“She’s good,” he says.
I don’t answer. Julien doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need to.
The rest of the day becomes louder without increasing in volume. Claire calls twice, then locks down the reservation system before it collapses beneath requests from people who believe urgency is a substitute for patience. Julien handles the staff with calm brutality. I cook through service with the review somewhere beneath my ribs. It doesn’t distract me. It doesn’t soften me. It stays there, precise and unavoidable. She wrote the truth, and I believe every word of it, including the four stars.
Later that evening, after service, after the last station is clean, I return to the penthouse. The apartment is dark when I enter. The Seine moves below the windows, carrying broken strips of city light. I put my keys in the bowl near the door and go straight to the kitchen because every important thing in my life seems to end up there whether I intend it or not.
I stand at the island with my phone in my hand. Then I call her. She doesn’t answer. The silence after the ringing stops is unreasonable. It is also physical. I set the phone down, pour water, don’t drink it, and spend the next hour pretending I am not aware of the screen. Then I call again. She answers on the second ring.
“Damien,” she says.
Her voice is exactly what I remember. Clear, direct, slightly careful in the way she becomes careful when something matters too much to handle carelessly. I grip the edge of the island and look at the Paris evening outside of my window, because if I close my eyes, I’ll see her here in my shirt with cold coffee beside her laptop and sunlight on her hair.
“Serena,” I say.
For a moment, neither of us reaches for the safe version.
Then I say, “I read the review.”
“I assumed.”
“It was honest.”
Her breath shifts softly on the other end. “Good.”
“It was precise.”
“That’s better.”
“It was exactly right.”
There’s a silence.
Then she says, “You sound angry.”
“I am furious.”
She laughs. Completely. Genuinely. The sound crosses the ocean and lands in my kitchen with such force that I have to look down at the island for a second. I know that laugh. I’ve heard it in a market, across a dinner table, in this kitchen, in my bed. I’ve missed it.
“I gave you four stars,” she says.
“Yes.”
“You are furious because you agree with me?”
“Yes.”
“That must be very difficult for you.”
“It’s a professional inconvenience.”
She laughs again, smaller this time, but still real.
“I missed that.”
I stop breathing for half a second.
“So did I,” I say.
