Page 44 of French Kiss

He drained his beer and signaled to the waiter to bring us each one more drink—the promised second round. I was still only halfway through my first glass of wine, as small as it was, so I took another sip. “No, I don’t think about looking her up. The past is the past. Why are you trying so hard to get me together with my exes?”

“Sorry,” I said, realizing it did seem like I was pushing awfully hard. “I just want you to have a good life. I guess I’m a little trigger-happy.”

“I do have a good life.”

“I know, I just meant—”

“No, I get it. It’s nice of you, really. But once she crushed my heart, it kind of spoiled the memory of the good parts, you know?”

The waiter came by with our next round and took Josh’s empty glass away. Then, maybe sensing that we might need some carbs to go with our drinks, he put down a bowl of potato chips and a dish of pretzels. Josh thanked him and asked him a question I didn’t understand before resuming his doodle.

“Okay, after the Rodin, we’re going to a perfume shop where you can stand in a booth and experience all kinds of smells until you find what you want, and they’ll make you a custom scent.”

“You think I need that? Do I stink?”

“You’re in France. Yes, you need to find a perfect perfume. It’ll be fun. Then we’re gonna walk in the Jardin du Luxembourg and down Boulevard Saint-Michel to Notre-Dame. You have to see the stained glass. Then we’ll figure it out from there.”

“I don’t know what half of that is, but it sounds like a plan.” I was game for whatever Josh had in mind, since he seemed to know the city. The farther I could get from the Eiffel Tower and the bad memory of standing there alone, the better. I drained my first wineglass and set in on my second, feeling the tiniest tinge of relaxation wash over me. “Hey, you know what? I think it’s happening. I think I’m starting to relax.”

“Good girl.” Josh looked good, sitting across the table from me, the afternoon sun hitting his face.

“Being here suits you,” I told him.

“Thanks. I love this city. The first time I came here was kind of a disaster, back in high school. I didn’t know my way around, and I managed to find my way to the seediest area of town on the first day. Like I had radar that took me directly there. So I was scared out of my mind and didn’t think much of this place, to be honest.”

“I’m impressed your parents let you fly over here in high school by yourself.”

“They’re European. It’s a different attitude. Besides, once everything became part of the EU, France just seemed like an extension of Germany in their minds. It would be like them letting me go to Oregon from San Francisco.”

We still had plenty of time left in the day, and for the first time, I didn’t feel like I was in a rush to be anywhere. We had a couple of hours before the Rodin Museum closed, and even if we didn’t do all the things on Josh’s new list, it didn’t matter. For the first time in years, no one was grading us or giving us a deadline to get something done. The wine was doing its job. I felt the first evidence that coming this far for vacation had been the right thing to do.

“Sometimes you need to go a continent away to get out of your head, I think,” I said.

“True. It’s the hundred-mile rule. If you’re more than a hundred miles from home, you can drink without feeling hungover and have coffee without getting jittery, because you’re in a place where you know it’s all gonna be okay, so nothing affects you the way it would when you’re all wound up at home.”

I leaned back in my chair and felt the sun on my own face. “I’ve been wound up since I was nine.”

“What happened when you were nine?”

“I realized that things mattered—that if I wanted to do something in the world, there were steps I needed to take. I realized people were judging me.”

“You figured that out at nine? You poor thing.”

“It’s okay. It’s kept me motivated all these years.”

“There’s more to life than motivation. C’mon, let’s go see some art,” he said, taking some euros out of his wallet and leaving them for the waiter.

“Wait, let me get this. It’s the least I can do after you came all this way.”

“Oh, you’ll get your chance. Don’t worry. This isn’t our last meal, and the one you’ll be paying for will be a doozy.” He scooted out of his chair, carefully moving around the small tables. I followed him back onto the sidewalk, where he consulted his phone map to make sure we were headed in the right direction. “Hold on, I think I’m turned around,” he said.

That struck me as funny for a guy who always knew where he wanted to be.

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