He starts moving faster, pushing through the crowd with single-minded determination. My breath catches. After a week apart, after days of texts and photos but no voice calls because we both needed the distance, seeing him in person feels like remembering how to breathe properly.
Then he's there, dropping his bag and pulling me into his arms, and I wrap myself around him like I'm coming home. He smells like airplanes and coffee and something that's just Dylan, and I bury my face in his neck and hold on tight.
"Hi," I breathe against his skin.
"Hi yourself," Dylan murmurs, pulling back just enough to cup my face and kiss me properly.
When we finally break apart, both breathless, Dylan rests his forehead against mine. His hands still frame my face, thumbs stroking my cheekbones with devastating gentleness. "I missed you so much," he says, voice rough.
"I missed you too," I whisper.
He pulls back to look at me properly. "Did you find what you were looking for?"
I smile, feeling tears prick my eyes. "Yeah. I found myself. And now I'm ready to findus."
Dylan kisses me again, softer this time, and when he pulls back, he's smiling that devastating smile that made me want him from day one. "Then let's findusin Paris. I can't think of a better place."
The next morning starts with coffee at my café. We take the metro from Dylan's hotel—a beautiful boutique place near theLouvre that makes my little room in the Marais look like a closet—and emerge in my neighborhood just as the city is waking up. The bakery is already open, flooding the street with the smell of fresh bread. My waiter spots us from inside and nods in recognition, already preparing my usual order.
"You have a usual order," Dylan says, sounding delighted. "After one week."
"I'm consistent." I lead him to my favorite table, the one in the corner where you can watch the whole street. "And Pierre makes the best café crème in Paris."
"Pierre?"
"I don't actually know his name. But he looks like a Pierre."
Dylan laughs, and the sound draws several people's attention to us. He doesn't notice. His attention is completely on me, like I'm the most fascinating thing in France.
When maybe-Pierre brings our coffee and croissants, Dylan takes his first bite and groans. "Okay, you weren't exaggerating. This is obscene."
"Right?" I tear off a piece of my own croissant, butter flaking everywhere. "I've had one every morning. Sometimes two."
We sit there for over an hour while I tell him about my solo week. Dylan listens intently, asking questions, holding my hand across the small table. When I finish, he's quiet for a moment.
"I'm proud of you," he says finally. "For proving to yourself what I already knew—that you're complete exactly as you are."
The words settle into my chest, warm and sure. "Thank you for letting me go. For not making me feel guilty about wanting time alone."
"You needed it." He squeezes my hand. "And honestly? Knowing you chose to come back to me after proving you didn't need me? That means everything."
We spend the afternoon wandering through Montmartre, climbing the steep streets hand in hand. The neighborhood ischarming in the daylight—art studios with paintings displayed on easels outside, small boutiques selling vintage clothing and handmade jewelry, cafés with colorful awnings and flower boxes.
At a vintage bookstore tucked down a narrow alley, Dylan disappears into the stacks while I browse poetry near the front. When he returns, he's holding something wrapped in brown paper. "For you," he says, handing it to me.
I unwrap it carefully. It's the first edition ofThe Great Gatsby. The cover is worn soft with age, the pages slightly yellowed. Inside the front cover, someone has written in faded ink:For my love, who sees me completely.
"You told me once it was your favorite," he says quietly. "That first week we were working together, during one of those late nights. You said Fitzgerald understood that the most painful kind of love is loving someone for who you want them to be instead of who they are."
I barely remember it, but my heart does somersaults.
"Thank you," I whisper, tears springing to my eyes. I stand on my toes to kiss him. "This is perfect."
We kiss on street corners and bridges, take silly photos in front of a carousel that's closed for repairs, eat crepes from a street vendor, and get powdered sugar on our noses. It's playful and romantic and easy in a way I never experienced with Oliver. There's no pressure to perform. No walking on eggshells. I'm just myself. And Dylan looks at me like I hung the moon.
That evening, we have dinner at a small bistro in Saint-Germain-des-Prés that Dylan found online. The restaurant is tiny—maybe ten tables—with exposed brick walls and candles flickering in wine bottles. We order coq au vin and a bottle of red wine that the waiter recommends, and when the food arrives, it's the kind of perfection that makes me want to cry.
"Oh my god," I moan around the first bite, then immediately blush when I realize how loud I was.
