“Not really.”
“Then what are we doing here?”
Andy narrowed his eyes and glanced upward at the man beside him.
“I don’t know why you’re here,” he said.
“Because you’re here.”
Andy swallowed.
Across the street, a man stood up and knelt, reaching for the hand of a woman. She had a glass of pink wine in her hand and it sloshed over the rim as she muffled a shriek when the man opened a black velvet box. Cars and busses sped down the street and dozens of people filled the crosswalk beside where he stood.
He would never propose to someone at a place like that.
In a city like this.
When the stoplight turned red and the traffic piled up, the man with the ring box was back in his seat and the woman had set down her wine in favor of her phone and she snapped what had to have been a dozen pictures of the diamond on her finger in all different lights and angles. The man watched her, his smile wide, but his eyes…tired.
“I would say no,” the stranger said, again in that thick and broken cadence that came with not being a native English speaker.
“What if you loved him?”
“That’s for him and I. Her and him.”
“You wouldn’t want the entire city of Paris to know?”
The man’s lips twisted into the hint of a smile. “The city does not know. The arrondissement barely knows.”
“What is your name?” Andy asked, tearing his attention away from the cafe he knew he would not be patronizing.
“Leonidas.”
“Greek?” he asked, already knowing the answer. Leonidas’s skin was a dark, rich olive tone that spoke to summers in the Mediterranean, and now the accent, the earlier question…it all made sense.
“Hmmn,” Leonidas hummed, but it sounded in the affirmative.
Andy bit the tip of his tongue between his teeth. There was something about this man, about this stranger, that had Andy on full alert. He didn’t know why, but tendrils of—a feeling—tangled together in his gut, and he folded his arms across his chest to either protect himself, or stop himself from reaching for the man. He didn’t know which.
“Do you live in Paris?”
“For now.” Leonidas shrugged, and scratched an itch beneath the folded edge of his beanie.
“Traveling?”
Why did he care? He hated this city and he would be gone soon enough.
“Eventually,” Leonidas answered. He licked his lips and Andy’s breath caught. He watched the sun reflect off the wetness of Leonidas’s full lower lip, and then as fast as he saw it, it was gone. A cloud slipped in front of the sun and the sky darkened, finally matching the threat of rain that the moisture in the air hinted at. “What about you?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head and frowned. “I don’t have tickets, but I won’t be here long.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Is it?” He looked up at Leonidas, then quickly looked away, hoping the things he felt weren’t painted across his face.
“Are you leaving tonight?”
“No.”
