Page 3 of I Love You in French

My thoughts drift back to Graham and the fact that my hands are still shaking. To say I panicked a few minutes ago is an understatement. Have I set my sights and hopes on one day marrying someone French? I mean, sure. It would be nice. My mother was French. My father was American. Somewhere in my deep well of memories, I can still hear my father saying, “Wait for the French kind of love.” Of course, he was talking about my mother and not about a specific nation of people in general. I’ve never actually thought or told a man that I wouldn’t date him because he wasn’t French. In my distress, I just made that rule up.

Perhaps it has something to do with Jacques, a man who is most definitely French and has been visiting my bakery and coffee shop, Sparrow’s Beret, for the past four or so months. He’s basically a European version of Graham, but instead of what went down outside of this train, he has never shown much interest in me other than to ask for his usual: a double shot of espresso and a pain au chocolat. For the past week, he has seemed to linger in the café a little longer than usual, but I could’ve been imagining it. Still, that hasn’t stopped me from hoping he will see the light and ask me out one day soon. Though, these days, I would describe myself as more of a flashlight whose batteries are threatening to burn out.

I adjust myself in my seat, my heart still beating furiously after my outburst toward Graham. There’s a draft somewhere on this train. I didn’t dress warmly enough for the hint of fall in the air. So now I’m cold. I’m irritated at myself, and I feel the creeping blanket of my steady companion: loneliness. Not a great combination. Sure, I might have seemed calm and collected on the platform, minus my blunder of not having my earphones connected to my phone, but it’s false bravery. Every time I have a close encounter with a man who’s interested in me—not that it happens often—I tense. I panic. I’m always awkward. And I care about what people think of me way too much.

So, this has been quite the event. Who even am I? I know I’m too old to be pushing away perfectly acceptable men who quote Jane Austen and telling them ridiculous things like, “You’re not French.” I. Know. This.

Reaching into my oversized travel bag, I pull out an oversized cream sweater (yes, there’s a theme here), and I snuggle within it. If only Handsome Stranger could see me now. Swallowed up by a sweater? Simply ravishing.

I intentionally connect my earphones to my phone this time—I don’t yet trust earbuds—and listen to my favorite band, Histoire. I’ve been obsessed with their music for the last several years. I don’t speak French fluently, but I understand it fairly well. And the lyrics get me every single time, like a frequency connected to my heart.

As the train grows quieter with each opening and closing of the doors, and since I still have about thirty minutes until I’m home, I let my thoughts drift to the metros within Paris that I’ve seen in pictures. Because with all my claims to be waiting for a Frenchman, have I even been to France? Sadly, no. Without my parents, I just haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. I’ve booked a ticket no less than five times, and each time, I find a reason to wait. To delay.

The skyline of Boston catches my view, and I can’t help but give a small smile for the city that is one of the reasons I exist. The leaves in the few trees I see whirling by are gathering orange and other warm tints at their edges, and it settles into my soul that there truly is nothing like New England in the fall. Even though I only go to the city every other Thursday morning and return on the eleven o’clock morning train, it’s still a piece of home.

Home. What a concept. What a word. I like to think that words are like water or weapons. They give you what you’re thirsty for or cut you at the heart. My mother, or ma maman, always said that words create your life.

I don’t remember many words from my mother. From the photographs and my own vague memories, I know she was a force of elegance and strength. My father, who left this world nearly two years ago, was a hard-working man with a deep well of kindness and joy. I never got the full story of their love, only pieces that appear throughout my memories, like leaves falling to the earth. But they loved each other deeply and loved each other until the end. This I have always felt right down to my bones.

I do know that my parents met in Boston when they were sixteen. He was delivering bread in the city, and she was visiting America for the first time with my grandparents. It was an earth-shattering love from the start. They wrote to each other for a few years before my mother attended a university in America, and my father waited for her. They married soon after, and then I came along. I don’t know how most love works, but you can sense when your parents love each other. And their love lives on in my system. I have to believe that.

My eyes stinging from the memory of them, I clear my throat. Without warning, our train car jerks violently and has some sort of shrieking fit. I jump as a guitar case flies from an overhead bin and lands to the right of my seat.

“You could’ve been crushed,” says the older woman from before. It’s not helpful, and I think I detect a hint of mischief in her tone but hope for the best. The commuters surrounding us who are not on their phones look at the case, but no one moves toward it.

My gaze travels up the case and lands on a sticker that reads Seb’s. Immediately, I think of La La Land. It looks just like the sign from the movie. I smile to myself and refrain from humming “City of Stars.” I feel my eyes widen when I see another sticker—this one from CDG, Charles de Gaulle Airport, in Paris. I sit up and look around the train, but I’m now the only person in the car besides the unhelpful older woman and the snoring man wearing a New England Patriots sweatshirt across the aisle. He doesn’t look like a Seb, but I’ve been wrong before.

I reach for the case to pull it out of the aisle when I suddenly feel I’m being watched. I turn to find a crew member with an intense brow who is new to this route heading my way.

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“Yes?” She turns toward me, clearly already annoyed.

I point to the guitar case and do my best to smile in a way that disarms her ability to hate life. “Um. .. Do you know whose this is? I don’t know if it’s been abandoned or not. It kind of flew at me, and I—”

“You’re not stealing it?”

“What? No! No, I’m not stealing it—I think the case tried to kill me, actually ...”

I swear I hear the older woman across the way whisper, “Crush,” as the crew member grabs for the guitar and looks at the ticket above the seats, eyes narrowing.

“They’re still here.”

I laugh forcefully to try to dissolve the already awkward situation. My stomach dips at the thought that it could belong to the man I saw earlier. Because, of course, I’m being attacked by random luggage owned by someone (I’m hoping Handsome Stranger), who’s possibly getting a coffee and not in need of a baggage manager.

“Great!”

She maintains eye contact as she walks away. As if I would steal someone’s guitar. Really. The world these days.

“Seb,” I whisper. A grin hits my face, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve smiled all day. After my usual ritual in Boston this morning, combined with the emotions stirred up about my parents every time I’m in said city and a fleeting encounter with someone who thinks I’m unhinged for Frenchmen, my heart has been an overcast sky lately.

I pull out a book from my bag and attempt to hide the cover. It’s a Regency romance, so there’s lots of pining and men in great coats. The cover doesn’t do it justice really. But if Seb does come back, I don’t want him to think I’m a hopeless romantic (I totally am).

I wait for five more minutes before I feel the rhythm of the train lull me toward sleep with the memories of the plans my mother and father once made for us to visit Paris.

∞∞∞

Being jostled awake by a moving train car is not as glorious as it should be. I’m rethinking my love for travel because a train ride has never been a romantic experience for me yet. It’s definitely not like the movies. Thankfully, I’m at my stop. I jolt upright in my seat, the scratch of my sweater still stinging my cheek, and as I search around my seat for my things, it hits me: The guitar case is gone. Looking up, I recognize the back of Handsome Stranger getting off the train. His brown hair lightly dances in the breeze beneath that blessed baseball cap. He adjusts his now-returned guitar case, which he must’ve retrieved while I was asleep. Fantastic. I hold my breath, praying luck is on my side to see a glimpse of his face.

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