Page 50 of Date and Switch

I’d fallen in love with Bryce. It was so damn easy. It just snuck up on me out of the blue. So easy in fact that it seemed like it had always been there. Just under the surface, waiting for to catch my gaze.

“6 rue de Bourbon-le-Château! Here we are.”

Bryce held open the most ornate glass doors with the words Parfumere etched in swirling script. I had next to no time to consider why we were in a perfume shop in Paris before we were greeted by a lithe woman who introduced herself a Jolene. Though, given she was French, it sounded much more beautiful and rounded, like Szho-lee-en.

“Bonjour Jolene nous avons rendez-vous onze heures avec le parfumeur.”

Bryce’s French was lilting and impeccable. He informed Jolene of our eleven o’clock appointment and asked to be pointed in the direction of the perfumier. I could listen to the magic of his voice with a French tongue forever.

“Oui c'est moi comment puis-je vous aider aujourd'hui.” Jolene motioned towards her name tag, which identified her as the master perfumer. Bryce didn’t just have an appointment with the hoi polloi of perfume making but the master.

“Oui c'est moi comment puis-je vous aider aujourd'hui,” he told her he needed her help and hoped she’d be able to be of assistance. He took a small velvet bag out of his pocket and dumped the contents on her counter. It was a piece of glass wrapped in a washcloth.

“Ce flacon de parfum appartenait à sa grand-mère. C'est de la plus haute importance. Pouvez-vous déterminer les senteurs qui ont fait le parfum?”

He told Jolene that the perfume was from my grandmother and that he hoped she could replicate it. Bryce hadn’t even finished explaining to her and I already started crying.

“Je ne peux pas croire que tu ferais ça pour moi!” I can’t believe you would do this for me!

I was in shock that he would even think to do something so considerate for me and I told him so. Words stuck in my chest beneath the swell of emotion that pushed at my chest while simultaneously warming my whole insides. Despite my soaked face and probably runny nose, I flew into his arms. After a near pornographic display of lips, teeth, and tongue, he pulled back, confusion on his face.

“You speak French, too?”

“Guilty,” I shrugged with a laugh. “German too, and Russian—badly. But enough to be able to sing some of the more popular arias.”

“You’re fluent…in all of them?”

“So is the life of an opera singer.” I shrugged with a sheepish grin.

“I also speak English,” Jolene offered. “Whichever you are more comfortable with.”

“I can’t quite place the scents.” Bryce continued, “I feel like it may be a citrus note with the floral. I think it might be a Queen of the Night. I don’t know how rare or hard to come back that type of floral scent is.”

Jolene waved the broken perfume bottle under her nose, making notes on various things she picked up.

“I’ll have to check what I have in the back. If I don’t have Queen of the Night specifically, I may have a tropical flower with an adjacent scent profile.”

Watching her work, seeing how perfumes are built was the most fascinating experience. She’d collect different droplets of smells onto cotton balls and trapped their scent beneath goblets to diffuse the smell. Exposing me to a bouquet of varying profiles. After about an hour she had six scents built that she would disburse into tiny diffusers. We left the shop with all of them, tasked with spending the afternoon with them to see if we felt any of them were a direct match. She also planned to enlist the help of some of her colleagues to see if all of them in tandem could build the exact scent profile of my grandmother’s perfume.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve such a special gift—or really any of the gifts you’ve given me—but this one Bryce, I don’t have any words to describe how special this is for me.”

He blushed. In all the months we’d been on the ship together I don’t think I’d ever seen him do so. Bryce was always Mr. Ice Box. Super cool, confident, self-assured, and charming. Hesitant and a little shy? Yes, please. An entirely new side of Bryce and I couldn’t get enough of him.

“C’mon.” I took him by the hand in the direction of the Taxi lines. “Tell Esther whatever other appointments or calendared items you have for today—they’re cancelled. We have a very important date with Mary Magdalene.”

“With whom?”

“The Louvre. Gregor Erhart? His famous sculpture of Mary Magdalene. It’s what you wanted to see at the Louvre, right? We’re going. Right now. And I’m marching you straight to that exhibit and we’re going to stare at her beautifully shaped tear drop tits all afternoon long if that’s what you want. Fuck Mona Lisa and her stupid smile. We don’t need to hulk around a massive group of tourists to get a gander at a picture about the size of a postage stamp. We’re cool, and wizened. We know the real shit to see.”

“S'il vous plaît, emmenez-nous au Louvre et dépêchez-vous.” I told our cab driver, pulling Bryce in with me.

“I planned to go to the Louvre tomorrow.”

“Why do tomorrow what can be done today. It’s barely ten past noon. We will have six hours to meander and do whatever it is your heart desires.”

“Je suis vraiment désolé. Pourriez-vous s'il vous plait nous conduire au 111 Rue de Turenne?”

Bryce asked the taxi driver, telling him instead of the Louvre to take us to 111 Rue de Turenne.

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