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“Do you…” He stops, shakes his head as if admonishing himself. But Iknowhe was about to ask if I want kids, and I don’t want the question to go unanswered. If he’s asking it, or trying to, it’s important to him.
“Do I want children?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes. “We don’t need to talk about it. It’s not…”
But he wants to know. And he listened to me discuss my hard thing. This is probably hard for him, given what he told me about his wife. “Maybe someday,” I say, before he can back out.
The corner of his lips twitches in a grin. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” It’s not a false promise like his ex made to him, but it’s not a lie either.
After dinner, Finn takes my hand as we walk through the moonlit streets. We reach an open iron gate, and he peers past it into a courtyard, teeming with flowers, lifting a brow in a partners-in-crime invitation. I say yes, and seconds later, he’s kissing me against a vine-covered brick wall under the Paris moon. If kisses were words, this one would sayI’m falling for you.
* * *
The next night, I pick a hole-in-the-wall vegetarian café in the Latin Quarter, tucked into an alley where no one can find us. Finn doesn’t even grumble about ordering a spicy eggplant sandwich. When we sit to wait for our orders, I cross my legs, but he reaches for my ankle, runs his thumb over the star anklet, and says, “This was how I knew it was you. I saw it in your father’s office that day, but I didn’t make the link until I went to The Scene again.” He doesn’t linger on uncomfortable reminders of our connection. “You wear it all the time. It must be important to you.”
I fiddle with the stars on it, but I don’t feel sad thinking of Willa. I don’t always, or even often, feel sad when she comes up. I’ve had six years to adjust to life without my first best friend. Sometimes, I just want to talk about her. “My sister gave it to me for my eighteenth birthday. It was a thing we did. We used to give ankle bracelets to each other. Especially when we learned what they originally were used for.”
“I have no idea what they stand for so you’d better tell me.”
I picture Willa and me at sixteen and seventeen, curled up on my bed, overstuffed with pillows, a laptop on my knees as we searched out info on anklets. Then, we were rolling our eyes and giggling when we learned the ancient meanings behind them. “We read that sometimes women in olden days would wear them so men could hear them coming and not say naughty things in front of them. And then they were worn to show social status. So we’d give them to each other and say,Now I can hear you sneaking into my room to steal my shirt. Or,this means I’m the favorite daughter since I did the dishes.” I glance at Finn, and his smile sayskeep talking.“But in the end, we decided that to us, they meantfuck the patriarchy.”
A laugh bursts from him—a rich, vibrant sound that I’ll miss when our time here ends. “The patriarchy should be fucked, toppled, drawn, and quartered.”
I arch an appreciative brow. “I like you even more now.”
He leans closer and murmurs, “It’s very mutual.” Then, he cups my cheek, holds my gaze, and breathes out my name: “Jules.”
He says it like I’m his not only for now, but beyond Paris.
I swoon. Too much. Too far.
After we eat, we head to the hotel, but he stops under a streetlamp on a corner and kisses me, making my head swim with desire and my heart burst with hope. “Was that on your list?” he asks. “Being kissed under a streetlamp in Paris?”
You are the list, I want to say.
But that’s too much. That’s not part of this deal. Instead I say, “It is now. You keep adding to it every night.”
There’s a glint in his eyes like he’s making a plan. “Good. Then I have something else to put on it.”
“What is it?”
“Let me make some calls,” he says.
I faux pout. “Tell me.”
“It’ll be worth it.”
You’re worth it, I want to say, but that, too, I keep to myself.
* * *
In the morning, as I’m spritzing on Come What May in my hotel room—which has become ours—he comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. “I have a surprise for you on our last night.”
“Will it be worth it?” I tease, calling back his words from an evening ago.
He kisses my neck, murmuring against my skin like he doesn’t want to leave Paris or me. “You’re worth it, Jules.”
