Page 110 of All Our Nevers

Instead, I wrap my arms around his neck as I say, “You know, it’s pretty Sophie-and-Andy of us to come to Paris together before you even called me your girlfriend. You really couldn’t have asked me like two weeks ago? Do things in a normal order like boring people?”

He bends his face closer to mine, our noses almost touching as he says, “You hate boring people.”

I feel myself softening in his arms. “I do, don’t I?”

Then he’s kissing behind my ear, down my neck, holding me against the solid wall of his body. And the beautiful thing is? No one even cares. It doesn’t matter that this display is quickly becoming indecent. It’s Paris—the city of love and horny Frenchmen and Owen’s wet mouth on my skin.

“Come on,” I say, finally pulling away before I can lose myself completely. “I want to get to the shop early.”

While Sophie tends to panic in stressful situations—all emotion, no logic—I am the opposite. I crave cold, hard facts as I evaluate my performance and make a plan to move forward.

It’s this quality that has me summarizing my meeting with Joséphine in simultaneous verbal and written analysis, Owen listening from across the black metal of our café table, twin porcelain cups of espresso perched between us.

“She basically said the role is mine. At least, I think she did. There were some idioms and ça y est’s floating around that I’m not sure I interpreted correctly.”

“You had the meeting in French?” His eyes are saucer-wide.

“No, no, mostly English. Just tidbits of French at the beginning and end to make her like me.” My spiral-bound notebook is open on the table. I turn to a fresh page and draw a vertical line down the middle—pros and cons. “But it sounds like she wants me to consider her compensation structure and give her an answer soon.”

“So she’s not considering other designers?”

“She did, but she said none of them were a good fit—pas compatibles.”

“Then that’s it, you did it! What are we still doing here? We should be having champa—”

“Wait, wait, wait. I can’t celebrate before I’ve even figured out if the offer is good.”

“Amel—Lia, you know I’m a lawyer, right? Get it from her in writing and we’ll go over it together. Your industry knowledge and my legal background. We’ll make sure you get the deal you deserve.”

“I don’t want to extort her.”

“Who said anything about extorting her? Regardless of her intentions for fairly or unfairly compensating you, a lawyer with your best interests in mind should review the document. Please, at least let me take a look? You don’t even have to take any of my advice.”

“Okay, fine. Yeah, you’re right.” Then a spark of an idea flits through my mind—a dream in the Parisian haze. “And hey, if this design licensing path starts to take off for me, maybe you can be my legal counsel on a more permanent basis.”

A smile stretches across his face, elbows pressing into the latticework of the table. “I’m very expensive, you know.”

“Name your price,” I say, mirroring him.

“Expertise like mine? Priceless.” His eyes flit down to my lips as he says, “I’ll accept my payment like this,” and kisses me.

“Ew,” I laugh against his lips. “Such a fucking cheeseball.” Still, I let his hand wrap into my hair, holding our lips together over the café table for a lingering moment before I remember the matter at hand and pull away.

“Okay, okay, be serious. I have a decision to make.”

He raises his hands. “Sorry. The floor is yours.”

“If I do this, it’ll be really hard to predict my expected revenue. She’s offering a small advance, and then I’ll be making twelve percent royalties from each sale of my designs, which from my research seems more than standard. And her shop is successful here in Paris, but the Boston location will be new, so it’s hard to translate existing sales data into meaningful projections.”

My pen scratches numerical approximations into the paper in time with my words.

“And for the amount of time I’ll have to spend designing over the next three to four months, or longer if my contract is renewed, I could easily take a net loss on income for the year. It’ll be a huge amount of time away from cultivating social media partnerships and paid exhibits around the city.”

I picture my calendar, carefully curated for the rest of the year already. The fear of letting it go and falling into the unknown.

“And wait—” I say, holding up a finger when I see Owen starting to respond. “Before you tell me to take a chance on myself and blah, blah, blah—this is not an abstract aspirational exercise. If my income goes down this year, I almost definitely won’t be able to make rent at my current place. Though… if I have to move to a random town at least I’ll be farther from Connor.”

“That’s not good enough,” Owen says. “He needs to leave you the fuck alone. He needs to never think about you again.”