Chapter Sixteen #2
“But what if it isn’t a game? What if you could have something real with her?” Lou asked, glancing at George, whose mouth felt dry. “Tell her how you feel, Cliff. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Well, she could say no.”
“Maybe,” Lou said. “But then it wasn’t meant to be. You can never regret honesty, though, can you?”
Cliff looked pensively at his own reflection in the large mirror on the opposite wall.
Lou raised his eyebrows at George, and George knew that his friend was urging him to weigh in, but George’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and he couldn’t summon the right words.
You can never regret honesty, Lou had said.
But what could George say now that wouldn’t make him a hypocrite?
“George?” Lou urged after a moment. “Don’t you have any advice for Cliff?”
Cliff looked at George, his expression miserable and pleading. George felt compelled to say something.
“I do think,” George said carefully, “that Lou is right. You will always regret not telling the truth if you choose not to do it.”
Beside him, Lou nodded, and though George meant the words, he felt like a fraud.
“All right, then, you two convinced me,” Cliff said. “I’ll talk to Diane today.”
George gave Cliff what he hoped was an encouraging smile, then shot a look at Lou, who was watching him.
They’d just dispensed the right advice to Cliff; of that, he was sure.
But when it came to taking his own advice?
Seizing his own moment before it was too late?
George wasn’t sure he had the courage to do that.
Piper and her mother got off the Big Bus three times, first on the Champs-élysées for a bit of shopping and an early lunch of croque monsieurs and rosé, then at the Trocadéro to snap some pictures with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and, finally, at the Opéra Garnier, where they admired the gilded exterior of the famous theater and then walked over to the Galeries Lafayette for more shopping and salads at the café on the ground floor.
It was nearly five by the time they walked through the doors to their hotel, and Piper’s mom was rubbing her eyes and yawning.
“That was an awesome day,” she said as she unlocked the door to their hotel room. “But I hope you won’t mind if I turn in early.”
“Of course not, Mom,” Piper said, trying not to notice how frail her mother looked. The more exhausted she became throughout the day, the more her whole body seemed to deflate. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” her mother murmured, heading for the bathroom. “Nothing a little rest won’t fix.”
“Right, but—”
“No buts!” her mother called from the bathroom. “Go out with the boy! Your old mom needs her beauty sleep!”
Piper swallowed her hurt. She had checked her phone a hundred times, and Nicolas still hadn’t called or texted. She felt foolish to have believed he could be something special. “Yeah, okay.”
Piper’s mom emerged a moment later, already wearing pajamas, her face scrubbed clean of makeup. “What?” she asked, and Piper looked away; she hadn’t meant to stare at her mother.
“Nothing, Mom,” she said, and when her mother continued to look at her, she added in a small voice, “It’s just that you look… sick.”
There. She’d said it. She’d acknowledged the elephant in the room, which was that Piper’s mom wasn’t just taking a quick rest before the next round of sightseeing; she was sleeping off the effects of an illness that was gaining on her.
“Well,” her mom said, smiling a smile that Piper knew wasn’t real, “I feel perfectly fine, and I’m sure I’ll feel even better after I get some sleep.”
“What about your dinner?”
“That salad was more than enough. And if I wake up later and I’m bored, I can wander around the neighborhood a bit on my own. I promise, sweetheart, I’m fine. Just text me if you’ll be very late so that I know you’re safe, okay?”
“Okay,” Piper murmured. It used to drive her crazy that her mother wanted to keep tabs on her, but who would do so after her mom was gone? She had the terrible feeling that the things she had pushed away were the things she would miss the most. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Positive.” Piper’s mom yawned again.
“Okay.” Piper still wasn’t certain that she was doing the right thing by leaving her mother, but already, her mom was crawling into bed, her lashes fluttering as she fought to keep her eyes open. Piper had to blink back tears as she crossed the room to kiss her mom on the cheek. “Get some rest.”
“Have fun, honey.”
“Sure.” As she walked out of the hotel a few minutes later, she resolved not to go anywhere near the Café Le Petit Pont—and to stop thinking about Nicolas.
As she strolled north across the Pont Saint-Michel toward Notre Dame, she tried to imagine her mother here nearly thirty years ago, when she was a young woman, before she was married, before Piper existed.
Had she walked this same path? Seen these same sights?
It was incredible to think that so many of the buildings that dominated Paris had been here for hundreds of years without change.
It wasn’t like that anywhere in the States, where cities were constantly reinventing themselves.
Buildings were ripped down and rebuilt; restaurants and businesses came and went; nothing was permanent.