I Love You in French (Love in Birch Borough #1)

Chapter One

Sparrow

My fingers always smell like croissants. The real ones. The buttery ones. It’s not ideal, but it helps to block out the other smells when I’m on the train home from Boston. I don’t intend to smell like croissants. But when you work in a bakery—or une boulangerie —and a French American one at that, you don’t stand a chance. And because we’re in America, we also sell coffee and sneak in other pastries as we please.

I look to the overhead Lite-Brite style train marquee sign. Three minutes.

I slump further into my right hip—my former-ballerina posture taking a break—and observe the yellow, fluorescent lighting and cavernous tiles. Any remaining warmth from the outside world has stuffed itself beneath the earth and through the train platform as my fellow commuters and I wait.

A movement catches my eye as I see the silhouette of a fashionable man a few feet to my right looking my way. Today’s the day. I feel it. He’s finally going to talk to me. The last few months have been a dance. I see him but try not to let him know I see him. He tries to get my attention, and immediately, I put up all my defenses. He even left a business card near my seat once with his social handles so I could look him up. He’s always been respectful, and you can tell he’s a decent human. The man doesn’t give off any creep factor. He just seems to know what he wants. Truthfully, he’s swoon-worthy and handsome, but no. Just no. I have valid reasons for my standoffishness with men, even if my best friend always tries to convince me otherwise.

I adjust the earphones in my ears and try to pretend that we didn’t make eye contact. The movement beside me tells me I’m too late. I grimace and politely point to my earphones. Not interested.

“Hi,” he says.

I don’t look his way.

“Okay, well, I’m sure you can hear me . . .”

I avoid his eyes and try to pretend I’m oh-so focused on my phone. It’s no use. His cologne is strong enough to wake the swooned, as if he is prepared to both cause women to faint and then wake them up again. I sigh. This is happening.

“I’ve seen you here before. On the train. I’m not a creeper.” He rushes the last part. Glad to know my inkling was correct.

“My name is Graham. Graham Winnings,” he continues.

It sounds like he’s prepared a pitch. I shift my stance and look up at the marquee light. Two minutes.

“I work in corporate law. I’m single. Never been married. No kids.”

He tries to stay within view as a rush of commuters has us bumping shoulders. I turn and catch his eyes. It’s confirmed—he is, indeed, very handsome. Not a Chris Evans type of handsome, but more like a my-town-would-be-thrilled-I’m-no-longer-single-and-he-probably-modeled-once type of handsome. Lily is going to have words for me for not accepting this one. I know it.

I nod my apologies and look back toward the tracks.

“As I was saying . . .”

His voice isn’t even annoying. But he’s not the one. How do I know? Oh, I know. Took me two-point-five seconds to know. The smell of oil and exhaust surrounding us isn’t distracting me from my mission of avoidance.

“ ... I’m thirty-two years old. I call my mom every morning because she lives alone, and I never want her to miss someone telling her ‘Good morning.’ And I don’t have a dog, but I want one someday. A big one.”

Oh, this comment makes women moan in frustration everywhere. The monster.

I slightly roll my eyes and hear a cough nearby. I look up to find a woman glaring at me with a look that says if I don’t accept him, she will, and this could be my last chance before becoming a spinster. Yep, her eyes say all of that. I grin my apologies and try to focus. Mystery man—or now Graham—has continued listing off his qualities. I’ve missed most of them.

“ ... I own my house. I have never been arrested.” He sighs.

I give him nothing. I can’t.

“And it’s not just because of how you look.” My eyes widen. “Not that you aren’t very attractive, but I just had a sense that we would hit it off somehow.”

The truth is, he does seem nice. And I could see him somewhere in my world. Just not beside me. I’ve never been more certain.

“Um ... I’m guessing by your lack of response that you don’t care. I’m hoping it’s not because you’re married or have a boyfriend who is going to beat me up for talking to you.”

I steal a glance at his face and see him staring at the phone in my hand. My earphones are not connected to my phone. The adapter is dangling in the wind. He stifles a laugh, which is polite.

“And I’m also guessing that you’re not going to stop pretending that you actually have music playing in your earphones . . .”

I wrinkle my nose. I’d fail as an undercover agent.

“‘ May I ask why, with so little endeavor at civility, I am thus repulsed? ’”

I grin at this. Pride and Prejudice . The movie. The man has taste. He’s cultured. The once-glaring lady across from me nearly falls into the nearby cement pillar. A middle-aged man takes one look at Graham and starts to take notes on his newspaper. He catches my amused look and rolls his eyes. No one will let me travel here after this moment if I don’t accept his hand immediately.

I turn slowly toward Graham. I shake the iciness out of my posture and try to be more human and less wounded—I need to ride this train. Lily is waiting on me at the store, and I can’t mess this up just because it makes me uncomfortable to turn him down. It’s not this guy’s fault I can’t date him. He’s exceptional. He’s well-dressed. But, nope, not the one. And something in me deeply wishes I wasn’t so keenly aware of it.

“You seem like a nice guy,” I say.

He startles, clearly not expecting to hear my voice. “I am.”

I nod politely. “My friend Lily would be obsessed with you.”

“I don’t see how that detail matters at this moment ... and, wait, did you say Lily ?” His brow furrows, and I see a flash of something in his eyes before he shakes it off.

“But this is where you and I stop.” I maintain eye contact and nod as if the conversation is over.

The alert sounds for the incoming train.

He clears his throat. “We’re getting on the same train.”

“Ahhh, but that’s where you’re wrong, buddy.” Yep. I said it. It’s metaphorical. Let’s see if Mr. Millions of Bucks picks up on that cue.

He shuffles in his Italian leather dress shoes and crosses his arms over his broad chest tucked behind a camel-colored trench coat. An expensive designer scarf is even sticking out from the top of the coat, framing his strong jaw. I don’t relent.

“It’s not personal.”

“It can’t be personal. You don’t know me.” His eyes are amused while calling my bluff.

I grin again. “Well, it’s not. I just can’t date you.”

The train car screeches on the rails. It’s loud. The kind of loud that says they haven’t greased these rails since the Boston Tea Party. Extreme? Not if you’ve heard this noise.

We wince. Once the train car stops, I turn toward him. I have ten seconds to get this right before the doors open.

I look into his questioning eyes. No doubt this will haunt him for a while. He checks every box, and he knows it. But he can’t check the most important one of mine.

I square my shoulders as the door opens, and I step into the car. I turn quickly, the commuters already creating space between us.

“May I ask why not?” He amplifies his voice in a weirdly professional and acceptable way. Again, so very polite.

“Well, Graham, it’s simple . . .”

He leans forward but doesn’t attempt to get on the train car. I time the rest of my response. Three, two, one . . .

“You’re not French.”

His jaw goes slack as the doors close. We’re taking off, and the force throws me onto the closest faux-leather seat. I can see his silhouette, unmoving, no doubt in shock from the one rule of my dating world: Date a Frenchman or date no man. And in case it’s unclear, it hasn’t worked for me so far.

I’m still staring at the closed doors in front of my face, my spine rocking and swaying lightly from the momentum of the moving car. Something is stirring my gut, but I try to push it down. I can feel the weight of the stares of the commuters around me, and I want to block it all out. I don’t like the feeling of needing to explain myself. It would sound ridiculous if I did anyway.

So I scrunch my nose and turn to prepare for another battle when my eyes catch sight of the most beautiful frame of a man I’ve ever seen in my life. His back is to me, his head slightly angled to the side. He’s within range and without earphones, so there’s no way he didn’t hear me a few moments ago. And this has me cringing with regret. Still, the curve of his shoulders under a bomber jacket and the way the pieces of his hair flip under a baseball cap has my mouth stuck together. This is ridiculous.

“Are you going to find a seat or not?” says an older woman with her eyebrows furrowed as if I got the last item she was looking for at a Black Friday sale.

My exhale is loud as I quickly attempt to move away from the embarrassment and her scorn and toward the only open seat I see, which is five rows behind Handsome Stranger. I don’t need to see him to know his face would be devastating—his voice too, probably. Sometimes, you can just sense attractiveness even before you encounter it, and it’s in this moment I recognize that the battle I’m facing today wasn’t outside this train car. It’s now.

I may have won my freedom by ensuring Graham won’t ever ask me out again, but I most definitely have lost if it means this Handsome Stranger is not for me. I look out the window, warmth creeping up my neck and adding a new and unwelcome blush to my cheeks.

After waiting a few seconds to catch my breath, I glance again toward the back of his head (in case I blacked out and hadn’t seen him clearly), but he’s moved on ... because he’s no longer in his seat. I risked a glance, and now I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t. It figures the man I would want a better glimpse of is nowhere to be found, while the man I was trying to avoid has no problem approaching me. I should’ve known after the way this day started, even before my commute. The croissants didn’t rise properly, and the sugar spilled all over my usually clean counters. It was a sign.

My thoughts drift back to Graham and the fact that my hands are still shaking. To say I panicked a few minutes ago is an understatement. Have I set my sights and hopes on one day marrying someone French? I mean, sure. It would be nice. My mother was French. My father was American. Somewhere in my deep well of memories, I can still hear my father saying, “Wait for the French kind of love.” Of course, he was talking about my mother and not about a specific nation of people in general. I’ve never actually thought or told a man that I wouldn’t date him because he wasn’t French. In my distress, I just made that rule up.

Perhaps it has something to do with Jacques, a man who is most definitely French and has been visiting my bakery and coffee shop, Sparrow’s Beret, for the past four or so months. He’s basically a European version of Graham, but instead of what went down outside of this train, he has never shown much interest in me other than to ask for his usual: a double shot of espresso and a pain au chocolat . For the past week, he has seemed to linger in the café a little longer than usual, but I could’ve been imagining it. Still, that hasn’t stopped me from hoping he will see the light and ask me out one day soon. Though, these days, I would describe myself as more of a flashlight whose batteries are threatening to burn out.

I adjust myself in my seat, my heart still beating furiously after my outburst toward Graham. There’s a draft somewhere on this train. I didn’t dress warmly enough for the hint of fall in the air. So now I’m cold. I’m irritated at myself, and I feel the creeping blanket of my steady companion: loneliness. Not a great combination. Sure, I might have seemed calm and collected on the platform, minus my blunder of not having my earphones connected to my phone, but it’s false bravery. Every time I have a close encounter with a man who’s interested in me—not that it happens often—I tense. I panic. I’m always awkward. And I care about what people think of me way too much.

So, this has been quite the event. Who even am I? I know I’m too old to be pushing away perfectly acceptable men who quote Jane Austen and telling them ridiculous things like, “You’re not French.” I. Know. This.

Reaching into my oversized travel bag, I pull out an oversized cream sweater (yes, there’s a theme here), and I snuggle within it. If only Handsome Stranger could see me now. Swallowed up by a sweater? Simply ravishing.

I intentionally connect my earphones to my phone this time—I don’t yet trust earbuds—and listen to my favorite band, Histoire. I’ve been obsessed with their music for the last several years. I don’t speak French fluently, but I understand it fairly well. And the lyrics get me every single time, like a frequency connected to my heart.

As the train grows quieter with each opening and closing of the doors, and since I still have about thirty minutes until I’m home, I let my thoughts drift to the metros within Paris that I’ve seen in pictures. Because with all my claims to be waiting for a Frenchman, have I even been to France? Sadly, no. Without my parents, I just haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. I’ve booked a ticket no less than five times, and each time, I find a reason to wait. To delay.

The skyline of Boston catches my view, and I can’t help but give a small smile for the city that is one of the reasons I exist. The leaves in the few trees I see whirling by are gathering orange and other warm tints at their edges, and it settles into my soul that there truly is nothing like New England in the fall. Even though I only go to the city every other Thursday morning and return on the eleven o’clock morning train, it’s still a piece of home.

Home. What a concept. What a word. I like to think that words are like water or weapons. They give you what you’re thirsty for or cut you at the heart. My mother, or ma maman , always said that words create your life.

I don’t remember many words from my mother. From the photographs and my own vague memories, I know she was a force of elegance and strength. My father, who left this world nearly two years ago, was a hard-working man with a deep well of kindness and joy. I never got the full story of their love, only pieces that appear throughout my memories, like leaves falling to the earth. But they loved each other deeply and loved each other until the end. This I have always felt right down to my bones.

I do know that my parents met in Boston when they were sixteen. He was delivering bread in the city, and she was visiting America for the first time with my grandparents. It was an earth-shattering love from the start. They wrote to each other for a few years before my mother attended a university in America, and my father waited for her. They married soon after, and then I came along. I don’t know how most love works, but you can sense when your parents love each other. And their love lives on in my system. I have to believe that.

My eyes stinging from the memory of them, I clear my throat. Without warning, our train car jerks violently and has some sort of shrieking fit. I jump as a guitar case flies from an overhead bin and lands to the right of my seat.

“You could’ve been crushed ,” says the older woman from before. It’s not helpful, and I think I detect a hint of mischief in her tone but hope for the best. The commuters surrounding us who are not on their phones look at the case, but no one moves toward it.

My gaze travels up the case and lands on a sticker that reads Seb’s . Immediately, I think of La La Land . It looks just like the sign from the movie. I smile to myself and refrain from humming “City of Stars.” I feel my eyes widen when I see another sticker—this one from CDG, Charles de Gaulle Airport, in Paris. I sit up and look around the train, but I’m now the only person in the car besides the unhelpful older woman and the snoring man wearing a New England Patriots sweatshirt across the aisle. He doesn’t look like a Seb, but I’ve been wrong before.

I reach for the case to pull it out of the aisle when I suddenly feel I’m being watched. I turn to find a crew member with an intense brow who is new to this route heading my way.

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“Yes?” She turns toward me, clearly already annoyed.

I point to the guitar case and do my best to smile in a way that disarms her ability to hate life. “Um . .. Do you know whose this is? I don’t know if it’s been abandoned or not. It kind of flew at me, and I—”

“You’re not stealing it?”

“What? No! No, I’m not stealing it—I think the case tried to kill me, actually ...”

I swear I hear the older woman across the way whisper, “Crush,” as the crew member grabs for the guitar and looks at the ticket above the seats, eyes narrowing.

“They’re still here.”

I laugh forcefully to try to dissolve the already awkward situation. My stomach dips at the thought that it could belong to the man I saw earlier. Because, of course, I’m being attacked by random luggage owned by someone (I’m hoping Handsome Stranger), who’s possibly getting a coffee and not in need of a baggage manager.

“Great!”

She maintains eye contact as she walks away. As if I would steal someone’s guitar. Really. The world these days.

“Seb,” I whisper. A grin hits my face, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve smiled all day. After my usual ritual in Boston this morning, combined with the emotions stirred up about my parents every time I’m in said city and a fleeting encounter with someone who thinks I’m unhinged for Frenchmen, my heart has been an overcast sky lately.

I pull out a book from my bag and attempt to hide the cover. It’s a Regency romance, so there’s lots of pining and men in great coats. The cover doesn’t do it justice really. But if Seb does come back, I don’t want him to think I’m a hopeless romantic (I totally am).

I wait for five more minutes before I feel the rhythm of the train lull me toward sleep with the memories of the plans my mother and father once made for us to visit Paris.

∞∞∞

Being jostled awake by a moving train car is not as glorious as it should be. I’m rethinking my love for travel because a train ride has never been a romantic experience for me yet. It’s definitely not like the movies. Thankfully, I’m at my stop. I jolt upright in my seat, the scratch of my sweater still stinging my cheek, and as I search around my seat for my things, it hits me: The guitar case is gone. Looking up, I recognize the back of Handsome Stranger getting off the train. His brown hair lightly dances in the breeze beneath that blessed baseball cap. He adjusts his now-returned guitar case, which he must’ve retrieved while I was asleep. Fantastic. I hold my breath, praying luck is on my side to see a glimpse of his face.

“Please, please, please ...” I whisper. “C’mon, Seb.”

He hears me—I’m sure of it—and he starts to turn back toward the train just as a very large family barrels through from the train car next to us, completely blocking my view.

“No, no, no!” I grab my bag and slip out of the car, practically sliding off the steps and onto the train platform. I’m on my toes, trying to see over people—and now a baggage cart on the platform—when I realize there’s no way I’m catching up to this man. He’s gone. And I didn’t even get enough of a glimpse to give a report to Lily—or to commit his perfection to memory.

I let out a sigh that ruffles the fringe falling across my forehead and close my eyes.

“That was him, you know.”

“Ah!” I jump and see the crew member with the intense brow beside me again. Why do I always attract people I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with? I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

“You know? The one with the guitar case.”

“Yes, I remember,” I manage.

She inhales loudly, nails brushing across her pristine train vest. Are train vests a thing? They must be. “Quite a looker, that one.”

I groan. I swear there’s some amusement in her voice. She must get a kick out of these missed meet-cute moments all the time. If this were a fairy tale, she’d definitely be the villain—or at least the villain’s sidekick.

And because I don’t want her to feel the satisfaction of misjudging my frustration, I manage to quietly add, “How lovely.”

I’m halfway to my car when I realize that if Mystery Man has gotten off at this stop, he’s at least in the area. Maybe for an afternoon or maybe longer. He could have family in town, but that’s doubtful, as I’ve met everyone who’s a regular here at least four times. No one comes to Birch Borough without a reason. It’s too small. Too off-the-map. Maybe there’s still hope for a meet-cute after all.