However, now that I’m here I can hardly stand right outside the embassy with the raised collar of my trench coat hiding half my face. There’s a high chance the Diplomatic Security Services—or the CIA—will fall on me like a ton of bricks. I haven’t put much thought into my actions but that sure isn’t the outcome I’m looking for. A light rain has started to fall anyway and I have to find some form of shelter.
After making a full circle of la Place de la Concorde, my eyes fixed on the obelisk right at its center, and getting increasingly wet, I work up the courage to dial Josh’s number. The connection takes its sweet little time during which my fingers tighten their grip around my cell.
“MacBride.”
Not a single sound makes it through my glued lips.
“Josh MacBride. Who is this?” He doesn’t have my French cell number.
Josh is a Kansas boy and to me, despite his time at Georgetown and Oxford, he still sounds like one. His speech is all over-emphasized vowels and I used to tease him about it.
“It’s me, Lenor,” I manage in a hushed breath.
“Are you okay?”
“I know you’re in Paris. I’m outside right now. Can I see you?”
“Where outside?” Josh asks, unfazed.
“Outside the embassy.”
“I’m done here. Give me ten minutes.” He hangs up.
I wait. The gardens of the Tuileries, with its classically landscaped alleys, border the south side of la Concorde and I stand at their entrance busying myself at obliterating any more questions. Surely, there are a few valid ones regarding the rationale behind running after a guy who broke our engagement earlier this summer because he was still married to someone else and had a son with her.
In the meantime, the rain intensifies and a wisp of wet hair gets stuck against my right cheek.
“Lenor.”
I swivel around to face Josh. My first reaction to the sight of him is how foreign he looks. I’ve shared this man’s life for four years. I’ve slept by his side. He has made love to me. I’ve betrothed my soul to his. Only two months gone and he’s become a complete stranger, from the shape of his shoulders to the sharp lines of his cheekbones. A stranger. An unexpected wave of sadness crashes over me. Sadness and bewilderment.
“Can we find somewhere inside? It’s pouring down out here.” You can always count on Joshua MacBride to be matter-of-fact.
“Sure.”
I lead him away from la Concorde into Rue Royale. After twenty yards we enter a random café. The bitter aroma of coffee shoots up my nostrils and mingles with the underlying smell of stale tobacco. France has banned smoking in bars and restaurants, but I’m convinced that after decades of public chain-smoking, it’ll take a century to fully cleanse the air.
We sit down at a corner table and I choose the banquette along the mirror-covered wall that faces out to the whole cafe. The material covering the seat is threadbare and as with the rest of the place, it’s in dire need of a full refurb. But I guess that’s part of its charm.
I carefully fold my coat and lay it by my side. Josh removes his suit jacket and lifts his sleeves up to his elbows. The muscles of his forearms have lost nothing of their definition and his dark hair is still cropped short. The flimsy feeling of familiarity finally snakes its way through me.
A waitress approaches our table and Josh addresses a silent question to me. If there’s one thing the ever-capable Joshua MacBride is utterly useless at, it’s foreign languages. So, for once, I take charge.
“Un petit pichet de Rosé, s’il-vous-plait.” A carafe of Rosé wine, please.
As soon as the girl has retreated, Josh starts, “I thought about emailing you to tell you I was coming to Paris for work. It was a last-minute decision by Estevez anyway. But I assumed I’d be the last face you’d want to see again.”
“You were right.”
“So why are you here tonight?”
“I have no idea.” A chuckle makes me bend over the table and I lay my hands flat upon it. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I listened to my gut.”
Josh scrutinizes my face and I manage to keep my chin up. “It’s not much like you to listen to your gut.”
“I’ve not been acting like myself lately.”
Another pause as the full weight of Josh’s gaze settles on me. I can’t ignore the elephant in the room much longer. “How are Cassie and Lucas?”
He stretches back on his chair which looks far too small for his high-school quarterback shoulders. “Cassie is touring at the moment. She stepped in at the last minute as the warm-up for an indie band. The one we saw at The Turf. She didn’t want to because we’ve just started the adoption process and I had to work hard on convincing her.”
“I’m glad for her. She’s so talented.” My own compliment takes me back to a night in an Oxford pub with that gloriously beautiful girl singing her heart out, right when mine had started to crumble. I should be able to taste the foulness of jealousy, only I don’t.
“Lucas is still with the same foster family. Hopefully we can have him for supervised visits around Christmas.” He shrugs—a hesitant shrug—and his eyes roam around the washed-out walls. “I can’t imagine what will happen if the adoption falls through.”
You’d have to be deaf to miss the tightness of worry in his voice. In another one of my spur of the moment decisions, I extend my hand to cover his. “It’s going to be fine. You both love Lucas so much and you love each other. It’s so much more than a lot of kids have.”
He stares down at our joined hands. “I know.”
When the waitress arrives with our drinks I remove my hands, letting her set down the glasses and carafe in silence.
Josh takes one long sip of his wine, but I don’t touch mine. There’s a question burning my lips and it has to get out. “Are you happy?” I asked the same question to Zach not so long ago.
Carefully, he places his glass back on the table. He stares right at me and answers, “I am.”
Again, envy should devour me. Envy. Resentment. Anger. It doesn’t and that absence of feeling disarms me. There’s that new hollowness inside me instead, a pit of nothingness.
“And you?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
“How long do you plan to stay in Paris?”
I shrug. “Mom still needs me here, but I guess the time has come for me to think about what I really want to do with my life.” Strange how Zach’s words have already planted their seeds inside me.
Zach. The thought of him makes me take a calming breath.
After a more moderate sip of wine, Josh finally asks, “Aren’t you lonely here in Paris? It’s never been your favorite place.”
“I have my cousin, Charlie. We’re close. She’s the one who told me you were at that party. Petite, brunette, very pretty?”
My description is met with the arch of an eyebrow. “That girl? She kept ogling me. I assumed she was just French.”
I let out a giggle. “Charlie is very French, but in this instance, she was probably trying to keep herself from stabbing you in the eye. She’s pretty loyal to me.”
“You deserve nothing less.” Josh rubs the corners of his eyes. The budding tension contaminates me and I cope by taking my own gulp of Rosé. “I know it’s too late for me to apologize, but—”
“Don’t. Please, don’t. I didn’t come here to guilt-trip you.”
“So why did you come?” Back to his first question.
“I…wanted to make sure I was over you.” Hmm. Old Lenor would never dream of being that blunt. “You’ve been a jerk to me with all your Will I? and Won’t I?, but the truth is I had my own baggage right from the start and I never had the decency to be honest with you either.”
“Your first love?”
“Yes.”
“Zachary Murdoch.”
I feel my face make an involuntary double-take. “How do you know his name?”
Is there a secret league out there with all the guys who screwed me, th
en screwed with me?
Josh rushes into an explanation. “I had the misfortune to cross Megan Alistair’s path a couple of weeks ago. She mentioned him.”
Megan, Josh and I were at Georgetown at the same time. The mere thought of her succeeds in making me do the unthinkable: I swear out loud in French! “Quelle garce.” What a bitch.
“I don’t understand, but I hope it was appropriately insulting.”
“Nothing is.”
We look at each other and laugh. I notice a new sparkle in Josh’s eyes I’ve never seen before and our shared laugh is followed by two simultaneous sips of wine.
I can hardly stop there. “Zach lives in Paris now.”
“Are you seeing him again?”
There’s no hint of jealousy or possessiveness in Josh’s question. All that heartache hasn’t been for nothing: The page is well and truly turned on us.
And it’s better that way. I let that realization settle inside me before answering, “We’re trying to be friends.”
“Is it working?”
“I think so. I hope there’re second chances for friendship too.”
“Do you think we can be friends one day too?”
“We’ve always been friends, Joshua. Always. Maybe that was our problem: That’s all we were all along.”
I check for a trace of hurt on his face but find none.
In an unspoken agreement, we steer the conversation away from us, our failed relationship, and our past mistakes. We make fun of my father instead. A lot. We have another carafe of wine and by the end of it, I’ve been fully briefed on the adoption, Cassie’s singing ambitions, and Josh’s first steps on Capitol Hill.
It’s a good hour until we leave the café and step back onto Rue Royale. The rain has stopped, but a breeze engulfs us making me shiver. I pull my collar tightly around my neck.
Thirty yards up Rue Royale, a taxi with its roof light bright and shining drives towards us. Josh lifts his arm. “Let me get you into a cab.”
I wait for the taxi to stop before putting my hand on Josh’s forearm. “I’d prefer to walk back home. You take it instead.”
“I’m not leaving you on your own at this time of night. No way.”
I have to fight the smile that threatens to appear on my lips and take a step closer to him. My fingers run up his arm to his cheek. The faint stubble tickles my palm.
“Joshua MacBride, always the knight in shining armor. I’ll be perfectly fine.”
He shuts his eyes, and almost imperceptibly, his face leans closely against my hand. “I’m sorry, Lenor. You’ve been so wonderful to me. You deserve—”
“Hush.” I go on my tip-toes and place a light kiss on his other cheek. “Be happy, Josh.”
I move aside to let him climb into the car. He opens the door, and right before getting inside, he stops and looks over his shoulder.
“Lenor, sometimes our first love is also meant to be our last. Mistakes are made, but we learn to grow from them, and then we do.” A couple of very tipsy and noisy passersby stumble behind me. Josh waits for them to reach a safe distance before continuing. “Maybe that’s your story too.”
I nod, all my energy focused on keeping my trembling lips pressed together. Slowly the taxi joins the night traffic heading towards la Concorde. Through the rear window I see Josh giving me one last look. I think he waves at me. I’m not sure because my sight is blurred by tears I haven’t yet shed.
That is the real end. The end of four years I’ve shared with this man. An end without broken glass, without shouting games, without hate or reproaches, but the end nonetheless. I’ve been a detour in Josh’s life and he’s getting back onto the main road he should never have driven away from. He’s getting back to the people he loves. His wife and his son.
A single tear rolls down my cheek and runs over the edge of my jaw. A bittersweet grief starts pouring into the empty pit inside me. The same drunken couple passes by me again. They’re giggling and holding onto each other. Kissing. A muffled groan escapes from my mouth and I cover my face with my hands, then stamp the sidewalk with my heel.
At last, I let myself cry.
Crying isn’t for the weak. Crying is for those who are moving on.
I have to let go. Of Josh, but also of that heartbroken girl back in the Hamptons five summers ago. I choke, sniff, and choke some more. In the pocket of my trench coat my cell rings. I ignore the sound. I’m certainly making a show of myself, but I don’t give a damn.
My cell vibrates again. There’s always that lingering fear inside me that I’m missing a call from Mom, like those I ignored during my night with Pierre, the night she tried to kill herself. My hand plunges inside my pocket and I withdraw my cell. I blink twice to refocus.
A message from Charlie. GET YOUR BUTT TO LE DUKE AND DON’T SULK ON THAT HOTTIE, PLEASE!
Charlie loves me. I know she does. I’m not alone anymore and I haven’t been for a while.
I cross la Place de la Concorde in record time. The traffic is sparser than earlier and I rush across the roundabout ignoring the red lights. I march over le Pont de la Concorde and avoid the main artery along the Seine by joining la Rue de l’Université. That street is like a necklace whose beads would be magnificent townhouses and its string the history of France over the past millennium. I know most of the names by heart: Hotel du Marquis de Ganache, de Bragelonne, de Senecterre, de Longueil. Saying them out loud always sounds like a melody, even in my less than perfect accent.
I reach le Quartier Latin in thirty minutes. A personal record. Amazing what a pair of flat shoes can do to a girl’s mobility. As expected, the queue outside Le Duke reaches around the corner of the street. I’m not exactly dressed for the occasion and the sideways, suspicious glances I’m getting from the girls—sequined, short-skirted, and made-up—waiting for their turn to get in, only confirms this view. However, I know the big boss, so I jump the line.
My name isn’t the ‘Open Sesame’ list as I’ve expected it to be. I’m unceremoniously asked to get to the back of the line and wait there like everybody else. I don’t like the idea of bothering Zach and contemplate joining the mass of bodies. That’s when my eyes catch the familiar sight of gladiator shoes and a gravity-defying-boobs-blonde-crop combo.
Clara.
Through the tiny space not filled by the gigantic bouncer, I wave at her like a lunatic. There’s no doubt in my mind she sees me. Still, she turns a one-eighty away from me. You bitch!
Maybe my brainwaves carry the insult because she stops in her tracks and retraces her steps.
“Let her in,” she orders the bouncer, who then steps aside.
I rush in. “Thank you.”
“No worries.” She gives me the once-over and I wiggle under her gaze. Jeans, flats, and a Burberry coat aren’t in keeping with tonight’s dress code. “Zach didn’t mention you were coming.”
“That wasn’t the plan.”
She coldly nods, then opens her clutch and extracts what looks like a friendship bracelet. “Give me your wrist.”
I obey and she knots the bracelet around my wrist so tight it hurts. I wince.
“This will get you inside the private party,” she explains. “Your cousin and Ziggy are already there. So is Zach.”
“Great.” I’ve no intention of lingering under her refrigerating gaze, so I hurry up towards the stairs that lead to the club.
I’ve already put my foot on the first step when she speaks in a voice just loud enough to be heard over the pounding music, “It’s like nothing else exists for him anymore.”
I slowly pivot. “What do you mean?”
She edges closer to me, her eyes level with mine.
When she speaks next, her face is so close to mine than I can feel her minty breath on my face, “He’s not completely there anymore. He answers questions, he keeps coming every night, but it’s as if, all this,” she waves loosely at the gothic-looking hallway, its arches and imitation Doric columns, “as if it has never really mattered.”
“All this time he was waiting for you to come back into his life.”
Her words resonate through my mind. I’ve thrown similar words at Cassie. They’d been fueled with bitterness and anger. Zach isn’t Josh, and our shared story isn’t the unbending love Josh and Cassie have for each other. That thought pinches my heart.
“You’re wrong. This is his life, the one he built on his own, the one thing he is most proud of. If you don’t see that, then you don’t know Zach as well as you think.” I finally manage to climb one step, which enables me to stare down at her. I need all the help I can get. “We’re only friends.”
“He wants more,” she says with a bite.
Whatever I have with Zach, it’s mine, ours. “I don’t think so, Clara, but if he does, then that’s strictly between him and me.”
I turn away and head up to the VIP room on the top floor. It’s definitely a big night for Le Duke and I have to weed my way through the crowd. At the entrance of the VIP room, I show my bracelet to the even more imposing bouncer and next I’m welcomed by a waitress offering me a flute of Champagne. I pass on that and keep moving until someone tugs at my sleeve.
“Lenor!”
I look down at Charlie and warmth seeps its way into me. She’s on the edge of the banquette in an alcove. She shuffles to create some space for me and as I sit down, I notice Ziggy’s arms wound around her waist. Good for you, cousin.
“I’m so glad you came. What changed your mind? Did you end up seeing Josh?” She places her index finger under my chin and inspects my face from multiple angles. The spotlights make me blink. “You don’t look too devastated. Have you finally moved on from that douchebag?” Charlie has expressed herself in perfect English and I wonder why she doesn’t do me that favor more often.
Ziggy gets up from the banquette. “I have to start my shift. Your girls have a lot to talk about anyway.”
I express a smile of gratitude in his direction. There’s immense kindness in the one he sends back to me.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promises Charlie.
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