Chapter Sixteen #3
But Paris was like a time capsule. Sure, the vehicles and the storefronts, the electric streetlights and the mopeds, were all new in the past hundred years, but Piper could close her eyes and imagine that she was here almost thirty years ago, when her mom was young, or eighty years ago when World War II raged, or nearly two and a half centuries ago during the French Revolution.
Notre Dame had been here for some eight hundred years.
The Eiffel Tower, clearly visible in the distance in the opposite direction, was a much newer arrival, less than 140 years old, but it, too, had witnessed its share of history.
It made Piper feel small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. People came and went, but these great monuments they built—much like the paintings they painted and the sculptures they sculpted—stood the test of time. Art lived on in a way people never could.
As Piper passed Notre Dame and headed for the bridge behind it that would take her to the ?le Saint-Louis, the small residential island where she’d seen on TikTok that there was a great, decades-old ice cream shop called Berthillon, she felt a sort of peace settle over her.
Maybe a piece of her mother would survive, just as the streets of Paris had survived, just as the artwork in the Musée d’Orsay had survived, as long as there was someone here to carry her memory forward.
Maybe, as long as Piper was here, walking this earth, her mom would be, too.
Twenty minutes later, after ordering a salted butter caramel glacé from Berthillon, Piper strolled back toward Notre Dame, reveling in the taste of the sweet, creamy ice cream, hands down the best she’d ever had.
She finished the last of the cone as she crossed through the public square in front of the church, and she was just about to reach the rue de la Cité when she saw a familiar figure hurrying across the bridge from the Left Bank, his head down.
It couldn’t be, could it? She ducked her head and averted her eyes, but not in time.
“Piper?” Nicolas’s deep voice called out, and as he strode over, Piper wished she could disappear into the pavement.
But when she looked up, he was smiling, which threw her off for a moment. “Uh, hi, Nicolas.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Ice cream,” she managed, wondering why she seemed unable to string sentences together in his presence. “I mean, I’d read about Berthillon, and I thought I would try—”
“The caramel au beurre salé,” he said, his smile widening as he correctly named the flavor she’d just polished off.
“How did you know that?”
“Because you still have some, just here,” he said as he reached out and gently touched her chin, just below her lip.
Piper could feel her cheeks growing warm, though she wasn’t sure whether the heat was from his touch or from the embarrassment of realizing she’d been wearing a glob of ice cream on her face. “Oh,” she said, wiping her chin quickly. “Uh, thanks.”
“Anytime.” His eyes lingered on her lips for a moment before traveling up to meet her gaze. “I tried to call you, Piper.”
Piper frowned. “No, you didn’t, Nicolas.”
“I think,” he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and typing something in, “that you gave me the wrong number.” He held out his phone to show her.
“What?” She had hastily typed her own number in yesterday, still flustered from their kiss, and as she stared at the screen now, she realized, to her embarrassment, that she had entered 0211 as the last four digits instead of 0212. “Oh my God,” she murmured.
“I reached a very confused man instead of you,” Nicolas said, raising an eyebrow. “I thought at first it was a boyfriend you had not mentioned.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said quickly.
He smiled at this. “And then I thought perhaps you’d given me the wrong number on purpose.”
“I would never.”
Nicolas shrugged. “Well, perhaps I’m not as charming as I hoped.”
“No, you are very charming,” she said quickly. “I am obviously just an idiot. Here, let me correct the number.”
“Only if you’re certain.” Nicolas hesitated, holding the phone just out of her reach and waiting until she looked him in the eye.
“Believe me, I’m certain,” she said, holding out her hand.
When he finally gave it to her, she changed the last digit and then, just to be sure, she texted herself a smiley face from his phone.
Her phone dinged with the incoming message, and she held it up to show him.
“See? Now you have my number, and I have yours. I’m so sorry. ”
He smiled at her as he took his phone back.
“I thought I’d scared you away,” she added in a mumble.
He slid his phone into his pocket and took a step closer, reaching for her hand. “Why would you think that?”
“I’m an emotional basket case, Nicolas. I’m pretty sure you’re not actually supposed to sob openly on the first day you meet a hot guy.”
“A hot guy?” he asked with a grin.
She could feel the color returning to her cheeks. “I assume you own a mirror.”
He laughed. “Where are you off to, now?”
“My mom is already asleep. I’m just wandering, I guess. Maybe trying to find the peace and joy you told me about.”
He held out his arm with a grin. “In that case, what do you say we wander together for a while?”
She blinked at him. “You don’t have somewhere to be?”
“I just finished work. I was on my way home. But I’m in no rush. And if you have a bit of time…”
Piper gave him a shy smile. “I do.”
“Well then, allons-y,” he said with a smile of his own. “Let’s go.”