Page 29 of Husband Material
Here I would sit, and here I would stay. This was the best—the only—chance I really had for running into Giselle.This will work. She'll come.
A few hours later, down to my last chewy ham slice with the sun nosing down the horizon, I wasn't so sure. I'd been sitting on this uncomfortable patch of grass for what had to be four hours now. Despite the vigilant and borderline insane way I'd been staring holes and occasionally following any woman that even passably resembled Giselle, I hadn't seen her. So far, the police hadn't showed up to ask me to leave, so I counted my blessings, even though it wasn't much.
Although I'd had ample time to imagine what Giselle might be doing while I sat waiting in the Tuileries hoping to find her. No matter what odd charming situations I half-pictured in my mind's eye, they always came back to the same image of her eating strawberry pancakes in her flat while looking out over Paris. Yep, that was the only other "lead" I had on her. Giselle lived in the city and apparently loved it.
So, all I had to do was search out every twenty-four-year-old artist living in downtown Paris…What an easy fucking task that'll be.I prayed it wouldn't come to that. The Tuileries was my best chance.
Scowling, I swatted away a fly descending on what was left of my half-eaten strawberries. The ants, flies, and the occasional bumblebee had long since discovered my presence and had banded together to drive me insane.
"M. vous doivez partir." A man decked out like a swanky mall cop leaned over to give me the brunt of his judgy well-mustached frown.
In response to my blank face, he let out an impatient sigh.
"The park is closed," he said in a heavily accented voice, stabbing his finger out to drive the point home. "You must leave."
* * *
The next morning,I was up early, wolfing down my croissant as I barreled down the stairs two at a time. Surprisingly rested after sleeping so well in my room at Hôtel Juliana, I decided it was because I was now in the same city whereshewas.
Outside, speed walking was essential, since the sidewalks were already flocked with people.
About twenty minutes later, I was back atmyspot. Parked in the very same indentation in the grass where my ass had been situated less than twelve hours prior. Flanked by my sentinel of perfect tree lines and a grasping, increasingly diminishinghope.
And so the hours slowly crept along as I leaned on the tree and a parade ofnot-herspassed by. Most looked to be tourists. Fascinated timeworn men, bored adolescent girls.
Seeing a lilac-haired one stride past without so much as lifting her eyes off the screen made pain scrape through me. Giselle and I had talked about that, one night—people barely living because they were so concentrated on their phones—after I'd nonchalantly mentioned never seeing her on her own Motorola.
"The whole phone thing, it is like a screen for the present moment," she said. "To face the world head-on, to give it one instant or iota of their full attention, is something most people today cannot bear. So, they glaze it away. Glue their gaze and minds to the screen. Scrolling, scrolling to infinity. Maybe a picture, a few texts saying nothing in response to less. When you think about it, it is nothing more than a smart, sad strategy. Always being halfway in this world and halfway in that, so there is no room."
"Room for what?" I asked.
A shadow passed over her face. "For the thoughts they cannot bear creeping in."
* * *
As I stared glumly ahead,the thoughts I hadn't wanted to face hit me square in the gut. Cassidy had been right about me. That in the end, even when I'd met a girl I really did care for, orlove, I'd messed it up.
Maybe I was doomed to be alone.
And Giselle? I'd never found out what had driven her to Charleston so impulsively. Why hadn't I pushed until she'd told me? We’d spoken about many things, but had we ever truly gone beneath the surface? Had she wanted me to?
Something in me ached with recognition. Regret over what could've saved everything. Maybe if we'd bonded over her intimate secret, maybe she would've stayed. Maybe I would've realized sooner what she meant to me.
The sun seesawing from one horizon to the other was my indication of time passing and marching forward. When the shining orb began its inevitable descent, so too did my last dregs of hope. This was it, then.
She isn't coming.
I'd been wrong. Maybe Giselle was staying with some friends on the opposite side of town. Maybe she wasn't even here in Paris. She'd once told me that her father lived on a farm in the countryside and had started a second family with his new young wife after her mother died. Maybe she'd gone to visit them. After all that had happened with her, the only thing I could admit to myself with complete certainty was that I didn't know her as well as I should've.
When my eyes stopped on the seventh Giselle look-alike of the day, I tossed my last slice of orange in my mouth. The moment seemed ironically symbolic, watching the wind ruffle the golden waves of her long hair as she paced down the aisle of trees, toward me. My last bite of orange, the last sight of a Giselle look-alike. It was time to go; I could see that now. I'd have to try to find her another way.
I rose, and the Giselle look-alike stopped.
"It is you," she breathed.
I gaped at her. At her green dress fluttering in the breeze. Her parted lips that couldn't seem to settle on the smile her eyes were shining with. Those eyes, that weren't brown as I remembered them. Now, surrounded by so much green, they were too. Dark green shining emeralds.
"Gi." I rasped out her name. I did not believe it was her at first. Couldn't fucking believe it. I'd seen too many girls with the same hair dancing in the wind. I'd seen too many girls with bohemian style and an unhurried step. Too many girlswho were not her.
