Page 58 of The Boyfriend Material Novellas

She ropes her arms around my neck. “Fine. I’ll stay here with you, and we’ll dance on a rooftop garden, and we’ll watch the stars. We’ll go to The Marais and duck in and out of antique shops, and pop into the Musée Rodin whenever the mood strikes.”

I pick up the thread easily. “There are Monets to be seen. Don’t forget the Musée d’Orsay.”

“We’ll kiss in front of a Van Gogh that’s rumored to be magical. And then there will be more magic when we go clubbing in Oberkampf.”

I groan appreciatively. “I like your story of our romance. Clubbing in Oberkampf sounds dirty and delicious.”

“That’s how we’ll dance, Reid. Our bodies will be tangled together.”

“Inseparable,” I add, my voice going low, smoky.

“People will watch us,” she says. “They’ll pretend not to, but they won’t be able to take their eyes off us.”

“They’ll be jealous of the young lovers,” I add, stroking her hair, running a thumb across her jaw, picturing our sultry nights.

“They’ll be jealous because they’ll know that when we leave, we’ll bethatcouple.”

“The couple who can’t take their hands off each other.”

“Or their eyes,” she adds.

I can’t stand this. I can’t take the tension. Or the reality that I’m leaving and so is she. I press a kiss to her lips, then ask the inevitable. “What would happen if we stayed in touch?”

She looks up at me, and her voice comes out trembling. “What doyouthink would happen?”

The look in her eyes. The tremor in her voice. I have to stop pushing and pressing. She’s going to graduate school. She has no room for a long-distance lover.

But this stupid organ in my chest is galloping out of control. I try to talk back to it.For fuck’s sake, it’s been four hours.

But what if four hours is enough?

Enough to know?

Enough to feel?

Enough to try to stay in touch with a woman going to business school halfway around the world?

Exactly.

I must focus on goals. Hers, and mine. She doesn’t need a man distracting her from her studies and scholarships with nightly texts. And I don’t have the wherewithal or the means to travel to New York to see her regularly.

I dig down deep, then answer with my brain. “We’d fall for each other and it would mess up our lives. That’s why we’re going to do something else.”

Her brow knits. “What would that be?”

I grab her hand, lead her into a café, order two espressos, and ask her for the book from the store. The Paris photo one.

“You’re taking it back,” she says with a pout, clutching it.

“I would never do such a horrid thing. I have other plans for it.”

She proffers it from her bag and slides it across the table to me.

I ask for a pen, and she hands me that too.

I write inside.

Someday when I run into you again, because I know I will, we’ll have more than one perfect afternoon. We’ll have endless time.

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