Chapter 17
I haven’t actually moved from my stool at Bar Hemingway, but my world is so rocked by Tyler’s admission that my soul exits my body and levitates high over Paris, does a lap around the Eiffel Tower, rings the bells on top of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, and drops euro coins in every street performer’s bucket before returning to my body with a whoosh.
“That’s not true!” I finally manage to spit out when I can find words again. “I’m the one who’s been dropping hints for you. I’m not the kind of person who could just forget a friend like that.”
“Neither am I,” Tyler insists. “I’m the one who gave so many signs.”
“What signs?” I sputter incredulously.
“I mean, I mentioned Roseline and you didn’t seem to remember her.”
“Of course I remember Roseline! She was the best. And I remember that pumpkin soup from Haiti she’d make …”
There’s a shimmer in Tyler’s eye. “Soup joumou,” he recalls. “I still think about it all the time. You know, Roseline’s actually the reason I started taking French in middle school. She mostly spoke Haitian Creole, but she taught me a lot of French words, too. It sounded so beautiful in her voice.”
“Does she still work for your family?” I ask.
“No, she retired four years ago—she’s living her best life near her kids and grandkids. We still talk on birthdays and holidays, though.”
All sorts of memories of Roseline I’d forgotten come flooding back.
She was so much kinder than she had to be.
When Mom would come pick me up from the Travers’s house, Roseline would pack up a week’s worth of soup joumou in little pint containers for us to take to Dad in the hospital.
For a while, it was all he wanted to eat—soft enough to digest but flavorful enough to keep his adventurous palate happy.
“But none of this explains why you’ve ignored me at school,” I say to Tyler, still confused and disoriented as the noise of the bar swirls around us. “After that first alliance meeting, you barely even looked at me.”
“I mean, I didn’t think you remembered me,” Tyler says softly. “Then you acted like you hated me. And that hurt my feelings.”
“I didn’t hate you,” I protest, blushing, which is so annoying.
“Well, I didn’t know that,” Tyler points out.
“Well, you should have—” I catch myself and realize it’s not my place to tell another human being whether or not I hurt them.
The earnestness in Tyler’s gray eyes right now, the way he’s acting like I’m the only person in this crowded, glamorous bar we shouldn’t even be in, tells me he’s being genuine. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” I say.
“Thanks,” Tyler says softly. He holds my gaze for a long moment.
A jolt runs through my body. I remind myself that I can’t get swept away by the possibility of the perfect storyline: My childhood best friend moves away, gets a glow-up, comes back years later, and then we realize there might be something more on a night out in Paris …
I have to keep at least one toe in reality.
I say, “None of that changes the fact that you acted like you didn’t remember me first.”
I expect Tyler to defend himself, but instead, he breaks into his most infuriatingly handsome smile yet. “So you really don’t remember,” he says.
Annoyed, I say, “No, I just said that you didn’t remember.”
“Don’t you remember the last time we saw each other before I moved away?” he asks. “It’s a core memory for me.”
I’m stunned. I was a core memory for Tyler Travers without even knowing it?
I rack my brain. That time period, right around when Dad died, all runs together for me.
In my memory, Tyler and his family just kind of faded away.
One day, I was going to their giant house after school to play, then another day, I wasn’t.
I don’t remember a particular moment—a single scene in my mind—where I learned Tyler was moving away.
I don’t remember feeling devastated. I definitely would have cried—I was a really emotional kid, even back then. But I come up with nothing.
“I’m sorry,” I say, surprised at myself. “I don’t remember. I usually don’t forget such important—”
“Don’t be sorry,” Tyler says quickly. “I shouldn’t have expected you to remember. I realize that now. You were dealing with much, much, much bigger stuff … with your dad and everything. Back then, you never wanted to talk about your dad, which was totally understandable.”
“I think it was all a little too real for me at the time,” I say.
I flash back, again, to the sound of Mom crying as I listened to her and Dad from the hallway.
“Dad’s sickness became our entire world,” I add softly.
“Even now, there’s nothing I remember from that time as clearly as the sound of his voice getting weaker every day.
” I swallow hard, but this time I’m not as desperate to turn away from Tyler.
“That makes total sense,” says Tyler, leaning closer. He’s quiet for a moment, then adds, “Reality is hard. You always liked to escape into your fantasy worlds, and I loved going with you into them.”
I nod. “You did.”
Tyler nods, holding my gaze again. “And I still do.”
My insides turn to glitter. I’m not totally sure if we’re in a fantasy world. Because right now, it looks like Tyler Travers’s lips are parted just a little bit, like he wants to lean in for a kiss—but nothing about my reality has told me that anything like this is possible.
Tyler breaks eye contact and clears his throat. “So … the last time we talked, before I moved away, we made a plan for how our interaction would go when we finally saw each other again.”
I’m drawing a total blank. It’s as if this entire episode of my life was scooped out of my brain like a little ball of ice cream. “We did?”
“You wrote out a whole scene for exactly what we’d do when we first saw each other again,” says Tyler.
“You wrote it out like it was a movie—not in, like, proper screenplay format or anything, just on a piece of paper, in pink glitter pen. That’s why I wasn’t surprised at all when you said you wanted to become a screenwriter. ”
I’m gobsmacked. I’m shook. How could I have no memory of this?
“It does sound like something I would do,” I admit.
“When we finally did meet again at the alliance meeting,” continues Tyler, “I performed my part of the scene, but you didn’t perform yours. That’s why I assumed you’d forgotten me, and why I started ignoring you.”
I replay that scene of Tyler’s first day back in Sandy Springs.
All I remember is that I had to wait in line because everyone was so interested in the good-looking new kid from New York City.
I don’t remember Tyler doing anything out of the ordinary—aside from being tall and handsome and from New York.
“Your Kate 76s, gentlemen,” interrupts the bartender, bringing me back down to earth.
Both of us turn in our stools to behold our drinks, which are true works of art; they belong in the Louvre.
Each tiny, elegant glass is full of shimmering pink liquid and comes with a pristine white rose in it.
Without thinking, I down half of my fruity drink in one gulp.
A pleasant, toasty warmth trickles into my stomach.
“Whoa,” says Tyler. “Have some hot dogs.”
I didn’t even see the platter of four mini hot dogs. I stuff an entire one into my mouth. I didn’t come to Paris for hot dogs, but maybe I should have. The bun is buttery like a croissant, and the hot dog is juicy, with the perfect amount of snap.
Through a mouthful of hot dog, I say, “Now you’ve gotta tell me. What was this scene I came up with?”
Tyler smiles devilishly. “I’m not going to tell you.”
“Are you kidding me?! You can’t tease me like that.”
I hate an ambiguous ending.
“I would think that you of all people would appreciate the drama of it all,” says Tyler with an infuriating smirk. “I’m gonna see if I can throw you enough hints for all the memories to come flooding back on their own.”
“But that kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life,” I whine.
“Yeah, it does,” says Tyler, grabbing a mini hot dog and popping it into his mouth. “I didn’t remember how much I used to like Jar Jar Binks and how we used to act out scenes from your Attack of the Clones fanfic until you reminded me on the Metro.”
I smile. “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do all night—get you to remember,” I say, making my fingertips dance together like I’m an evil genius. “It was all by design.”
Tyler mirrors my evil-genius fingers back to me. “That’s why I can’t just tell you what you wrote. It’ll mean more if the memory comes back to you in your gut.”
My heart does a quadruple axel straight into a second quadruple axel—and I’m not sure if a figure skater has even performed such a combination before.
I give him a sideways look. “Are you sure you don’t watch a ton of rom-coms?”
Tyler takes a big gulp from his cocktail. “No. But I know a thing or two about drama. I mean, this is all very Proust. I just need to find the right trigger that’ll unlock that Proustian memory. Your madeleine.”
“Or my Pixarian ratatouille.”
“Exactly.”
Woozy and happy, I take another sip of delicious drink, the white rose tickling my nose. “I better slow down,” I say slurrily, “or pretty soon I won’t be able to remember anything. I’m not exactly used to alcohol.”
Tyler busts out laughing. “These are virgin cocktails, Ben.”
“Wait, really?!”
“Yeah,” says Tyler, his eyes twinkling. “That’s what vierge means. If you want to have your first-ever drink tonight, it should be at a gay bar.”
“Vierge,” I repeat, suddenly feeling miraculously sober again. “I guess I’m just used to you translating all of your own French.”
Tyler buries his face in his basketball-palming hand. “Oh God. I can be such a mansplainer sometimes. That must be so annoying.”
I couldn’t feel less annoyed by him right now. “It was annoying at first. But now it’s … kind of cute.”
Is Tyler blushing? I can’t tell.
As if to distract himself, he takes his phone out of his pocket—I can’t believe it still has a charge—and he gasps when he sees the time. “The drag show’s gonna start soon. We should go.”
For a split second, I think about suggesting we return to the hostel—again. But no. I don’t want to go back to the hostel. I want this night to keep going.
“Oh, okay,” I say, flustered. “Should we take the Metro?”
“No time. I’ll get an Uber—”
His words die just as his phone does.
So much for an Uber. I’m wondering if we should ask the bartender if Tyler can charge his phone when I hear Trace’s arrogant laugh from the across the bar.
And suddenly I have a wild idea.
Maybe it’s the half glass of non-alcohol, maybe it’s Paris, maybe it’s the fact that Tyler and I have come clean about our friendship, but I suddenly feel reckless and brave.
“Let’s pay and head back to the lobby,” I whisper. “I have a plan.”