Halfway across the bridge, my phone buzzes. I smile as I answer it. “Hey, baby sis.”
“Finally!” Marisol groans. “I’ve been waiting for it to be after your work and before my school. Time zones are the worst. Where are you?”
“Crossing the Seine like a proper Parisian.” I shift my bag higher on my shoulder. “It’s cinematic. You’d approve.”
I can hear her smile. “Send me a picture. How’swork? You restoring, like, the Mona Lisa or something?”
“Not the Mona Lisa.” I dodge a tourist with a tripod. “But close…at least for me. A pastel by Rosalba Carriera. She’s keeping me busy.”
Marisol is twenty, all energy and determination, studying engineering at UC Irvine. She’s the practical one—always solving problems, building things.
Growing up, she tinkered with my mom’s tools and rewired the toaster three times before Papi begged her to stop.
“How are the ‘rents?”
“Mom’s swamped with orders—Valentine’s Day wiped her out. She said she’s going to send you pictures of a new necklace she designed. And the restaurant is crazy, which means Papi is crazy. The place is packed every night.”
“Sounds about right.” If I close my eyes, I can almost smell Papi’scarne asadasizzling on the grill and hear the jukebox in the corner—Selena, Luis Miguel, and the occasional Vicente Fernández ballad, when Papi gets sentimental. The soundtrack of my childhood.
I feel a sense of melancholy. I miss my family. I miss my colleagues. I even miss Philly, and who would’ve ever thought that could happen!
“You sound good…likereallygood. Is it the food? The men? What?” Marisol interrogates ebulliently.
I pause, watching the water ripple under the bridge.
Gustave’s face flashes in my mind—the way his storm-gray eyes had softened, for a moment, before he cut me down. “Paris is…good for me.”
I don’t mentionhimto my sister.
I don’t mention thecaliente?* sex or the fight at the Pyramid.
Not because I don’t trust Marisol—I tell her almost everything—but because this feels like it’s mine, private and raw, not ready for the family group chat. And…because I’m embarrassed, if I’m honest. He made me feel foolish, like a naïve American who stumbled into a world she doesn’t belong in.
Marisol fills the silence, rambling about her fluid dynamics class, about a group project where she’s the only girl on the team—shocking—and about a guy who keeps asking her out, even though she’s made it clear that she won’t date until finals are over.
I walk through Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which is alive with chatter from cafés.
I can’t wait to get back to my flat and reheat thechili con carneI made yesterday. A couple of fresh tortillas waiting in the fridge for a quick warm-up, a glass of Pommard Burgundy Ipicked up over the weekend from the wine shop down the street, and…el paraíso?*.
With Papi being a cook, food is basically our family love language.
I eat out plenty in Paris, but some days I just need comfort—something myabuelaused to make, the kind of food that feels like home.
I turn the corner onto Rue de Buci, my earbuds still full of Marisol’s chatter about somegeniusboy in her physics class who thinks “mansplaining” is a compliment, when I freeze.
Because I seehim. The man with the stormy gray eyes.
He’s at one of the tiny café tables directly below my apartment. He’s in a dark suit, impeccable, looking utterly out of place among the students in leather jackets and the tourists nursing carafes of cheap wine.
The second he sees me, he stands, raises his hand in a tentative wave.
My stomach drops to my shoes.
“Uh, I have to go,” I blurt into the phone, cutting off Marisol mid-rant. “Love you, bye!”
I stab the OFF button, and shove the phone into my coat pocket.
A hot mess of emotions slams into me.Dread, because the last time he spoke to me, hemade me feel like the world’s worst human.Irritation, because he has the audacity to show up, and—dammit—relief.
