Page 3 of Angel Eyes

“Whether you can or can’t is entirely up to you,” she said matter-of-factly as she rose from her chair, leaving the offending papers behind.

“Grace—”

“It’s your life, Juliet.” She paused at the door. “You have to decide how to live it.”

In the hours following Grace’s departure, I had thrown myself headlong into work. I answered Tom’s emails (all seven of them), sat through a three-hour meeting with the client, during which we discussed the target company’s equity structure and litigation history in excruciating detail, and churned out a draft purchase agreement. By the time I clicked Send on the document, my two-day-old blouse was riddled with sweat stains, I was dehydrated, and the only meal I’d had was a granola bar I found at the bottom of my desk drawer.

Life was good.

I collapsed back against my chair, rubbing my eyes. “Siri, what time is it?”

“It’s 12:53 a.m.,” she responded cheerfully.

Great. Maybe if I rushed home, I might have time to shower and squeeze in a couple hours of sleep before Tom started emailing me again at whatever ungodly hour he woke up.

My gaze landed on the stack of application papers.

I glared at them. The papers glared back.

Before I could think too hard about why I was having a staring contest with an inanimate object, I grabbed the application and flipped through it, reading the requirements for submission.

It’s not like I’ll actually get in.

I had no formal creative writing education, and I doubted my work would be taken seriously in any case. Maybe if I wrote literary fiction or creative nonfiction or something. Because I was pretty sure a university wouldn’t be impressed with a story about a grumpy, small-town ranch hand who falls in love with a disgraced Hollywood socialite.

I grabbed a pen and wrote my name on the line labeled Applicant.

Just to get Grace off my back, I had told myself as I scribbled down my contact information.

Two months later, I received an acceptance letter.

Now, watching the sunset behind Notre-Dame Cathedral, I still couldn’t believe I had done it. That all those months ago, I decided to forgo a night of much-needed sleep and finish the application in time for the morning mail pickup.

In my twenty-eight years, I had never done anything so unpredictable.

I had always been straitlaced, rule-following Juliet—the Upper East Side debutante turned lawyer who was destined to marry a lawyer, have lawyer babies, and attend high tea and charity events until I died clutching my pearls at the ripe age of eighty-five.

You aren’t capable of doing anything spontaneous.

It had hurt to hear those words from Kyle, not simply because they were unkind, but because, deep down, I knew they were true.

All the success I had achieved up until this point had come on the heels of toeing the line and keeping everyone around me happy. My grandparents who had raised me after my parents had died. My overachiever boyfriend from Connecticut who wanted nothing more than to be part of an enviable power couple and make partner before leaving the private sector to run for office. My senior team members who never missed an opportunity to tell me how invaluable I was, all while driving me like a workhorse and piling on demands.

Sure, my life came with perks, including first-class everything and a paycheck with plenty of zeros. But as glamorous as it looked on the outside, I couldn’t say it felt good on the inside.

So, I had decided to take a leap of faith.

One summer to live out my dream of being a writer. One summer to leave behind all the rules and expectations. One summer to pretend I had a life that I love.

Two

Juliet

In the thirty-six hours since arriving in Paris, I’d learned two things. One, when your boyfriend is pissed at you, don’t send him cat memes at two o’clock in the morning. (Spoiler, he won’t find them funny.) And two, as tempting as it may be to take a cute selfie while riding your bike across a bridge, this, too, is a bad idea.

The first lesson came late Monday night while I lounged in the kitchen, still wide awake from jet lag and eating my way through half a box of chocolate macarons. The second, the following morning on my way to campus for my first day of class.

Steering my cruiser bike with one hand, I smiled up at the camera as I pedaled across the Pont Marie, trying to capture the clear sky and leafy green trees lining the river’s edge behind me.

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