Chapter Seventeen #2
“Apparently, Grandpa Henry wrote ‘City of Light’ for this Celeste woman eighty years ago.”
“Tu me fais taire!” he said. “And now he’s trying to win her back with the song again?”
“It’s kind of incredible, isn’t it?” Melanie felt a surge of connection to her husband, something she hadn’t experienced in a long time. She was surprised how good it felt.
“When it comes to love, perhaps anything is possible.” Gilles hesitated. “It would be nice to be there to support your grandfather, wouldn’t it? And I want to prove to you that I’m committed to working for your forgiveness. Melanie, what if you and I go to the concert, too?”
Melanie shook her head in astonishment. “Like… a date?”
“Is that too much to ask? To see a concert with my wife?”
“No. I mean… I guess that sounds good.” She felt uneasy, but she couldn’t put a finger on why. Wasn’t this what she wanted? To feel that he saw her? That she mattered to him?
“I will see about getting us some tickets, then,” Gilles said, sounding relieved.
“My grandfather actually has a few extras. It’s just…”
“What?”
“I can’t remember the last time you asked me out. And it’s… well, it’s nice,” she said. But when he didn’t reply, she squirmed uncomfortably in the silence. “Gilles?” she ventured after a moment.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said quickly, the background of the call coming alive with the sounds of traffic and construction.
She realized he had muted himself for a moment, and she resisted the urge to ask why.
Suspicion tugged at the back of her mind, and she quickly shrugged it off.
“I missed what you said, mon amour,” he said.
It was the perfect opportunity to change her mind about the concert. But she wanted to forgive him. She did. And maybe this would be a first step.
“Melanie?” he prompted. “Are you still there? What’s wrong?”
She chewed her lip. “Gilles? Are things really over with Amandine?”
“Of course.” He sounded annoyed, but then his voice softened and he said, “It was never really anything to begin with. Just a stupid mistake. I am all yours.”
She took a deep breath. They would never get back on track if she didn’t try. “Okay. I’ll leave a ticket for you at will call.”
“And then perhaps you’ll allow me to come home?”
She wanted to say yes, but she wasn’t there yet. “Let’s just take it step by step, okay?”
Gilles hesitated before saying, “Right, of course. I love you, you know?”
“Do you?” She needed to hear him say it again.
“Of course I do, Melanie. You’re the love of my life.”
She exhaled. She wanted to forgive him. She wanted to live in a world where her marriage was worth fighting for. “I love you, too,” she said, but as they hung up, she couldn’t help but think that in giving Gilles a second chance he hadn’t really earned, maybe she was doing a disservice to herself.
Julia woke up to a pitch-black hotel room, her mouth dry.
“Piper?” she croaked, groping around for her cell phone. She had no idea what time it was. Was it morning yet? Her hand landed on the light switch beside the bed, and she turned it on, illuminating the room.
No Piper. For a second, Julia couldn’t breathe. She snatched up her cell phone to see if Piper had texted her, and that’s when she realized it was only 6:45 p.m. Less than ninety minutes had passed since Piper had gone.
Feeling both ridiculous and relieved, she grabbed her bottle of ibuprofen from the bedside table, palmed two pills, and swallowed them quickly with a few sips from a bottle of water.
She really needed to be taking the tramadol her doctor had prescribed instead, but she hated how foggy it made her feel, and she wanted to remember every second of this trip.
Her head throbbed and her belly ached—obviously the cancer performing its usual smug victory dance in her organs—but, by God, she was in Paris, and she was wide awake, and she couldn’t stay in this hotel room by herself for a second more.
She contemplated texting Piper to tell her she was going out, but that would only disrupt her daughter’s date, and knowing Piper, she’d be racked with guilt if she didn’t immediately come back to spend time with her mother. With any luck, in fact, her daughter wasn’t thinking of her at all.
Julia threw on jeans, a black silk tee, and her Sambas, ran a brush through her hair, and headed out the door, stopping at the front desk to grab the key to lock her room.
She was tempted to try someplace new in the neighborhood, but she also wanted very badly to step back into a past where she was young and her whole life lay ahead of her, and the only place she knew how to do that was at the place that had once been The Red Telephone Box.
She thought fleetingly of Sam—what if he was there, too?
—but she quickly reminded herself that this was Paris, and he had a trillion dining options, and besides, he’d said he was here for his job, so he was probably out with coworkers.
She could call him—he’d given her his number—but that would be irresponsible.
She couldn’t act like just another American tourist in Paris, because she wasn’t.
She was a dying woman in Paris. And she knew she shouldn’t spend any more time with a man she was that attracted to without imagining a future that could never, ever exist.
She wove through the bustling Latin Quarter, dodging crowds of tourists on the rue de la Huchette, passing by the crowded Café Le Petit Pont with a smile, before turning right and heading toward Le Maison Grog.
How many times had her feet worn this exact same path when she had lived here?
And how could it be that this might well be the last time she’d walk it?
As she hurried along the rue Galande, her head down, she heard someone calling her name.
“Julia?”
Snapped out of her self-pity, she looked up in surprise to see Sam ten feet away, coming toward Le Maison Grog from the opposite direction.
He was wearing the same baseball cap she’d already seen on him, along with a faded Rolling Stones tee and a pair of jeans that hugged him just right.
He looked good—even better than he had the day before.
“Sam,” she squeaked, feeling instantly embarrassed that she hadn’t called him. Certainly he’d taken it as a rejection rather than what it was: an attempt to spare him pain.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite fancy day-drinker,” he said with a small smile as they reached the door at the same time. “You came back.”
“My reminiscing got the best of me, I think,” she admitted. “A million places to eat in Paris, and I wind up at the same hole-in-the-wall bar because it reminds me of the past.”
“Turns out you can’t turn back time. But you can eat fish and chips that remind you of who you were in the last millennium.” He held open the door for her. “That’s what I’m doing here, anyhow.”
She laughed. “But it’s a risk, isn’t it? What if the old owner took the recipe with him when he sold it to the Australians?”
“It’s a chance we’ll have to take.”
“Living on the edge,” she replied and then resisted the urge to immediately smack herself in the forehead. To say she was rusty at flirtatious banter was a vast understatement.
From behind the bar, the bartender who’d waited on them yesterday waved in recognition, and Sam waved back before ducking his head.
“Um, at the risk of sounding like an idiot who doesn’t know when to stop putting himself out there,” Sam said, “would you care to join me for a bite?”