He didn’t.
At the studio, Amaya stood with her hands in her coat pockets, hair tucked into her scarf, looking like she belonged to the night more than the day. Luc was there, too, earbuds in, hood up, gaze fixed somewhere beyond all of us. Two other residents hovered nearby—Henri Morel and a woman named Sanna something who only spoke when necessary.
“Bonsoir,” Amaya said as I approached, her eyes sweeping me once from boots to collar.
“Bonsoir,” I replied, attempting confidence.
Luc lifted a hand in acknowledgment without removing his earbuds.
Amaya leaned in, cheek-kissed me on the correct side before I could mess it up. “Good,” she murmured. “You wore shoes you can run in.”
I blinked. “Run?”
She smiled. “Paris is romantic. But also … Paris.”
Before I could ask what that meant, she linked her arm through mine and started walking as if we’d been friends for years. The sudden intimacy surprised me—how quickly people here shifted from distance to closeness in the span of one decision.
Or maybe that was just Amaya.
We took the metro, packed tight in a car that smelled like perfume and damp wool and the metallic tang of the tracks. I held the pole overhead, my body angled slightly to keep from pressing too hard into the stranger beside me. Every stop made us sway into each other, anyway. Bodies were unavoidable here, and that fact had been a constant, low-grade destabilizer since I arrived.
At home, physical space was a boundary people respected.
In Paris, boundaries were negotiated.
Amaya leaned close to my ear as the train rattled. “You’re thinking too loud again.”
“I’m not thinking,” I lied.
She made a sound of disbelief. “You are always thinking. It’s why your pictures are good. It’s also why you look like you’re about to jump.”
“I’m just new,” I said.
“New is fine,” she replied. “But don’t confuse new with weak.”
The words landed. Not as a pep talk. As a challenge.
Luc glanced at us, as if he’d heard, and then looked away again. But I saw the faint curve of his mouth. Like he approved of Amaya’s cruelty.
We surfaced from the metro into a neighborhood I didn’t know well—streets narrower, older, quieter. The buildings leaned toward each other like conspirators. The gallery was tucked behind a courtyard, its entrance marked only by a small light and a brass plaque I couldn’t read fast enough.
Inside, warmth hit my skin. Music—low, thumping, elegant. The space was crowded, more fashionable than the private showing had been. Less candlelit intimacy, more curated cool. People wore black like it was a uniform. Conversations floated in French and English and something Slavic I couldn’t place.
I didn’t know where to put my hands.
Amaya drifted immediately toward someone she knew, kissing cheeks, smiling, becoming fluent in a social world I was still learning. Luc melted into the crowd like he’d never been there at all.
I stood near the entrance, camera strap taut against my palm, and tried to remember that I belonged here. That I had a reason to be in the room beyond my own nerves.
I walked toward a series of photographs hung along the right wall—grainy portraits, brutal and intimate. A woman smoking in bed. A man staring into a bathroom mirror, eyes hollow. A hand gripping a wrist, not violent exactly, but not gentle either.
I leaned in to read the placard and realized I was too close—my breath fogging faintly against the glass.
“Too close,” a voice said beside me, accented English.
I startled, turning.
A man stood there holding a glass of something amber, his hair perfectly combed, his smile too practiced. He was handsome in the way men were handsome when they knew it and used it like a tool.
