31
“Luna Aldridge Spotted on Romantic Boat Ride with New Boyfriend”
—Hello Paris!
I CHECKED MY watch as I stepped out of the elevator: eight P.M. One glance around the lobby was all it took to spot Kieran’s tall presence at the entrance.
Black hair still styled from earlier, paired with a crisp pair of linen shorts and navy blue shirt, he was fidgeting with the ring on his finger.
Up and over and down. As if he was also nervous.
We’d been on several fake dates, so I wasn’t sure why this felt like more.
Maybe it was the dazed look in his eyes when he saw you in that red dress, unsure of whether to admire it or figure out how to unravel it—
In and out. In and out. A pathetic attempt to control the rapid beat of my heart.
I flattened the pleats in my skirt before approaching him.
“Is this when you finally tell me what’s happening? There wasn’t a PR event in tonight’s schedule.”
He jolted in surprise. “It’s nice to see you too.”
Him and formalities. “I can go back to my room where there’s a pint of ice cream.” I began to turn, but he caught my hand. It felt as intimate as our lips brushing in the jazz club.
When did touching each other’s hands become so casual?
“Okay, okay, I get it. I thought we could celebrate,” he explained, his fingers still around mine.
“Your movie?”
“No. God, no, not that.” Horror washed over his face. “You’re the French Open champion.”
“You’re serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I thought we could walk around. Enjoy Cannes before we have to leave in a few days. Get ice cream, maybe. Unless you’d prefer your freezer-burned pint.”
I was… dumbfounded. He was serious. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d celebrated a win, let alone it being someone else’s idea.
“Well, if you had started with ice cream…”
A smile parted his lips. “You’re a pain in the ass. You know that?” He shook his head. “You’re down to two scoops now.”
The cobblestone path outside the quaint hotel followed a narrow walkway downward.
It filled the gap between the pale yellow homes, which looked a mustard yellow under the starry sky.
Each home had terraces floating above us, filled with planters of red roses and clothing lines draped across the street.
It was difficult not to absorb every detail, from the color of the shutters to the Vespas zipping by and the conversations echoing outside the windows. A living, breathing postcard.
Slowly, the homes faded into restaurants and shops. Candlelight and clanking silverware came from open doors of late-night cafés. Kieran navigated the area as crowds of bar-hoppers spilled out into the street and cluttered the sidewalks. He reached for my hand to guide me through.
I tried to let the gesture pass while watching him order us ice cream at a small window in a brick wall. But the skin of my palm was hollowed out. Tired from paddling through warm water, yet still craving the ocean.
Burying the feeling and steering my gaze away from his hand, I accepted the cone of caramel ice cream. The dim light from the lampposts continued to shift their focus across his face, caressing the waves of his hair and the curve of his cheekbones.
“I’ve never seen anyone so excited about ice cream. Maybe my brother, but he’s lactose intolerant, so that whole situation is tragic from the start.” He laughed.
“I can only imagine what it was like sharing a bathroom together,” I said, cringing, thinking of the bathroom Walt and I shared growing up. It made me physically recoil.
“Don’t even get me started.” He wiped mint ice cream from his lip. “My sister, Mila, used to wake up an hour before him to get in the bathroom. One time, she had woken up late, and instead of waiting, she walked next door to use the neighbor’s toilet.”
“That’s genius.”
“She walked over in footie pajamas with bunny ears attached to her feet. Because that’s what she wore to bed at seventeen.”
Laughter bubbled under my tongue. “Your family sounds like a lot of fun. I’d love to meet them sometime.”
“I think they’d love that.”
“I just realized that I don’t even know where you’re from,” I pointed out, turning to him. Our walk was cut short by a river running through an aisle of stone homes, similar to Venice, forcing our path to the left, following the stone-sandwiched stream.
“Spain,” he responded, no emotion on his face. Or at least no emotion I could pinpoint.
Each time I learned something new about him, it took me by surprise. “What part of—boats! Finally!” I cheered, throwing my arms up. My ice cream scoop flew off my cone. The salted caramel melted into the cobblestones.
“You’ve got to be the clumsiest tennis player on this planet,” he noted. He took the cone from my hand and pressed it against the ice cream on his, scooping a dollop off. “I think we can share ice cream, seeing as we’ve kissed already.”
My face warmed. I accepted the cone. “We need to get on one of those boats.”
I jogged down the stone steps where the sidewalk kissed the top of the water.
“I don’t see anyone who will be driving this boat!” he pointed out from behind me.
I turned. “I didn’t say we needed someone to drive the boat. I said that we needed to get on the boat.”
“Who is going to drive—Oh, no, no.” He was laughing, but he also sounded horrified. This was going to be great.
“You don’t think I’m capable?” I approached the man who guarded the several small speedboats bobbing in the water, handing him cash, and accepting the key.
“I think you’re capable of lots of things, including drowning us.”
“It’s a river, not the Atlantic! And I have a boating license, you idiot!”
“Maybe in America!” he corrected.
I stepped into the boat and waited.
His tongue rolled under his cheek before succumbing.
“Sit down, the boat is moving!” I announced.
“Sitting!” he confirmed, taking a seat beside me in the tiny boat.
I turned the key, and the engine sparked to life, gurgling in the river. Pushing us forward, we rode under the small footbridge. I kept a light hand on the wheel as we idled down the narrow pathway, tall French homes watching from above.
“How did you end up with a boating license?” he asked.
“Promise not to laugh?”
“Promise.”
“I dated a guy once in high school who had a boat. His family owned this cute pontoon with a brown canopy. His friends would ride it every weekend, and come back to school on Mondays, bragging about who got to park and drive it across the coast. After a few months, I asked him if I could drive it, and he said no.”
“He said no?” His brows rose.
“Yup. So I went and got a boating license.” I smiled.
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “You’re serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious. I wanted to prove him wrong.”
“What happened when you told him?”
“He was dumbfounded. I thought he’d laugh and take me out the next day.
But he was fumbling for his words and had this look of total annoyance.
It didn’t help that he was with his friends either.
” I leaned back into the seat. “I knew he was going to say no again. But I didn’t even care at that point, it was just how he made me feel when he had said it.
I just stood there and let him call me a kid. I never spoke to him again after that.”
I looked over at Kieran and found him listening still, so I continued.
“When I got home, there was a little gold boat charm waiting on my windowsill. It looked like one of the trinkets my mom and I used to buy. We used to collect these little knickknacks from the tourist shops down the street. She’d usually search for charms to add to her jewelry,” I explained.
“To this day I don’t know if it was my dad or my brother who put it there.
But it’s on her bracelet now.” I lifted my wrist and let the bracelet dangle. “It’s the only charm I ever added.”
It glimmered under the overhanging streetlights. My heart felt heavy behind my rib cage. I wanted to plunge my hand under the bone and hold it up myself to lessen the weight.
I turned to Kieran, trying to collect myself. He stared at my wrist before his gaze crossed my face.
He looked serious. “So what you’re saying is that you’ve never driven a boat?”
A smile cracked the earnestness of my cheeks, and a slew of giggles erupted. I fell forward, almost whacking my head on the steering wheel, clutching my torso, and causing—
“My ice cream!” I shouted. But watching the cone float upside down in the river only made me laugh more. Kieran beside me was no better. He was standing up, clutching his knees and bracing for air in between laughs, watching the ice cream swim away.
He opened his mouth. “How”—gasp—“did you”—gasp—“manage”—a prolonged gasp—“to drop two ice creams?!”
“Sir, you’re supposed to be seated!” I ordered, trying to maintain my boat duties.
But I couldn’t keep it together. I covered my mouth to hush my laughter as he took his seat beside me, his breath quieting. I followed his movements, leaning into the cushion, catching my breath. Our chests rose and dipped for a few moments in the silence of the rolling river before he spoke up.
“How much do you remember of her—your mom?”
I didn’t turn. I couldn’t. If I did, the tears would have been beckoned by the protectiveness in his eyes.
“Not enough,” I exhaled. “I remember the red nail polish she wore because it reminded her of the wine stain that lived on her wedding dress. I remember her favorite pair of flats and the shade of lipstick she wore on date nights with my dad. I remember the tortoise pattern of her hair clips and the smell of bread that stuck to all her clothes. But I can’t remember the sound of her laugh or the way it felt to have her fingers comb through my hair.
I can try to remember everything she said, but I can’t remember the way it sounded.
Which is the most foolish thing, because she spoke with such grit and fearlessness, so why can’t I remember it? ” I asked myself.
“Maybe because you’re inheriting it without even realizing. She sounds a lot like you.” His voice was soft. Comforting. I wanted to rest my head on it.
A weak laugh came from my lungs to correct him. “She was the most unapologetic, beautiful human.”
“I don’t see any difference, then.”
I wish I hadn’t turned to see the sincerity on his face. It was so raw. Under dark lashes, his blue eyes explored me.
I gulped a heap of warm air and sat up in a rush. “Gosh, I’ve been talking all night. I’m banned from speaking for the rest of the boat ride. Your turn.”
He sat up with me, his shoulder just grazing mine. “What do you want to know?”
“What do you love about acting?”
He sighed. “Do you want the short answer or the long answer?”
“Whichever the honest one is.”
“Long one it is, then.” He nodded. “Have you seen the film Moonstruck?” he started.
“I haven’t.” I shook my head.
“It’s a classic. We’re going to watch it, pencil it into your schedule.
But anyway, not to digress, it’s my abuela’s favorite film.
Anytime it was on TV, she’d stop what she was doing—cooking, filling the bird feeder, spying on the neighbor having an affair across the street—it didn’t matter, if Moonstruck came on the TV, everything else stopped.
That movie made her smile and laugh so much, no matter how many times she watched it.
Some nights, a tear would even fall down her cheek.
She’d tell me that she wasn’t crying because she was sad, but that she simply couldn’t contain her emotions, she was that happy.
“I wanted to make people feel that way. So I enrolled in the theater program at school and never stopped. Now it’s a second skin. An extension of myself.”
“And you turned out to be a beautiful actor,” I said honestly, so honestly that it felt like a hair over the line sketched between us. But he didn’t notice because his nose was scrunched up. I shook his shoulder. “Why are you so shy about this!”
The emotionless look on his face loosened to an open smile. “What I’m doing isn’t saving lives, and it doesn’t take skill or intelligence.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Says who?” I asked in disbelief.
“People!”
“Who cares about those people! Kieran, what you do means something. The world needs film and art just as much as it needs science and medicine. You’re providing joy and empathy. You’re so talented that the amount of talent you have in one eyebrow alone is insane,” I argued.
Watching him laugh made my heart bloom into a sea of pastel peonies. If pink was a feeling, it was that. His face scrunched up with bliss.
“You’re a successful actor who takes his job seriously and is able to make a living doing it. You’re doing yourself a disservice by not acting like it.”
His lips were pressed together as if he was trying to hold back a smile. “Is this you admitting to watching my movies?”
He looked into my eyes. They sparkled like bubbly champagne under candlelight. I wanted to reach forward and run the pad of my thumb against the skin beneath his eyes. It made me sad to think that they were tunnels of sadness when he spoke about his career.
“What would you say if I said yes?” I asked, catching him off guard.
The joyful creases beside his eyes spread to the curves in his cheeks as he smirked. “I’d say I hope you didn’t see the one with the full-frontal nudity.”
A surprise yelp came from my mouth. Our foreheads knocked together as we laughed so hard our throats dried up and our stomachs ached.