“Hey. How you feeling, kiddo?”
A comical squish beneath my heel elicits a groan.
“Everything hurts, but I’m fine.” I drag my foot, letting it scrape along the cement. Thanks for nothing, Midas.
“Oh. That’s . . . good? I guess,” Caleb says, wavering. I can almost hear him swallowing his kneejerk “Hope you feel better soon” response. He’s a former fixer, but he’s finally accepted that my chronic illness is, well... chronic.
Which is more than I can say about most people I interact with.
Cementing a fair amount of my organs and ligaments together, endometriosis has negatively impacted enormous swaths of my life. Incurable, treatments and management plans range from miserable to soul-crushing, and true relief is hard to come by.
Most of the time, people are too uncomfortable with negativity and pain for honest answers. Wanting to fix it, fixme, they offer positivity and solutions, which become toxic in their frequency. I’m an optimistic person in my own way, but there’s a danger in forceful optimism and not recognizing reality.
I exist in a state of perpetual pain, and I’ve had to accept that to survive—it’d be nice if others acknowledged and were okay with it. Otherwise, the guilt and anxiety of being “a downer” are put on me too.
“It is what it is,” I say, passing the intricate iron fences lining the Luxembourg Gardens. Tree branches dressed in a fresh spring coat of leaves drape over the golden spires, a promise of renewal after a long barren winter.
“Huh, yeah—hold on, I gotta turn on the blender.” The muffled whir of blades crushing ice blares through my phone’s speaker. Pulling the phone off my ear, I pause in front of a vacant storefront and allow myself a moment to imagine what never will be.
A gilded pâtisserie sign sits above sage green awnings with Evelina, Paris printed in gold across them.
Decadent gâteaux, macarons, and meringues fill the single window, drawing the attention of hungry eyes while a bell perched above the front door rings as customers come and go.
Inside, tall display cases burst with freshly baked treats ranging from traditional croissants and pain au chocolats to my creations: cupcake donuts and mini peach pie tartlets.
Rushing to greet an incoming customer, covered in flour, I freeze, catching sight of the one. Chris Evans (obviously), on break while shooting a remake ofAn American in Paris, sleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing toned forearms rivaling Gene Kelly’s.
Tongue-tied, he fails to utter a single syllable as my large blue eyes hold him arrested. My mother always complained they were two sizes too big. “Try to be more demure, darling. You always look surprised.” But he finds them just right.
Sugar and melted butter swirl around us in the pastry shop, and in a drunk-on love haze, he finally tells me he’d like to taste my buns. I blush. He groans and then points to a case of cinnamon rolls in the display case, thoroughly seduced by my soft and gooey buns, tarts, and biscuits.
Sighing, I snap back to the present. It’s foolish to give in to hope, but from time to time, my former daydream believer escapes the cage my endometriosis-filled reality built, and I have the audacity to suppose a greater existence still awaits me. Chris Evans aside, at this point, it would benefit my sanity greatly if my past self accepted the truth.
This is most likely it.
On the precipice of twenty-seven.
Chronically ill.
A struggling blogger and part-time bartender, currently inhaling copious amounts of artificial dairy on a side street in Paris while devoting most of my mental energy to ignoring the barbed wire torturing my insides.
“Kiddo? Kiddo?” Caleb’s voice vibrates through the speaker in my hand. Right. The conversation I’m having with a human.
“Is there a reason you’re calling this early?” I shake myself out of my depressive spiral with a hit of cheese.
“Oh, yeah. I wanted to talk to you about the wedding.”
Oh, dammit, of course he does.
Fat raindrops splash on my forehead, falling from the gray clouds looming above. No way I move past this block dry.
Plop.Another drop falls.
Plop. Plop.Come on with the rain.
Face tilted upward, I smile through the downpour, just like my dear Gene Kelly taught me to do.
It’s becoming progressively harder to keep singing through the rain, and the sun has been noticeably absent from my heart for some time, but just like Gene pushed his way through his most iconic dance routine with a 103 fever and a smile plastered on his face, I keep pushing through too.
