At least it used to be.
“Yeah? What about it?”
“Togetherness. Giving.” Sharing music and laughs and food that smelled rich and warmed my insides. Too many sweets for my teeth and my stomach, but just the right amount for my soul. “Being a part of something.”
He snorts. “And for the poor, infirm, and alone?”
“I’m alone tonight. I’m fine.” I almost mean it, too. “Come on. You’ve got to see some good in it.”
“No. I don’t.”
I nudge his leg with my shoulder. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.” I want him to. I wish this for him.
“I doubt it.” A pause. “There room down there for another?”
I consider. What is he asking, really? Is there subtext here? Do Iwantthere to be?
Yes. I do.
I want to—I swallow, the sound loud in the suspended silence, and let my head thunk back against the metal side—kiss him. I know that in here, his lips will feel like so much more than they would out there in the world, the light, the sounds and sights, the way his hand did. The way his voice is so close, it’s almost inside my head. The way I can smell woodsmoke on him, detergent through cold denim, without even touching.
It’s aterribleidea. I mean, the man doesn’t even like Christmas, for crying out loud.
But he held me when he thought the elevator was falling. He gave me his coat. He thinks my ass is stupendous and that I’m magnificent and I’m leaving Paris soon, so…
“Yeah.” I scoot toward the front of the elevator and wait with bated breath to see which way he’ll choose to sit. Not that it’ll mean anything. Or maybe it will?
When he slides down close beside me, putting our shoulders together at one end and our feet at the wall opposite, I can’t decide if it’s on purpose or random or if I’m being really, really ridiculous right now.
“Ah, this is better,” he says in that low, secret voice I’ve only heard in the confines of this little metal box. A voice just for me. “Is it warmer down here or am I imagining it?”
“See? You’re cold! Oh my God. You should take this back. I’ll be—”
“Frozen stiff by morning.” He pushes my arm down before I can move to slide the enormous coat off. “Absolutely not.”
The hand he held me back with is still on my arm. It’s warm, I think, although there’s no way I can feel it through the jacket’s down filling. My imagination’s working overtime, I guess. But then it always has with this man.
Since that first day, I’ve pictured conversations where I insult him with a cutting cynical wit he can’t begin to come back from until he begs me to accept his apologies and brings me to a tiny off-the-beaten-path restaurant that only real Parisians know about, with a cozy handful of tables and a menu written out on a chalkboard, and orders all the desserts because he knows how I feel about chocolate. Then, for a nightcap, we swing by his quiet pub and he lights the little fire in that marble and pressed tin fireplace—just for me—and gives me, well, I guess it’ll be a scotch when I picture it now, although it was always cognac before, and then he sits next to me on a bar stool and leans in, smelling like—
“You all right there, love?”
“Huh?” I startle back to reality, a little dizzy, a little shocked, quite frankly, to find myself here, in this place with him and not daydreaming on my own upstairs. “Sorry. Got a little…distracted.” Oh, no. No, that’s not the word I meant to use, I meant to say tired or drowsy. Now, he’ll think it’s his presence that’s done it to me, which is definitely the truth, but he doesn’t need that confirmation.
“Uh, Jules?”
I jump again, my eyes massive as I stare at him, through him, maybe into the dark beyond him. “You know my name.”
“Well, yes. Yes, I do.”
Heat—or some bloodborne facsimile—fizzles across my face. “How?”
He clears his throat, a little awkwardly, and shifts the tiniest bit away from me. “Must’ve heard it or seen it on a letter or something.”
Hm. Okay. I guess that’s possible.
“Your poor legs. They’ve got to be freezing.”
At his words, I shudder. “I’m fine.” Except I don’t sound fine. And, maybe it’s the booze that’s made my brain all hazy or maybe it’s his presence. Probably it’s the cold. I mean, it is freaking bone-chilling in here.
