Chapter 8
Eleven Weeks Ago
Nick rang our buzzer Saturday night just as I’d finished helping Madame Dupuy with the dinner dishes.
He inspected my hiking shoes, which were the most sensible ones I owned, and pronounced them date-ready.
It wasn’t yet dusk when we walked up the street toward the Avenue de Suffren and crossed into the Champ de Mars.
The Eiffel Tower, illuminated from top to bottom, glowed like a huge lacy A against the fading sunset.
Tourists crowded the plaza underneath, taking selfies, gazing up at the enormous steel structure, or staring at their phones.
Circusy music floated out from a nearby carousel, which glowed with light.
A crêpe stand perfumed the air with chocolate and vanilla.
“Have you been to the observation deck yet?” Nick asked. I shook my head. “You’ll love it,” he said, taking my hand and leading me toward the stairs.
“Nick,” I said as we reached the first landing.
“Yes?”
“The grillwork on the stairs is open. I can see straight down. This does not make me feel safe.”
“It’s not supposed to make you feel safe; it’s supposed to make you feel like you’ve reached your goal despite treacherous odds,” he said. When I whimpered, he added, “Do you want to look out over Paris from inside the Eiffel Tower?”
I nodded. I did. I just wanted the stairway to look way less see-through.
“It’s just a few more flights,” he reassured me.
“We’re not going all the way to the top.
Keep hold of the handrail”—I was gripping it tightly enough to deform it—“and go as slowly as you need to. Don’t look at your feet; look straight ahead.
I’m right behind you.” He moved to the step below and put his hand lightly onto my back.
“Now take a step.” I did. Behind me, Nick took a step, too.
“Another one,” he said. We made it to the observation deck one slow step at a time, Nick at my back, talking me up.
Every step felt like a leap of faith, but I trusted him.
He’d done this. He knew it was safe. When we arrived and I dared to breathe again, I saw that the floor and balustrades of the deck were glass.
I whimpered even more, imagining myself plunging through and breaking on the ground far, far below as glass shards rained down on me. I pointed down, shaking.
“See-through,” I quavered, grabbing his arm. “Not reassuring.”
He put his hand over mine. “It’s industrial-grade.
It’s been here for years, and it hasn’t broken.
It’s safe.” Around us, laughing kids were leaning on the glass wall, taking selfies.
Nick put his arm around me and stepped me over to it, so, so slowly.
I kept my eyes slitted so I couldn’t see too much.
When we reached the clear wall, he said, “Okay, we’re there.
” I opened my eyes to a sparkling carpet of lights out of which reared the Montparnasse Tower, three kilometers away.
It stuck into the sky, as ugly as a telephone pole.
“Excellent view of the city from there,” he said, pointing at it.
“But you just get on an elevator. No adventure. No feeling of having conquered gravity.” He smiled at me.
“And it has no poetry; it looks like a smokestack. Who wants to see Paris from a smokestack when they can see it from the one-and-only Eiffel Tower?”
Somehow, I’d climbed into a fairy tale. I could hear the carousel’s cheerful music, people calling to one another, the muted rumble of traffic, the occasional shout of a soccer player from one of the impromptu games on the Champ de Mars.
Nick got his phone out and took a photo of us.
I took one, too, but my hand was shaking with terror and exhilaration, and the shot was blurry.
I texted it to Mina and Lily anyway. “The observation deck on the Eiffel Tower is GLASS,” I wrote. “I am TERRIFIED.”
Mina: Is the blur next to you cute upstairs boy?
Me: Yes
Lily: We need better pics!
“What do you think?” Nick asked with a smile.
I shook my head in awe. “This city just—I don’t even have words.
And everybody walks around, looking all serious and I-have-to-go-to-work-and-be-an-adult-so-I’ll-ignore-all-the-amazingness.
If I lived here, I’d be doing an endless dance of joy and eating all the pastries all the time while standing on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. ”
“You do live here,” Nick said quietly. “And nothing is stopping you from eating all the pastries all the time.”
He was right. I was a Parisienne now. I grinned at him.
“Clearly I’m living my best life.” Paris stretched before us, glittering and magical and full of surprises.
What would it be like to live here forever?
I wondered. What would it be like to be so familiar with beautiful wrought iron towers, amazing pastry, a zillion different cheeses, and cafés on every block that you could take them for granted?
I closed my eyes and made a wish, and then I made a promise.
I want to live here forever, I wished. I will never take it for granted, I promised.
When we finally tore ourselves away from the view, I found that going down the stairs was almost as bad as going up.
Nick went ahead of me, and I kept one hand on his shoulder and one on the railing.
He distracted me with random facts about the tower as we descended step by slow step.
It’s held together by 2.5 million rivets.
Lots of Parisians hated it while it was being built and called it insulting names.
Nick’s favorite was “truly tragic streetlamp,” which we agreed would be the name of our indie band if we ever formed one.
The truly tragic streetlamp was repainted every seven years on average, and the job took eighteen months to three years, depending on the weather.
After the tower opened, a baker climbed to the first level on stilts.
We speculated about why stilts all the way down the last flight.
Once we stood firmly on the ground again and my heart had stopped hammering, I looked up at Nick.
“I did it! I am the queen of the Eiffel Tower!” I slung my arm around him and took a picture of us, me grinning like someone who had just ascended the Eiffel Tower for the first time, and Nick smiling archly, like he had an excellent secret.
This photo was not blurry, and I sent it to Mina and Lily, who replied with heart-eye emojis and exclamation points.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” I told him, “because I am morally opposed to anyone dictating my footwear, but good call on the sensible shoes.” He smirked.
Then the Nick Wallace Tour Company walked me down the lawns of the Champ de Mars, explaining how they were old military drill grounds, and pointing out the military school, just visible at the far end, where Napoleon had learned the skills he’d used to conquer Europe.
We stopped at the road that bisected the park and turned, facing back toward the tower, which glowed in the falling dark.
Nick pulled out his phone and checked the time, then gestured at the tower and said, “Voilà.”
“Very impressive,” I said.
He frowned. “No, wait. It’s supposed to…
hang on a minute.” I had no idea what he was talking about, so I just stood there and took it in, its lacy metalwork and graceful curves contrasting with the quickly darkening sky.
I marveled at how it could be strong and delicate at the same time.
And then the whole tower twinkled as the lights illuminating it flashed in running sequence up and down its outline.
“Ohhhhh…” I breathed, captivated.
“Okay, now voilà,” he said. I leaned against him, hyperaware of the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the movement of his muscles, the in and out of his breathing.
Tentatively, I put my arm around his waist. He pulled me closer.
The tower blinked out, completely dark, and then relit, the lights shining steadily once again.
“Wow. That was just…wow. I don’t have words.”
“I thought you might like it,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “Thank you for this evening.” I already knew I would never see the Eiffel Tower again without thinking of Nick. My Nick. “I can’t believe I never saw it sparkle from our apartment. I spend half my time staring out the window at it.”
“You have to know when to look,” he told me as we walked. “It twinkles on the hour.”
From a cart, he bought a crêpe for each of us, folded and wrapped in a square of paper, smelling of vanilla and sugar and oozing melted chocolate.
I’d had crêpes before, but never wrapped in paper to carry with me as I walked under the Eiffel Tower in the softness of a summer night with a boy who made me happy.
The kind of boy—and the kind of night—kisses were made for.
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “This was wonderful,” I said. “Thank you.”
He looked at me, then leaned down and grazed my lips softly with his.
I returned the kiss. He tasted of chocolate.
I felt him step closer and slide his arms around me, sighing, kissing me soft and slow.
Time wound to a stop, and there was only now and Nick’s lips and Nick’s body against mine and me glowing all over like the Eiffel Tower.