Chapter Three #2
“Mesdames, are you ready to order?” he asked, but Julia might as well have not been there at all as he and Piper drank each other in. “Our salads are very popular, and our foie gras de canard is lovely.”
Piper again seemed to be at a loss for words, so Julia spoke for her. “Let’s have the foie gras and two small salads, then, with some french fries.” She handed the menus back and smiled at the young man with thick, dark hair, strong features, and long eyelashes. “And, Nicolas, was it?”
“Oui, madame.” He looked flustered when he finally turned to her.
“This is my daughter, Piper. It’s her first time in Paris.”
Piper had now turned scarlet. “Mom!” she choked out.
“Well. Welcome to Paris, Piper.” Nicolas smiled at her. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” Piper mumbled.
He hesitated for a second. “Is there anything else I can get you ladies?”
“We’re okay for now,” Piper said quickly, obviously heading Julia off before she could do something like offer the waiter her daughter’s phone number.
“I’ll be back shortly, then,” he said, smiling at Piper once more before walking away.
“Mom, what are you doing?” Piper groaned once he was out of earshot.
“You should ask him what time his shift ends,” Julia said.
“Why would I do that?” Piper’s eyes practically popped out of her head. “I mean, it’s not like I even live here or anything.”
“So what?” Julia asked. “Take some chances! Life isn’t just about making all the smart, safe moves.” Julia had learned that far too late. “Anyhow, you’re going to be all by yourself later on today while I catch up on sleep. Wouldn’t it be more fun to see Paris with a cute guy?”
Piper buried her head in her hands. “This is so embarrassing.”
“Just trying to help,” Julia said with a sly grin. What she didn’t say was that it would make her rest more easily to have a glimpse, even if it was just a small one, of the shape Piper’s life might take after Julia was gone.
Shelby Anderson had a hangover.
It had been a long time since she’d felt like this.
No, that wasn’t exactly true, was it? She’d had a hangover last week, too.
But that one had been from polishing off an entire bottle of chardonnay by herself at home.
At least this morning’s hangover felt well-earned; she was on a girls’ trip, and she’d stayed up most of last night on the flight to Paris with Corinne and Vanessa—her two closest friends—swapping stories and laughing, though for Shelby, it was all she could do to fight back tears.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be with Brandon. At home in Alabama. Ideally with a toddler or two following her around.
Instead, she was on another continent, on a trip that Corinne and Vanessa were cheerfully referring to as her “divorce party.”
The problem was that Shelby didn’t want a party. She didn’t want a divorce. But she had allowed herself to be swept along by her friends’ enthusiasm, and by the time she admitted to herself that she didn’t want this trip at all, she was already on a flight.
They’d arrived this morning, and after quick power naps, they’d grabbed lunch near their hotel at a little place called Café Le Petit Pont, where Corinne and Vanessa—both currently single—flirted shamelessly with the cute waiter, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-four or twenty-five, a full decade and a half younger than them.
But the waiter had no interest in any of them, though he was friendly and polite. It was obvious he was smitten with the twentysomething American girl with long dark hair at the next table over, who seemed to be on a trip with her mother.
“Oh my God,” Corinne whispered loudly at one point, her eyes wide as the others leaned in. “I think that girl’s mom is flirting with the waiter!”
“Really? Is he flirting back?” asked Vanessa, who looked forlorn, as if she’d missed an opportunity to win the waiter’s affection.
“No, wait,” Corinne said. “Actually, I think the mom’s trying to pick up the waiter for her daughter. Bold move, mom, bold move. The daughter looks completely mortified.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” Vanessa asked with a laugh.
“Now the mom’s telling the daughter she should go see Paris with the waiter,” Corinne reported, still eavesdropping.
Corinne had hearing like a bat. When they’d all been in college together at the University of Alabama nearly twenty years ago, she’d discovered that Vanessa’s boyfriend at the time was cheating because she’d overheard a conversation in a crowded restaurant from four tables away.
“I wish I had a mom who tried to set me up with hot guys,” Vanessa said, rolling her eyes.
Corinne laughed, and although Shelby forced a smile, too, she realized she was suddenly fighting back tears.
What she wouldn’t give for her own mother to be here with her right now, but her mom was too disappointed in her.
How can you just give up on your marriage like that?
her mom had demanded two months ago when Shelby had finally mustered the courage to call and tell her about the impending divorce, which Brandon had set in motion a few months earlier.
Shelby had protested that she hadn’t been the one to give up, that Brandon had been the one to leave, but her mother had brushed the words aside and given her an earful about how Shelby needed to honor her commitments.
The thing was, Shelby had honored her commitments. It would be almost better if he’d left her for someone else, because then she could have at least explained that to her mother. Instead, he simply hadn’t wanted her anymore.
What her mother was really asking, Shelby knew, was how she could give up on the perks of being married to a man like Brandon Anderson, who everyone agreed was the perfect catch—a former college football player, a successful engineer, the son of a respected circuit court judge.
But Brandon had been the one to unilaterally decide that their marriage was over, just after Shelby’s third fruitless cycle of IVF, when she’d felt like such a failure that she could barely get out of bed.
“All you ever talk about is babies, babies, babies,” Brandon had said, shaking his head in disappointment as she’d sobbed in the kitchen, pathetically begging him not to leave, to give them another chance. “I can’t do this anymore. For God’s sake, Shelby, there’s more to life than this.”
And maybe he was right. But she’d thought that he wanted a child as much as she did, and that all of this agony and despair would one day be nothing but a distant memory as they welcomed the baby that would finally make their family complete.
And now, not only had Brandon left, but Shelby had learned just last week through her divorce attorney that Brandon’s new girlfriend—a yoga instructor in her late twenties named Alexis whom he’d started dating a few months after separating from Shelby—was pregnant.
So Brandon would be a father after all. It just wouldn’t have anything to do with her.
“Earth to Shelby!” Corinne’s worried voice cut into Shelby’s thoughts, and she realized she’d been zoned out for at least the last minute while the conversation had continued around her.
“Sorry,” she murmured, embarrassed, and Vanessa reached for Shelby’s hand under the table and squeezed.
“You okay?” Vanessa asked. “You’re better off without him, you know.”
“I know,” Shelby said, but as Vanessa continued to look at her with concern, Shelby knew that her friend could see right through her.
What if she wasn’t better off, though? What if the problem was her?
What if she’d lost the perfect guy solely because she couldn’t pull herself together?
What if her mom was right about everything?
“You know what?” Vanessa said abruptly. “I think we need a bottle of champagne.”
Corinne grinned. “I’ll call the hot waiter over.”
“Actually,” Vanessa said, “what do you say we pay our bill here and go find a bar? We’ll have some bubbly, and then we’ll grab an Uber and go see the Eiffel Tower.”
Corinne shrugged. “I mean, I was thinking that maybe we could stick around here for a little while more and see if the waiter notices us.”
Shelby looked at her in disbelief. “Corinne, he’s currently drooling over that cute girl.”
“Plus, you’re almost old enough to be his mom,” Vanessa chimed in helpfully.
“Well, his loss. With age comes experience. I could teach him a thing or two.” Corinne waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
Laughing, the women signaled the cute waiter for the check, paid their bill, and got up to leave, though as they walked out into the Paris sunshine, Shelby couldn’t help but pause for a moment, looking up at the gorgeous, soaring architecture of Notre Dame.
It had suffered a great loss, too, hadn’t it?
It had risen from the ashes. It had been rebuilt.
Maybe, just maybe, there was hope of a better future for Shelby, too.