Chapter Four #3
On the sidewalk outside, she faced Notre Dame and took big, deep breaths, gulping in the air until her racing heart slowed and the tide receded and the fear and hurt were back where they belonged, deep beneath the surface.
But once the pain had tucked itself back in, she felt an overwhelming sweep of embarrassment.
Had she just run out of a bookstore, mid-conversation, like a total crazy person?
If her mom hadn’t scared Nicolas off earlier, surely she’d just done the job herself.
A moment later, she felt him appear behind her, the air around her growing charged. “Piper?” he said. “What happened there?”
His tone was gentle, concerned, but she still felt like an idiot.
“Nothing,” she said quickly, rearranging her face into something she hoped looked normal.
She’d become an expert at that since her mother’s diagnosis, carefully wiping away the signs of her own emotion so that they weren’t an extra burden. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing.”
She turned to face him, and she could read two things in his expression: that he didn’t believe her, and that he genuinely cared. She averted her eyes, because she didn’t want his pity. But she could still feel him looking at her with concern.
“Whatever it is, it isn’t nothing,” he said a moment later. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. But if you do…”
She allowed herself to look back at him, and to imagine a world in which she could just be a carefree girl flirting with a cute guy in Paris.
Instead, she was a girl who’d spent two years under the shadow of her mom’s impending death, and she’d all but disappeared into the darkness.
She thought of the Hafiz quote on the stairs inside about finding the light of her own being, but she had no idea how to do that.
“I’m okay,” she said, pasting on a smile. “Really. Mostly, I’m just embarrassed.”
He didn’t break eye contact, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was looking right into her soul.
“ ‘When it is dark enough, you can see the stars,’ ” he said after a moment, and her heart lurched, because how had he known she’d been thinking about the darkness that had eclipsed everything good in her life?
“What?” she asked.
He smiled slightly. “Another quote. Ralph Waldo Emerson. But I always liked it because it reminds us that when things are at their worst, there’s always light. You just have to remind yourself to look up and see it.”
“Yeah, but…” She swallowed hard. “What if the light’s all gone?”
“It’s never gone, though.”
“Yeah, well, my mom is dying, so things are pretty dark for me,” she said.
What did it matter, anyhow? She’d never see him again.
Once the words started pouring out of her mouth, she realized it felt good to say them, to share them with someone else rather than keeping them all inside.
“She’s dying from cancer, and this is our last trip together, and I don’t know what I’m going to do when she’s gone because I don’t know who I am without her, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to be okay with any of this. ”
“Oh, Piper.”
She couldn’t see his face because she was too embarrassed to look up. She studied her feet like they were the most interesting things in the world.
“Piper?” he said a moment later when she still hadn’t met his eye. “I’m truly very sorry.”
“Thanks,” she muttered to her feet. “I’m sorry, too. It’s not your problem, and I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just—I mean, I feel like a crazy person sometimes. I wish I knew how to handle all of this better.”
“Piper?” he said again, and this time, he waited until she looked up and met his gaze, which didn’t hold the judgment she expected. “You’re not a crazy person. You’re very strong, I think.”
“Nicolas, let’s be honest, I’m standing here on a sidewalk, word-vomiting out my feelings to someone I don’t even know.”
He shrugged. “I don’t mind. Besides, we know each other now, don’t we?”
She looked into his green eyes. “Yeah, well, it’s not like there’s anything you can do,” she said softly.
“I can listen,” he replied, still holding her gaze, and finally, Piper felt a bit of the weight lift from her shoulders.
Finally, he broke eye contact and looked down at his watch with a groan.
“Piper, I’m very sorry, but I have to get back to work.
If you have some time tomorrow, though, would you like to go for a walk with me between shifts? ”
“A walk?”
“It’s the best way to see Paris.”
“No, I mean, you want to take a walk with me? After all of… that?”
“Ah, well. My father died when I was ten, you see. So while I can’t say I know exactly what you’re feeling right now, I understand it. I do.”
“I’m so sorry about your father,” Piper said.
Nicolas shrugged and gave her a sad smile. “When he was still alive, he used to take me on long strolls around the city, nearly every day. Since he’s been gone, I’ve found comfort in walking, and I thought you might, too. If you’d like to join me.”
“Okay,” she said tentatively. “I—I’m supposed to be hanging out with my mom, but she usually takes a nap in the afternoon these days.”
“If you can spare the time, I’ll be in front of Notre Dame at two o’clock. And if you can’t come, that’s all right, too.”
“Okay. And… thanks,” Piper said. And as Nicolas smiled and turned to head back to the café, Piper had a sudden sense of the world rearranging itself into something she didn’t recognize.
For the first time in two years, she felt a little less alone, and with his words about light in the darkest times ringing in her ears, and with the rest of the afternoon to kill, she set off toward the Seine to see where her feet would take her.