Chapter 11
Tyler says he has a place in mind, and we cross to the other side of the bridge to get there.
We’re now on the Left Bank. Midnight in Paris feels uniquely magical: The cafés and bistros are overflowing with people, and the air smells like a mix of pastries and perfume.
The cream-colored buildings seem to glow in the dark.
And Tyler is right: Every place is open.
We pass so many cute spots, all with their chic awnings and straw chairs on the street, and I can see people eating plates of delicious-looking French fries and roast chicken, and sipping from massive cups of hot chocolate and coffee.
I want to stop at every place, but Tyler keeps walking and walking, until we get to …
The most Parisian-looking café I’ve ever seen.
It has a picturesque green awning, ivy crawling up the walls, romantic tables for two on the sidewalk, and cozy, inviting booths on the inside.
When I read the words printed on the awning, I gasp:
LES DEUX MAGOTS.
“This café is really famous!” I say excitedly.
“Yep, that’s why I wanted to come here,” says Tyler, grinning. “So you’ve heard of café Les Deux Magots?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, I have heard of café Les Deux Magots. You’re not the only Paris expert, you know. This café is a major setting of the book I’m reading.”
I pat my tote bag, where The Paris Wife is nestled. It occurs to me that I could use this café and this moment to check off the second item on my to-do list: Sit and read a book at a charming outdoor café.
Did Tyler have that in mind when he suggested coming here? I wonder.
No way. He’s not remotely that thoughtful. Not even Lucas was. But it’s a happy coincidence.
“Okay, second dinnertime,” Tyler says. “Here we go.”
“Can you ask for a table on the street?” I ask him.
I’m still a little shy about using my beginner French in real life.
Plus, Les Deux Magots is the most crowded café we’ve seen yet.
(Probably because it’s so famous.) I’m pretty sure someone who looks like Tyler is more likely than I am to get a prime table.
“Bien s?r,” he says to me with a little bow. “But of course.”
He goes up to the hostess, whose blue eyes light up when she sees him—handsome is handsome in every language, apparently—and within seconds, we’re seated at the perfect table right on Boulevard Saint-Germain.
Our chairs are facing directly out to the street, and Boulevard Saint-Germain has some amazing people-watching.
We’re in the Latin Quarter, which I know is home to the Sorbonne, France’s most prestigious university.
The street is bustling with young revelers out on the town—all impossibly trendy without trying to be, lots of baggy sweatshirts and jeans, black leather, cigarettes, loud voices.
“This is what I love about Paris,” says Tyler, a satisfied grin on his face. He leans back in his chair. “It’s ‘work to live’ here, not ‘live to work’ like it is in America.”
I look at him skeptically. I wonder how much Mr. Gossip Girl Prep School really knows about working at all. But then again, aside from my summer job at HomeGoods, I guess I don’t know much, either.
“What do you wanna do?” I ask him. “When you grow up, I mean?”
“Ah, the billion-dollar question,” says Tyler, his eyes going a bit dull. “Literally. My dad assumes I’m going to take over his hedge fund.”
I’ve heard of hedge funds. I know there are a lot of them in New York—on Wall Street.
I picture a bunch of men in suits surrounded by computer monitors with numbers flashing as they yell at people on their headsets until their numbers get bigger and someone else’s numbers somewhere else in the world get smaller.
But I don’t actually know what hedge funds are and honestly, don’t really care.
Now hedge mazes—those are legit interesting.
“Well, at least you’re guaranteed to have a job after college,” I say. “It sounds like it’ll pay a lot.”
“Yeah, but at what cost?” says Tyler. “My dad works eighty-hour weeks, and I’m sure he’ll expect his only son to do the exact same.”
I can tell I’ve hit a sore spot with him.
Tyler’s usually so easygoing, but right now, he’s agitated, and fiddling with that hank of hair on the back of his head again—his nervous tic, I’m realizing, which I don’t remember him having before—and there’s a bitterness in his voice.
He goes on, “He’s already trying to convince me to go up to New York this summer to intern for him. ”
I raise my eyebrows. “Your dad didn’t move back to Georgia with you?”
Tyler clenches his teeth and shifts in his chair. “It’s not like it makes any difference,” he scoffs. “Even when we lived in the same place, he was never around.”
Come to think of it, I have no idea what Tyler’s dad looks like.
Whenever I went over to Tyler’s house after school, I never once saw Mr. Travers.
It was either Mrs. Travers or Roseline watching us—but usually Roseline.
Mrs. Travers was super nice but always seemed a little sad—not that she ever frowned, because her face was completely frozen in place with Botox and whatever other expensive poisons she got injected into her skin.
But their huge house always seemed a bit empty and cold.
“I’m sorry,” I say in a small voice.
Tyler shakes the hair out of his face and shrugs. “Nah. This is the definition of champagne problems. Me complaining about my life is never a good look.” He nods his chin at me. “How about you? What do you wanna do? I’m sure you have way more interesting aspirations. You’re the creative one.”
“I am?” I smile hopefully.
Does he remember? When we were kids, I was always the leader in our imaginative games.
I’d come up with a scenario—we were two chipmunks who lived in a giant, fully furnished tree trunk; we were time-traveling twins who solved mysteries; we were Padawans infiltrating the forbidden sections of the Jedi Library—and he’d be an enthusiastic participant, asking me, “What happens next?”
It occurs to me that’s kind of what we’ve been doing tonight.
“I mean, yeah,” says Tyler. “Don’t people say that artists—or creatives or whatever—tend to be a little spacey because they’re always in their own heads? Well, that’s kind of you.”
A backhanded compliment, but I don’t hate it. “Okay, thank you?” I say, unsure. “But yeah—I think I wanna write screenplays. Or direct movies. Something with film or TV. Or just any kind of storytelling.”
Tyler gives me an earnest stare—like he’s trying to figure me out. “I could see you doing that. I’m sure you’d be amazing at it.”
The waiter, a skinny older man with a thin mustache, comes by then with two thick menus. It’s perfect timing, too, because I can pretend to focus on the waiter and hide my warm, blushing face.
“Merci beaucoup,” I say in stilted French. I’m suddenly so thirsty, and I recall learning at our fancy bistro dinner earlier that waiters typically don’t just bring you waters here; you have to ask. “Uh—deux waters?” I ask clumsily.
“Un moment,” the server says, bustling off.
I pick up one of the menus and Tyler takes the other. The menu is as long as the Cheesecake Factory menu (I’m sure no one in Paris would appreciate that comparison) and on its cover are printed the words:
Les Deux Magots
Café Littéraire, depuis 1884
“Wow, this place is old,” I say, opening the menu and flipping through the many pages. “So much history here.”
“This café is in the book you’re reading?” Tyler asks.
I nod, setting aside the menu. I reach into my tote bag and pull out my paperback copy of The Paris Wife. When Tyler sees the cover—a woman in a chic blue coat sitting at a cute café exactly like this one—he snorts, then immediately clamps his hand over his mouth.
I glower at him. “What’s so funny?”
He bites his lip and screws up his face. “I’m sorry. That just looks so much like a chick book.”
“Chick book?” I repeat disgustedly. “What are you, a Boomer dad?”
“Sorry, sorry, I know,” says Tyler, trying to compose himself. “I’m an idiot.”
My cheeks go warm. I was wrong to let my guard down.
I’m so used to people like Topher Willis ridiculing the things I like that don’t perfectly fit his idea of what a cool person should like.
I remind myself that those people are Tyler Travers’s friends now.
Whatever connection we have tonight is only because we’re alone together.
As soon as we’re back at school, all of this will vanish—just as our whole history vanished from Tyler’s mind before.
But I remember what Dad once said about me: Ben, you never let other people’s expectations stop you from loving what you love.
“It’s a really good book,” I say, mustering all the confidence I can. “It’s about Hadley Richardson, who was married to the famous writer Ernest Hemingway.”
“Oh?” Tyler says, raising an eyebrow as he closes his menu. “I’m a Hemingway fan.”
“Of course.” I stifle a sigh. I wasn’t prepared for Tyler to have read Marcel Proust, but now it makes sense that he’s a Hemingway fan. It fits with his pretentious, my-collection-of-indie-records-is-cooler-than-yours vibe. Which doesn’t match his whole jock persona. But people are complicated.
“Anyway, Hemingway wasn’t famous when he met Hadley,” I go on.
“They were just two penniless expats in love. But they were happy. Hemingway would write all day, and at night, they’d go to cafés in the Latin Quarter just like this one.
” I gesture around us. “Les Deux Magots was one of their favorite places. They’d talk and get drunk with their literary, artistic friends—people like F.
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. But as Hemingway rises up in the literary world and starts to get super famous, he turns into a total asshole and starts cheating on Hadley, leaving her alone to raise their kid while he’s running all around Paris.
But eventually, even though Hadley is totally in love with Hemingway, she can’t take it anymore.
They start fighting, and he leaves her for another woman.
He goes on to have three more wives and becomes the most famous, adored author of his time.
But Hadley was always the true love of his life—the one that got away. ”
“Quelle tristesse,” says Tyler, looking back at the menu. “How sad. That doesn’t sound like a very romantic story.”
“It is, though,” I insist. “Just because someone breaks your heart doesn’t mean everything you love about them is erased. Right?”
I bite my lip, mad at myself for oversharing again.
I can’t help but picture Lucas’s adorable face.
All the times we went to the Hobby Store after our shifts ended at HomeGoods to play in Lorcana tournaments together.
The time he admitted to me how invisible he’d felt as a gay Asian boy at Sandy Springs High, even at LGBTQIA+ Alliance events—a feeling I knew so well, too.
The way he was always so attentive to his little sister, Johanna, who has severe, nonverbal autism.
So even though Lucas treated my heart like it was a sack of rotting paté—Ashley says all the time, trying to be a supportive BFF, “Lucas Zhao will rue the day he crossed Ben Lim!”—I still think about him so much.
I still want him to have the best life ever, to be happy.
That’s what makes it so hard to move on.
And maybe I’m not actually mad at Tyler for forgetting me; I’m jealous of him. It’d be easier to be more like him. Someone who always has another option. Someone who can move on. Someone who never looks back.