Chapter Fifteen
I wake up heavy and groggy because I didn’t take my meds before I fell asleep. I reach over to get them – I always have them next to me – but it’s not my medicine box that I feel, it’s a solid mass – a man-shaped solid mass.
‘Sorry,’ Emmett says. ‘There wasn’t anywhere else to sit, and it was getting cold.’
Fuck, fuck. I’ve been asleep for hours. Outside the window the sky is the colour of burnt orange. The sun is setting, and the day has gone completely to shit.
Emmett is sat next to me, on the very edge of the bed, on top of the bedding. His long legs are stretched out before him, crossed at the ankles. He’s wearing matching socks.
‘I didn’t want to leave without checking you were okay, and there wasn’t anywhere else to sit.’ He’s still explaining the fact that he’s on the bed, I think.
My room has always felt minuscule, but with Emmett here too, it’s almost claustrophobic. Stretched out like this, he almost touches the wall opposite.
‘It’s fine, don’t worry.’ I scramble to sit upright, my head all woozy. I’m still in the clothes I wore to hike up the Eiffel Tower. I feel like I did when I was fifteen, gross and well… just gross mostly.
I look around for my bag. I need my meds. ‘Are you looking for this?’ Emmett holds up my pill organiser alongside a bottle of water. ‘I saw some medicine in there when you were looking for the key. I thought you might need them for your post-viral fatigue.’
He’s talking really slowly like my made-up illness has made me made-up stupid.
I reach for them. ‘Yes, I definitely do. Thank you.’
I twist away from him and then throw down the afternoon pills like I won’t survive without them, which I won’t. When I turn around again, Emmett is smiling, but it’s the smile of a porcelain doll. Slightly haunting and dead around the eyes.
‘All sorted?’
‘Absolutely,’ I smile, making myself be genuine.
‘Would you mind waiting while I take a quick shower? I feel all groggy. Then we can head back out. What’s on the itinerary for the rest of the evening?
’ I try to peer out of the window to work out what time it might be.
The sun is beginning to set behind the line of grey buildings by my windows.
‘Course, take all the time you need. There’s only one more place that I really wanted to show you today, anyway. It’s not far from here.’
It has to be LG. The carousel horse.
‘Okay, if you’re sure.’ I get the impression that Emmett has significantly scaled back his plans for the day after I moved like an injured sloth all afternoon.
‘I am, don’t worry.’
I pull out an outfit from my suitcase, doing my best to shield the chaos from Emmett. It’s a long, swishy skirt and a bardo top that’s super Paris.
I manage to shower and dress in the tiny bathroom, feeling slightly more human as a result.
I give my body a pep talk in the small mirror, begging it to give me three more days.
I’m Faustas, making a deal with the devil.
But I don’t want to know the whole world; I want this infinitesimal fraction of it.
Dr Dave says that if I accept the need to rest, I’ll likely feel better for it in the long term. Dr Dave and I disagree on many points, and for just this day, that’s one of them.
But still, I do feel better, and there’s something bubbling deep in my stomach that feels like excitement as I emerge from the bathroom. I forgot how much I love this top. A good top can always save the day. I’ve pulled my hair into a low bun, and I have big hoop earrings in.
Still, I’m self-conscious, super aware that Emmett is in my personal space. Especially when he says, ‘You’re beautiful, Luna,’ and smiles a genuine smile.
It’s a reminder of how different this Emmett is, and I’m not mentally prepared for it. I just return his smile and say ‘thanks’ and try to pretend that I’m unmoved by the whole thing. Especially since I’m already dreading saying goodbye again. Our last goodbye nearly killed me.
Emmett obviously isn’t getting changed, so we head down the stairs. I need to check that I can extend my booking until Friday.
‘Hang on a sec,’ I tell Emmett and approach the front desk.
‘I’m sorry, madame,’ she tells me, ‘but the hotel is fully booked.’ She does look sorry, too. ‘It’s the views of the tower. They make it very popular.’
I mean, you can see the tip. But still, I tell her that it’s no problem and walk away. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that I might not get the extra days. I could look for another hotel, I suppose…
‘Bad news,’ I tell Emmett. ‘I can’t stay the extra nights in my hotel. Do you know any other cheap ones?’ I emphasise the cheap.
‘Let me have a think,’ he tells me as we begin to walk, slowly, towards where we’re going.
‘Where are we?’ I ask Emmett as he leads me into a park.
‘Jardin du Luxembourg,’ he answers. ‘The Luxembourg Gardens. It’s one of my favourite parks in Paris.’
LG.
‘It’s lovely.’
The park has wide paths and colourful flower borders and bathed in the light of the early evening, it has an almost ethereal feel to it. There’s a pond, a bundle of little wooden boats with tall sails gathered together at one side.
It’s quieter in here than on the regular streets. Sleepy and peaceful.
‘Come on, before it closes.’
I nod, overly emotional once again as Emmett leads me to the far corner of the park. Then, I see what he wants to show me.
It’s a carousel. Old and wooden and… closed for the day.
Emmett goes to speak to an old man who is busy locking up the little green shutters on the ticket hut.
I hear him and Emmett nattering in French as I wander round to look at the carousel.
There are only two rows of horses, but they’re beautiful.
Delicately carved and painted, lifelike but also a little sad.
It’s so obvious now that this is what features in The Longing for Human Connection.
I start taking pictures, thinking that it’s impossible to feel neutral in Paris.
It’s just not the place for it. I send a picture to Mae.
Me: Look where Emmett brought me.
Mae: Omg he loves you still.
Behind me, the lights around the edge of the carousel flash on, sparkling in the early evening. It’s magical.
‘Giuseppe says we can ride it, if you like?’
‘Guiseppe?’
‘A friend of mine. His pa knew Earl.’
Guiseppe comes over, a wooden stick in each hand.
‘You have to catch the wooden hoops he holds. Winner gets the most,’ Emmett says.
‘You’re on.’ I take a stick from Guiseppe, saying ‘merci’ over and over because it’s clear as day he thought he was done with work until me and Emmett showed up.
‘He’s been here forty years,’ Emmett tells me as I climb on a horse, running my hands along the smooth main.
‘It’s gorgeous.’
Guiseppe starts to push the carousel. He’s obviously stronger than he looks because I think that’s how it moves, manually.
I’m right; we gather some speed, the lights begin to blur and I’m taken back to another time that Emmett and I were on a carousel together.
From the Time Before, when it felt like a whole lifetime was stretched out before me, a mass of colour.
As I hook my first wooden ring and laugh when Emmett misses his, I sense it, hidden among a bunch of other emotions that are tricky to place, that same feeling of optimism for the future. It’s not escape anymore – it’s hope.
Optimism, I think, feels a lot like hope.
Longing too. I wonder if that’s what Earl wanted us to take from this painting. Whether he knew somehow, that we’d need a reason to feel hopeful again.
I get another ring, and another. Guiseppe is making it extra hard for Emmett. I’m laughing, free, almost. Earl’s painting brought to life.
At the end of the ride, I want to go again. But I also want Guiseppe to go home and rest since he looks as close to keeling over as I do.
‘Merci,’ I say again.
‘You very good, Emmett very bad,’ he tells me. ‘Yes, yes, very bad indeed.’ I smile. Emmett has one ring on his wooden pole, but his eyes are dark where he’s looking at me laughing with Guiseppe.
He walks over with the air of a lion about to rip into a gazelle and I’m the gazelle, helpless to stop it. But instead, he hands Guiseppe twenty euros to much protest, and bids him ‘bon soir’.
It’s almost fully dark by the time we make our way over to a patch of grass by the boat pond. The night is clear and the moon is bright, and I do my best to ground myself in the moment. To live for now, not some unpredictable future.
‘Do you think that Earl wanted to remind us that life can be fun?’ Emmett asked.
‘I’m sure he did.’
‘I don’t have a lot of fun.’
‘Me neither.’
We don’t go into it any more than that.
I think about how it’s just par for the course that Emmett looks impossibly even more attractive in the moonlight. Moonlight makes everything just a fraction more beautiful. Throw in the stars and it’s practically obscene.
Emmett looks at me when he thinks I don’t notice. I feel the same way, as if this can’t quite be real, but I keep my peace until he finally breaks the silence.
‘Would you consider staying with me?’ he asks, not meeting my eye.
‘What like, in your hotel?’
He nods. ‘It’s a suite. There’s plenty of room for us both. It has a spare bed.’
This feels like a bad idea, the latest in a long stretch of bad ideas regarding Emmett.
‘I don’t know…’
‘Think about it. You don’t need to decide now.’
‘Okay, thanks. And thank you for the offer.’
Emmett nods. Once.
After that, we just talk. I tell Emmett about how my blog started, an abridged version. ‘I guess I just finally accepted that I’m drawn to the darkness.’
‘Earl would have said you can’t have one without the other.’
He means dark and light. And Earl did think that. That the light only shines so bright in contrast with the dark. But that’s not what I feel. I’m not drawn to the dark to make the light ever more stark. Sometimes the dark isn’t special, it isn’t poetic. It’s just dark.
Emmett disappears for fifteen minutes and reappears with a bottle of red wine. I take a sip straight from the bottle.