Chapter Seventeen
Sparrow
“Lily! I have nothing to wear!” I yell via speaker phone.
“You have loads to wear. Actual loads, Rory. I’ve seen you do your laundry.”
My sigh bends me forward enough to place my head on my dresser, its half-open drawers pressing into my hips. My phone is resting next to my head so I can hear Lily in a muffled yet endearing sort of way.
A ribbon hairpiece I haven’t seen in a few months is stuffed toward the back of the open drawer, and I shut my eyes before I notice anything else that’s gone missing. There’s too much weighing on my mind for this event.
I hear some music playing softly through the phone. Lily has a nineties boy band playlist going at the café—she does that sometimes when I’m not there—and I don’t even have the heart to tease her or tell her to switch it. “Lil,” I start.
“I know, Rory. I know.”
And we both know that she’s not talking about the music.
Somewhere in the conversation, I’ve turned and slid to the floor, my bed to my back. This is one of the moments I remember it’s true that grief shows its face when you least expect it. Speaking of grief, I look at the flowers on my bedside table. Because I’m a masochist, I put the bouquet Rafe gave me earlier this week in a vase beside my bed so I can look at them and think of the look on his face when he told Gladys that he couldn’t be the one I’d choose in the end. The look that will haunt me. I had him close to me, and I didn’t go after him. I know I let fear win this time, and if I didn’t have tonight to distract me, I would be banging on his door for forgiveness. But what would that change?
“Ro, why aren’t you with him instead?”
I don’t have the luxury of hiding from someone who’s walked with me through the most difficult parts of my life. “Because this was always supposed to be the plan, wasn’t it? Apparently, Rafe had an enlightening conversation with Jacques. And then Jacques asked me out. How could I say no?”
“And? I sense an and ,” is the response I get from the other end of the line.
“Anddddd Rafe’s not going to stay in this small town forever.” It hurts to say his name. Whereas normally, it’s sweet and like honey on my tongue, it now feels scratchy.
“Well, have you asked him that? I mean, have you said, ‘Rafe, what are your plans for the future’?”
“He told me. He said that he was here to get his music back on track. But he’s been to Paris and London and just came from LA, Lily! LA.”
“So?”
“So, I love it here, but I know there’s no way I could ask him to stay. Not when he wants to reach people with his music. He’s everything good in this world. He deserves to be on a bigger stage.”
There’s silence, and I know she’s giving me her full attention. “And you can’t leave.”
I shake my head, even though I know she can’t see me. My eyes catch on a framed picture of my parents and me at my fourth birthday. The cake is a few feet toward the center of the table, so I’m on my elbows, leaning over the table, my lips pursed to blow out the candles, my eyes closed to make a wish. The cake is white with pink roses and trim, and my parents are behind me, my mother smiling and my father grinning at my dedication to making wishes. I’ve always made wishes. I just didn’t believe any more of them would come true. “And I can’t leave,” is all I say.
Lily hums in acknowledgment, and then it’s quiet on her end of the line. I know she’s giving me space to work through this moment. I wipe my eyes—because at some point in this conversation I started crying—and I stand up from the floor. It’s time to move forward. Rafe has been a distraction—a beautiful distraction—but I can’t commit to someone who won’t be able to fully commit to me. Who shouldn’t. And I would never ask. So, I ignore the dread in my stomach and decide a different distraction is exactly what I need. Besides, isn’t this what I wished for?
“Let me ask you, Rory—because I love you too much. You want someone to fight for you, and I get it. But what if he needs someone to fight for him too?”
“He got to you too, didn’t he?”
Lily sighs, but I can feel that she’s not going to give away anything easily. She’s a beautiful vault and fights fiercely for people she cares about. So, if she’s not telling me something about Rafe, it means she’s also come to care for him too. This thought makes me smile.
“He didn’t not get to me. He’s okay. I guess. But most importantly, he makes you smile like I’ve never seen. Ever. I don’t know whether to hate him a little bit for it or name one of our coffee drinks after him—decaf, of course.” She laughs at herself. “But if you really need to see this through with Jacques, I’ll support you. I just think you need to be really careful about what you could be losing in the process.”
“I can’t lose him. I never had him.” Something tastes sour about those words. “I have to know, Lily. Don’t I have to know?”
She hums a bit, and I can feel she doesn’t wholeheartedly approve, but she also won’t stand in my way. Sometimes just knowing someone will support you in the trying is enough to add some courage.
“Okay, Lils, here’s what we’re going to do.” I can hear the smile from Lily on the other side of the line.
“There she is,” she whispers.
This new confidence has me pacing back and forth, really seeing, for the first time, my entire wardrobe sans the homecoming dress still hanging in my closet because I refuse to ever part with it. My father decided I needed a dress that went with my eyes, so he chose a mocha color, and I’ve never forgotten how happy he was that I wanted his opinion, never mind that I actually followed through with it. I was like an awkward teenage chocolate truffle, but my father’s expression of pure love was worth it all.
My eyes catch on a pair of black tights with tiny black hearts printed on them. Like a constellation forming, I focus on my black ankle boots, my black skirt, and a cream-colored blouse with the style of sleeves that are loosely fitting but cling in a cuff at the wrists.
This is my outfit.
“Got it!” I whisper-yell into the phone and hear the warped sound of Lily’s cheer. This is what it means to have best friends. We wait, comfortable in the closeness and process, until one of us can see clearly. And even if we don’t agree, she’ll show me she’s rooting for me just the same.
“Tell me everything,” is all she says before hanging up the phone. I run into my tiny bathroom, past the shelves with a Chip mug from Beauty and the Beast . I reach inside and pull out my gold necklace, from which dangles an image of the rose in a bell glass from the same film and featuring little petals that rise from the bottom of the necklace as if they just fell. My father gifted it to me when I was around thirteen years old, and it’s what I wear for courage. Most people don’t recognize the symbol. It’s elegant and not a jewelry piece for kids. I put it on and get dressed, only glancing at myself in the mirror long enough to notice the dark circles under my eyes and the way my ribcage seems to want to cave in under the heaviness I feel inside.
∞∞∞
Jacques picks me up at my place, and we take his fancy, European car toward the Downtown area of Portsmouth. He looks stylish, and his modeling skills are in full effect as I sit across from him at an upscale restaurant. It’s an Italian-fusion place, and while it smells incredible in here, the moment we walked through the door, all I could think about was the pizza Rafe and I shared at his studio. I will myself to focus. But it’s so hard when I feel so out of place. Unsettled. Unsure. These are the words that are floating through my mind as I dip some homemade bread into a plate of olive oil and salt.
Although Jacques has been perfectly polite, I feel like I need to be a different version of myself. Like somehow, if he saw the one who questions everything at midnight each night and has a stack of cards (already stamped) by her fridge and still forgets to send them, he wouldn’t be able to comprehend it. He’s only seen business-owner me—the slightly flustered me. Not the one who would hide a guitar pick in a stuffed raccoon just to see Rafe’s reaction. Or the one who owns candles and sometimes never lights them but collects them simply because I like the look of them.
I’m studying his face now—the symmetrical perfection of it, and it’s grating on me that his eyebrows are perfect. Whose eyebrows are perfect? I think it’s a ridiculous thing to be distracted by until I remember the scar through Rafe’s eyebrow. I grin to myself and clearly am distracted since Jacques has to call my name.
“ ?a va ?” I find him looking at me hesitantly. I’m not sure how many times he’s called my name, but I missed it at least once if his expression is any indication.
“Mm-hmm ...” I manage. “ ?a va, merci. ” The piece of bread I was dipping is completely soaked. It’s a vessel lost at sea in the middle of the plate. I poke at it and then push the plate to the side. No point in trying to rescue it and getting oil all over the table.
“So, Jacques, tell me about what you do?” I take a sip of wine and will myself to breathe. His accented-English is stunning. Musical. I’ve never understood why American movies feature French characters with the worst accents I’ve ever heard. It’s abominable, really, to butcher the language in such a way. Why not just hire people who are actually French? I find it all so alarming. There’s a cassette tape of my mother reading me a bedtime story. It’s about a girl who lives in a tree and wishes that she could be a bird so that she can fly away. My mother said that’s why she named me Sparrow. So that I always know I never have to be grounded. But hearing her voice, the melody of it all as she switched between English and French, has forever changed how I hear the language.
I snap back into the present and listen as Jacques talks about how he got into business and about all the places his work takes him, but my mind drifts to Rafe when he was in LA, and I wonder how many times he’s sung in Paris. I have to shake myself out of this because here—right in front of me—is a real-life Frenchman who is smart, interesting (to someone, I’m sure), and downright handsome. I can’t sabotage this.
His phone chimes. “ Excusez moi .”
I nod and really take him in while he’s focused on something on his phone. The way his face is all European—you know the type; you look at them and immediately know somehow that they’re not American. If he’s amused or annoyed with the cultural differences between us, I can’t tell. It’s then I decide to give it a chance. A real chance.
It’s at this moment he puts his phone on silent and hides it away inside his suit jacket. Because, of course, he’s wearing a perfectly tailored outfit.
“Sparrow, I’m so glad you came here with me tonight,” he states while the fancy food is brought to our table. I thought I had ordered a simple pasta dish, but looking at it, I severely underestimated how elaborately pasta could be made.
“My mother was French,” is all I manage to get out. And my focus is now on the chunks of tomato in the sauce. I hate chunks of tomato in a sauce. Blend it or make it a margarita pizza where one knows what one is getting, but for the love of all that is good, don’t make tomato sauce chunky. In town, Lorenzo knows how I like it. I start to move the pieces around the plate to find a bite I’d be comfortable with and am not having much luck.
He notices me playing with my food but has the courtesy not to say anything. So, I ask him about Paris, and his eyes flicker with excitement.
“Oh, when we’re in Paris, I just have to take you to this place my mother loves. It’s a fashion house called Durand, and it’s magnifique .”
I nod and get back to picking at my plate. I mean, is it kind of strange he’s already talking about us traveling together? Sure. But his confidence is one of the things I am attracted to.
“And I’ll take you to the gardens, of course. And shopping on the Champs-élysées . Do you like fast cars?”
I look up and try to process what he was saying. Because that’s not the Paris that I had in mind at all. I think of sitting in Montmartre and having an artist sketch my portrait along with the others on the street. I think of crowded cafés and walking over bridges that hover above the Seine. I think of standing under the Eiffel Tower just so I can be right in the middle of it. I take a sip of wine and leave his question hovering in the air. This wine is ... good. He’s ... good.
Jacques is still politely waiting for my answer, and I grin. Maybe what he and I can have is good, and I just won’t know until I keep trying. Maybe he can open up a different world to me that I hadn’t really considered yet. I fix a piece of my hair and put my hand down a little too forcefully. It nicks the abandoned bread and olive oil situation, and the piece of bread that I thought was gone forever manages to fly off the plate and catapult a few drops of olive oil toward Jacques. It’s a direct hit.
And he smiles. He actually smiles. I look around the restaurant, but no one seems to care that I’ve just gotten food on a former model.
“Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry,” I mutter as I stand to ... what? Try to wipe it off him? I’m not sure what I’m doing anymore and move to sit back down but then think better of it since he can’t see the mess near his shoulder. I hop and drag my chair over toward him, and he’s laughing again.
“Wanted us to be closer, yes?” He chuckles, and I let a grin break through. Maybe he will be okay with the clumsy parts of me. Grabbing a clean napkin, I dip it in water and attempt to help the situation, but all I’m really doing is getting a better sense of the cologne he wears. He captures my hand and slowly brings it to his mouth instead of letting me continue. A soft kiss lands on the edge of my knuckles, and I swallow. It’s a movie moment, to be sure. But I’d be lying if I said there were sparks. Where are the sparks?
I clear my throat and try to push back, but the chair gets stuck on the carpet, and my life flashes before my eyes. I let out a little squeak and stand quickly, taking my chair with me.
“Miss, do you need assistance?” The waiter is next to me, clearly concerned for my welfare.
As am I, young man . As am I .
“I’m fine. Thank you so much.”
He doesn’t believe me, but thankfully, he walks away anyway.
Jacques is amused and starts to eat his food, all politeness and refinement, and nods at the waiter as if it was perfectly reasonable to ask me such a question and perfectly reasonable for me to have almost wiped out a moment ago. Jacques is still smiling, but it’s at this moment I realize Rafe would’ve laughed. Actually, he may have thrown a piece of his own food back at me just so we’d be even. And this thought makes me ache.
“So, Jacques,” I say, attempting to distract myself ... again. “What do you think about Birch Borough?” I know he’s in the area for the next few years at least, as he mentioned as much when he first arrived.
“It’s . . . quaint.” Huh.
“Does this mean that you don’t expect to stay?”
He shakes his head adamantly. “No, of course not. I’ll be here another year more to gain business experience in America. It’s a good choice for me to be here now. But France is home.”
I smile politely, and inside, I’m sunk. Wasn’t I just telling Lily that the reason I can’t be with Rafe is because he is leaving? And didn’t I partially choose Jacques tonight on the pretense that he ... isn’t? “I didn’t realize that.”
He nods, and I think of all the ways I may have seen this situation incorrectly. He’s stunning, yes. On paper, he’s what I wanted. But off paper ...
“Sparrow, I have to tell you, you make me so nervous.”
What did he say? I make him nervous? I stuff a forkful of pasta with hardly any sauce into my mouth to buy some time. I point to my mouth in the universally acknowledged sign for “hold please, I’m chewing” (actually, that may not be true, but it was worth a shot) and wait while my brain races. I take another sip of wine to buy a few more seconds, and then I look him in the eye.
“Why?” is the devastatingly clever answer I manage.
He grins and leans a little closer. “You’re beautiful. You own a business. You’re very funny.” I shrug at this. “You’re like light. You make people feel good—they want to be around you. I want to be around you.”
To his credit, these are very kind answers. And still, I’m disappointed. The words seem right. They should feel right too, shouldn’t they? But they don’t.
“Thank you, Jacques. You’ve definitely made me nervous too.” Because he has. The past few months I was frozen when he walked in. “If you’re not staying here ... ” I start, “then, um . . . what are we doing here? Tonight?”
He shifts in his seat, his brow furrowed. “You mean to date?”
I nod. He smiles. “I would like to know each other. See what happens. Next year, I’m going back to Paris. And if things are good, we could go together? No matter what happens, if you want to be in Paris too, I can help. You could even sell your business. It’s what I do.”
My shoulders slump slightly. I stare back at the face I have been hoping to see in front of me, just like this, for all these months. Now that we’re here, I realize a very important thing: He doesn’t see me. And I wouldn’t even know this to be true if I didn’t know what it’s like to be fully seen by someone else.
Jacques is kind. He’s a decent man. My mind gives me images and ideas of touring Paris with him, and as incredible as it would be to be there and feel like I was with someone who knew the culture and the language, I’d rather stumble through and discover it all with Rafe.
“That’s very kind, thank you.” I smile and resume eating. It’s pleasant enough, but I keep my words few and my smiles sincere but generic. As fancy of a place as this is, as elegant as the company, as delicious as the dessert is when we get to that point of the meal, I want to hoard all my words and my full smiles for a man who is not here, and yet I feel him as if he were.
At the end of the night, I get a kiss on the cheek from Jacques in that faire la bise type of way, with a promise to see each other around town from me and a hope we go out again from him. But we won’t.