Kiss Me in Paris

by Catherine Rider

  I have not moved from this seat since Serena left, but I don’t know if it’s because I simply don’t want to, or because I am incapable. My nine-hour friendship with her has apparently been destroyed, but I am pretty certain we’re going to have to see each other again at some point — she left her things at my dorm, after all. She never actually took the spare key, so if she comes back, and I’m not there, she’ll have to try to explain who she is and hope whoever’s at the front desk will believe her story. Or she will have to hope that someone can track me down. Either way, it’ll be awkward for her. And afterward, assuming we are reunited, I just know that she will find a way to blame me for that, too. Because Serena seems able to get mad at me very, very quickly. To be fair to her, I do know it was out of line for me to expect her to leave that bistro (I may have overdone it, talking up my “better” place). I knew, as it was happening, that she had a reason to be angry with me.

  But don’t I have a reason to be angry at her? I have wasted the entire day, at the expense of my project! Monsieur Deschamps is going to fail me.

  And I also think she knew exactly what she was doing when she called me “selfish.” I am not my father.

  I watch the guy with the mistletoe guide his drunker friend along to the exit, wondering how this day — which didn’t promise all that much to begin with — somehow managed to go even worse than I expected.

  I know it’s not really Serena’s fault. She did more than enough to accommodate me — even changing her plans so that I could show her the Dugarry exhibit. She cannot have wanted to take such time out from her Romance Tour, but she did it. Because she is a decent person. This day was going well enough until …

  Martine. Martine, charging back into my life at the worst possible time, creating upheaval as she always does.

  She told me she’s over it. That’s what Serena said. Could I have misread Martine in the bistro? What if I wasn’t seeing the calm before a storm but just … calm? Now, suddenly, I find the energy to spring out of my chair and march toward the exit, walking so quickly that I catch up with the drunk guys in suits, who shout insults at me when I bump into them.

  I cannot believe I’m heading back to Maison d’angle. Martine has already ruined one project of mine and may have helped “finish off” another. But maybe we do need to talk.

  If she has moved on from the feelings that our breakup left behind, I would like her to tell me how she did it.

  *

  Maison d’angle is very busy by the time I return. Even Didier’s hair has lost some of its structure. The chatter of the patrons is so loud, I can almost feel it around my ears, but when Martine sees me lingering by the welcome desk, all that noise seems to be sucked away as she just … stares at me. Have I made a terrible mistake? I gesture to her. Can we talk?

  She’s holding two dishes, standing over a table for two. She puts the food down with a smile, shares a few words with the customers and then walks over to me. I have a little freak-out — what if she thinks I’ve returned because I want to get back together? That I’ve dumped the American girl and am now making some big, romantic gesture? Am I going to upset her all over again?

  But there’s no hope in her eyes. Only confusion. And maybe … embarrassment?

  “Jean-Luc, what are you doing back here?”

  “I need to talk to you,” I tell her. “Can you take a break?”

  She raises her eyebrows and jerks her head in the direction of the very crowded bistro.

  “I know this is inconvenient,” I tell her, “and I am sorry. But this is very important. It would mean a lot to me. To you, too, I think.”

  She pauses. “Okay … Go around back. I’ll see you in the alley, but I can talk for a few minutes only.”

  “Thank you.”

  I walk back onto the street, then around to the alley behind Maison d’angle. Martine keeps me waiting just long enough that I start to wonder if she’s going to leave me out here to get hypothermia, as some kind of revenge, but the back door opens and she comes out, shrugging on her peacoat.

  “What do you want?” she asks, her pale face like a ghost in the alley.

  For a second, I can think of nothing else except how strange it feels to be alone with Martine, face to face and a few feet away from each other, making very intense eye contact in the dark.

  “Are you really not angry anymore?”

  We have one of those long, drawn-out silences that I used to dread. I fight the urge to look away from her, seeing that her face fills not with anger or hysteria but with pity. Sympathy. “I’ve moved on. You should try it.”

  I stay quiet for so long that she sighs, annoyed.

  “You make me wonder if you don’t want me to move on or something.” Does she think I might like the idea of her being upset? I know our fights sometimes got personal, hurtful, but she should still know me well enough to know that I do not enjoy seeing her miserable.

  Apparently, neither of us could see how wrong we were for each other.

  “You hurt me,” she says. “You took everything I tried to give you, dropped it and ran away. The more I tried to close the distance between us, the faster you ran.”

  I look at the cobbles. “I know … I really am sorry. About everything that happened.”

  “And what are you even doing here with me right now? You have a nice girl in your life, and you’re here talking to the ex that you did not want to be with. Why?”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  She reaches out and lightly grabs my elbow — a prompt that I should look at her. Her face is soft, understanding. Her voice is, too: “Because you want to be forgiven. I know you, Jean-Luc — I’ll bet that, no matter how good a time you have had with this American girl, you have still picked fights with her. Right? It’s because you need people to prove to you that they do want you around.”

  She is looking right into my eyes, unblinking. A look of this intensity sometimes makes me edgy, but now … Now, she looks concerned, almost tender. “You do all of this to get what you want, and the minute anyone starts making an effort to show you they do want you, you run. I was tired of having to chase you all the time.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, even though there’s a lot I could say. I wish I could have made clearer to her that all those times I picked fights were not just about me testing how much she wanted to be with me. I think a part of me was excited by the thought that she might one day tell me to go to hell, so I would have a motivation to improve myself …

  A motivation I’ve felt sometimes today. And why would that be?

  “I’m sorry, Martine … I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  She just smiles — which makes it weird when she says: “You did hurt me. But I’m going to be okay. In fact” — the hand on my elbow slides up to my shoulder, friendly, appreciative … platonic — “you might have done me a huge favor. Because I got sick of crying after about a week, and then I applied for a bunch of internships — you know, to keep myself occupied — and I got one.”

  “That’s great.” I really mean it.

  “It’s only a small designer in Le Marais. But I am learning so much, and it’s a great experience. Plus, I’m, uh, going on a date tomorrow.”

  I try not to look surprised, but I can see from the way she rolls her eyes that I have failed. She laughs.

  “His name is Laurent, and he’s a medical student.”

  Now I don’t even bother trying not to look surprised. “A medical student? That …”

  “Does not sound like my type?” she asks, taking a step back from me. This whole conversation is much more formal than I’m used to with Martine, but I have to admit — I kind of like not being tense all the time. “I think that is where you and I were always wrong, you know? I used to look at love like kind of a jigsaw puzzle, that you needed two pieces that were similar enough to fit together. It was only when I found
that in you that I realized, we were too alike. Put us together, we just make the same shape, only bigger. But when you put two very different pieces together, they form something new.”

  This is the first conversation we’ve had in a while that’s not going to end with one of us storming off. My heart hasn’t felt this light since Martine and I first got together, back when …

  “I did love you, you know?” I tell her. “I … don’t want you to think I never did.”

  Her smile doesn’t waver, but her eyes do glisten a little, and she pulls her hand back. “Thank you …” Then, she gathers herself and points at the camera I kind of forgot was still on me. “Is that your project for Monsieur Deschamps? Can I see?”

  I take the camera off my neck and hand it to her, almost laughing when I realize this will be the first time she’s ever held it. For various reasons, I didn’t really trust her not to throw it when we were together.

  Martine liked to make it clear what she thought of bad art.

  She flicks through the photos I’ve taken today, and I brace myself for her to offer faint praise.

  “They’re wonderful …” she breathes.

  I was not expecting this response. “What did you say?”

  “I think they’re lovely … especially the ones of Serena.”

  “Oh, those were just for fun,” I say, as she hands the camera back to me. “They’re not for the project.”

  She smirks. “But I’d say more than half the photos are of her. It’s like she is the project … a documentary of you falling for Serena.”

  “I haven’t fallen for her!” My voice is loud, the walls of the alley throwing my words back at me as if rubbing my face in my own lies. “She’s completely wrong for me …”

  Martine just smiles as she hands me my camera. Then she leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. “Different pieces, Jean-Luc.”

  She turns around and walks back into the bistro, leaving me alone in the dark alley, holding my camera, which feels heavy with … Serena.

  Serena, the reason I left the dorm room at all this morning. The reason I found the will to start my project over properly, rather than try to salvage what I could from the crap I’d so far put together. Serena, who sees things in my work that even I don’t notice.

  A smile is breaking out on my face — I can’t remember a time I was ever happy to lose an argument with Martine, until now.

  Serena is the project.

  And then I’m running out of the alley, toward the Metro. I have to get back to my dorm — right now!

  ~ CHAPTER ELEVEN ~

  SERENA

  7:35 p.m.

  “It was funny until my mom called the cops!”

  I’m almost choking on my veal, because Ethan is cracking me up with a story about being taken to the circus as a kid and having such a great time that he tried to sneak onto the back of one of the trucks so that he’d get taken along to the next stop. Who is this funny, self-deprecating guy who can make me smile even when I’m feeling kind of sad?

  Ethan’s laughter dies down, and for a second he just gazes at me. It makes me blush a little, and I’m about to look away, when I see his right hand stretching across the table. The tips of his fingers brush the backs of mine, before his palm — not as sweaty or clammy as I remember it being back home — settles on top of my hand.

  Or it would, if I don’t jerk my hand away — but I do. I try not to let my own confusion show on my face and am about to tell him, sorry, I’m just a little ticklish, but before I can, the waiter is back at our table and asking (in English, for my benefit) if we want any dessert.

  “Chocolate mousse, s’il vous plaît” is what we both say, at the same time.

  “Get out of my head,” Ethan teases, as the waiter clears our dinner plates and heads back inside.

  I return Ethan’s smile, and we fall quiet once more. It’s not really an intimate moment, because of the chaos of engine noises and random car horns, even a police siren, outside, but I’m surprised to realize that I’m worried I may have hurt his feelings with the whole hand-retraction thing.

  Now I’m the one who reaches across the table, and when I place my hand on his, Ethan turns his over so that we’re palm to palm. It might not be the sweaty, clammy palm that I remember from back at Columbia, but my whole arm instantly feels like it’s made of wood, and the pressure of his hand is oddly tight.

  It’s just because this is new, I tell myself. You could get used to it.

  “So, listen …” Ethan gently squeezes my hand — I couldn’t take it back now even if I wanted to. “I’m glad we managed to meet up again, because there’re some things I’ve wanted to say to you since that party back home. In fact, I have to admit — I don’t think I’ve ever really stopped thinking about what an idiot I was that night.”

  “Forget it,” I tell him. But before I can say any more, he’s holding up his free hand — not quite a shushing gesture, but definitely one that says, he’s got more to say.

  “I messed up, I was wrong. Just because I couldn’t really see how putting yourself through all these emotions was going to help you get over what happened with your dad, that did not give me the right to judge. It’s none of my business. And while I don’t have much experience of grief myself, I took Psych 101 last semester, and I’ve read about how it can sometimes make people do … you know, wacky things in order to heal themselves.”

  I don’t get to respond to this (“wacky …”?), because Ethan’s free hand comes down, so that mine is now sandwiched between both of his palms. “Can we maybe forget all that?” he says. “Start all of this over?”

  I squeeze his hand back, even though my arm is starting to cramp a little. Striking that whole hallway conversation from my memory sounds like a very good idea.

  When I nod at him, Ethan breaks into the biggest smile I’ve seen since … well, since I randomly turned up here less than an hour ago. It’s nice to look at a guy who wants you here with him, who wants to talk with you.

  “Awesome,” he says. “Because I really do think that, tonight, I’m going to make a much better case for why we should get together.”

  *

  8:04 p.m.

  It’s not exactly elegant, ladylike behavior — and it’s not like I’m super keen to eat every single last bite of my chocolate mousse (I’m actually kind of full) — but focusing on my spoon is a way to hide my face from Ethan as he explains just how much we can save if we split all our subscriptions and memberships: Spotify, Amazon Prime, Netflix …

  Is it a bad thing that I most definitely do not want him to see what I put on my Netflix list?

  “You mentioned you liked that hiking trip your mom took you on a couple years ago. I love hiking, too! We’d never be at a loss for something to do on weekends.”

  I kind of wish I didn’t have my hair tied back — I could do with a veil of privacy right now, while I figure out how to respond.

  “You know I don’t believe in coincidences,” he goes on. Now I look back up at him. “We’re both cultured people, here for quite specific reasons, purposes — even in a world of seven-and-a-half-billion people, the probability of us running into each other was higher than you might think. It’s not a silly twist of fate.”

  He’s leaning forward in his chair, his forearms on the table. Excited. There is wonder in his expression — it kind of weirds me out, because it’s so unlike him. And the fact that he sounds like he does when I’ve seen him arguing with people unsettles me. I feel like I’m … well, maybe not on trial, but definitely in some kind of deposition.

  “We weren’t born for each other or anything like that,” he goes on. “People change over time, they grow and develop. No one is ‘born for’ anybody. But there are people like the two of us who are like” — he snaps his fingers, looking away, as if he might find the right words somewhere in the stalled traffic — “like
pieces of a jigsaw, you know? Pieces that are kind of the same, that fit perfectly together” — his eyes light up and he looks at me again, as if he’s thought of something he thinks is great — “and make a corner. And when you’re solving a jigsaw, it’s best to start with the corners. It makes everything afterward much, much simpler.”

  But a little less exciting is what I think but don’t say.

  He must take my silence as agreement, because he is moving on to his next point.

  “So, building out from that corner, I’d say we should give ourselves a one-year deadline. Christmas is convenient for that, right? And if we still consider ourselves broadly compatible by then, we should consider targeting the summer after sophomore year for when we might start looking for an apartment together. It would make the last two years of college a lot easier, if we’re saving so much money on rent and stuff.” His eyes continually flit from me to the street — well, beyond the street, to a movie screen that only he can see, playing our epically scheduled love story. “I’d say let’s do it this coming summer, but that might not give us enough time to find a good place that we can both afford. Unless you’d be cool with moving out to somewhere like West Orange.”

  He says that like he’s forgotten it’s in New Jersey. But I guess it does make some kind of sense. It’s hard to disagree with him, after listening to his near-ten-minute argument of the case. But I’m not really focusing on what Ethan has been saying about joint memberships or West Orange.

  I’m thinking about that business about the jigsaw pieces, about the corners — I realize how he’s looking at me, making eye contact in a way that he has never really done before. He’s being physically forward in a way that’s unlike him, too. There’d be no kisstastrophe today, I can tell. All this talk of planning for a future … this is what excites Ethan. I was wrong before, when I thought that he had no poetry or romance in his soul — he just has a very particular kind of poetry and wants a very particular kind of romance.