique mirrors. I stopped at a table with miniature figurines—tiny cows and pigs and dogs and cats no bigger than thimbles. Some were brushed silver, some white porcelain. They were cute, and while I wasn’t too sure a cow was anyone’s favorite, there was something about the dogs and cats that spoke to me.
I asked the vendor how much. A round woman in a heavy tarp of a dress barked out a number.
“Too high,” I answered in French.
We bargained like that until she reached her rock bottom, and I scooped up nearly one hundred cats and dogs, tucking them in my wheeled shopping bag. I felt like a regular Frenchwoman, weaving in and out of the stalls, wheeling and dealing, snagging the best prices.
I continued on, passing strange-looking garden tools and old kitchen utensils, when I spied several tables full of brooches and pins. They were tiny things and would look so very French on a necklace, the perfect mix of new and vintage. I bought a few dozen and then moved along to another aisle.
I walked past a table full of gray-haired men playing cards as they sucked on cigarettes. They were seated behind a counter displaying a messy array of hammers. I laughed silently, picturing a big, rusty hammer hanging from a slender silver chain. Yeah, that’d be a big hit for sure. I looked beyond the counter and spied a huge box full of antique skeleton keys. The box was at the foot of the card table where the men sat, and it held hundreds upon hundreds of keys that must have worked in miniature locks, because they were no bigger than thumbnails. They weren’t rusted, but just the right amount of weathered.
I asked the men how much.
“For the keys?”
“Yes.”
A man laughed, showing crooked, yellowed teeth. He took a drag of his cigarette, inhaling deeply. “No one’s ever asked before. You want to take them off our hands?”
“Maybe.”
“Five euros.”
I pursed my lips and resisted breaking out in a smile. The keys were perfect. They were pretty, but they also said something. Keys were staples of charm necklaces, with a universal appeal, but these particular keys had a unique look that stood out, a sense that they could unlock stories, or hearts, or secrets.
“Sold.”
I handed the man a bill; he stuffed it in his pocket and gave me the battered cardboard box. I closed the top and managed to stuff the whole thing inside my cavernous shopping bag. I wheeled it away, made a few more stops, then hailed a taxi. As we raced toward the Eiffel Tower, passing cafés full of people lingering over salads and breads and coffees, and bakeries peddling croissants and tarte Normande and chocolate eclairs, I replayed my three days in Paris.
At a market in the Marais, I’d found boxes of star, sun, and moon trinkets. At a street vendor in Montmartre, I’d stumbled across elegant glass hearts. I’d still have to do the hard work of assembling the necklaces, but I had the materials, and they looked both fresh and French.
In the evenings, I’d taken myself out to dinner, at a bistro near Notre-Dame, at a café tucked at the end of a courtyard, and at a bustling Korean place around the corner from the hotel. I’d been alone, but Paris has a way of surrounding people and making sure they don’t feel quite so lonely. I’d also stayed far away from the W Hotel near the Opera House—and from Bryan. The fact that I hadn’t set up my cell phone for international calling helped. No one could reach me easily.
The taxi driver stopped at the light at one of the boulevards, and I admired the buildings. They had that elegant, centuries-old look about them, with long, tall, open windows. When the light changed, the driver zipped across traffic, took a sharp turn, and let me out at my hotel.
As I pressed the button for the elevator, the desk clerk called out to me.
“Ms. Harper. There is a message here for you.”
“For me?”
Perhaps it was Mrs. Oliver, but she was on her vacation. I hoped something hadn’t happened to my parents. The clerk handed me a small white envelope. It was sealed, but my name was on the front. I opened it and unfolded a sheet of paper.
Kat—Remember when you said if I ever needed your translation services that I’d know where to find you? I do need help. Is there any way you can come to dinner tonight? The woman in charge of the padlocks in storage has a My Favorite Mistakes necklace. She loves your designs and would love to meet you. I think it could seal the deal. I hope you’ll say yes to dinner at eight. I can send a car for you.
Bryan
There was a phone number for his hotel. I stared at the note as if it would reveal the answer. Should I go? I still felt raw inside now that I knew the truth. I’d been tricked, and even if he’d felt he had to set me free in college, I’d rather he’d have told me he loved me before he left. Instead, he said nothing, and I felt like I was played for a fool.
I was left empty-handed, a broken-hearted idiot.
But if my presence would help Made Here launch a new line of cuff links fashioned out of the leftover promises from the lover’s bridge, well, that seemed fitting for our relationship of leftover promises. And it was the sort of thing a protégé should do. It was business after all.
I handed the paper to the clerk and asked him to call The W and confirm a car for pickup.
Orange flames glowed in the nearby fireplace, warming the restaurant. The waiter cleared away our dinner plates as Gabrielle Roussillon informed him that the meal was marvelous. She’d had rabbit and asparagus. I’d had chicken and roasted potatoes, and while I couldn’t vouch for the bunny, my French yardbird was indeed fantastic. The white tablecloth was now marked with a splotch of red wine from where Gabrielle had spilled some of her drink while talking with her hands.
Gabrielle was a chatty woman and had commanded the conversation. The pleasant result was I could focus on her rather than Bryan as she told bawdy tales of when she’d lived in Rome, and of all her affairs with Italian men. I laughed, not simply to humor her, but because she was one of those in-your-face people who could tell a saucy tale with a particular panache. She was curvy and broad-shouldered, with sheets of jet-black hair. She wore a ring on her left index finger and mentioned a husband once or twice. I wondered if it was an open marriage. Whether he had a mistress and she had misters, like her Italian lovers. From the conversation, it didn’t seem that long ago that she’d been in Italy.
She leaned back in her chair and tapped a charm on her necklace. It was one of mine, and the charm was a pizza pie. “I don’t know if you remember this, but I ordered it online from you a year ago.”
I flipped through my mental file of necklace orders. I certainly didn’t remember all of them, but a pizza charm stood out. “It’s not often that I get a request for a pizza pie. I think I found it at a toy shop. I can’t believe that’s yours.”
“Small world. It’s for all my Italian men.”
“But of course,” Bryan said. I didn’t look at him. I’d barely looked at him most of the night. My heart was still sore.
“And yours?” Gabrielle pointed at my throat. “What’s on yours?”
I walked her through some of my charms, telling
her the same stories I’d told Bryan that afternoon in Washington Square Park—the English major I never became, and the building that I almost moved into.
“And this one?” Gabrielle touched my movie camera charm. “Were you almost a movie director?”
I laughed and shook my head. “No.”
“Then what is this for? Is it to remind you to stop watching movies?”
“Sort of.” I looked at the fireplace to avoid eye contact. I’d never told Bryan about the movie camera. I’d never told anyone but Jill what it stood for.
“Kat, Kat, Kat. A woman like me knows when a woman is lying. What is the movie camera for?”
I returned my focus to the French civil servant Bryan needed to charm. “It’s for a boy.”
“And who is this boy?”
“My first love. He was my first favorite mistake.”
“Ah. See! I knew it wasn’t just about the cinema. Tell me about him.” Gabrielle placed her elbow on the table and tucked her chin in her hand, waiting for a story. I glanced briefly at Bryan. He was watching the two of us.
“I met him when I was eighteen.”
“Young love. The best kind.”
“And he was wonderful. And kind. And funny. He made me laugh. And he kissed like a dream.”
“He definitely wasn’t a Frenchman, because they kiss like bores!”
“We used to go to the movies together all the time, and we made out in the theater.”
“That is why I say young love is the best kind. You can’t keep your hands off each other.”
I nodded as waiters circled the small restaurant, clearing tables and serving other diners. Low music played overhead, tunes like those sung by the torch singer who’d lived across from me when I’d called this city home. Songs of love gone away or love gone awry.
“But he broke my heart.”
“And you vowed to guard your heart?”
“Yes.”
The Second Chance Plan (Caught Up In Love: The Swoony New Reboot of the Contemporary Romance Series Book 3) Page 14