The bartender brings a pale white from the Loire without ceremony.
“You want the list?” she asks.
“What is this?” I ask.
The bartender says the name of the producer, then adds,
“Chenin. Dry. Good acid. No drama.”
“No drama sounds very promising,” I say.
The bartender smiles. “People are enough drama.”
“I agree.”
She sets down the glass.
“Then drink.”
I drink. The wine is sharp, clean, lightly honeyed at the edges without sweetness. It tastes like wet stone, green apple, and restraint. No drama, as promised. I write that down.
The first hour is easy. I order anchovies with butter and bread, then a plate of radishes, then a small dish of warm white beans with herbs and olive oil. I take notes, but not too many. Some rooms punish excessive observation. This one rewards participation. I listen to the women by the window talk about a man named Luc who apparently has made three terrible decisions in one week and one excellent risotto. I watch the bartender pour wine without wasting a drop. I notice which bottles are recommended to whom, which regulars are greeted by name, which guests are gently redirected away from what they think they want and toward what they will actually enjoy.
I’m halfway through my second glass when the room shifts. I don’t see him enter at first. I feel the door open. Not in a mystical way. I am not that kind of woman, and if I become her, Sophie has instructions to intervene. The room simply changes. A draft from the street moves across my bare shoulder. The bartender looks up. One of the men at the bar turns his head, then returns to his conversation after recognizing the person who has walked in or deciding recognition is not required.
I look toward the door. Damien is standing just inside. No canvas bag this time. No market in his hands. He wears dark trousers and a white linen shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled over his forearms. The fabric is simple. The effect is not. The early morning sharpness of him has shifted into evening ease, though ease may be the wrong word. He does not relax so much as control less visibly. He scans the room. He’s not searching desperately. Not performing indifference. Simply deciding whether the room deserves him tonight.
Then he sees me and his expression changes. Barely. His gaze holds on mine across the room, and the entire wine bar seems to narrow without becoming smaller. The bartender says something to him, but he does not answer right away. I know this because her brows lift with amusement. I should look away—but I don’t.
He says something to the bartender, finally. She laughs under her breath and reaches for a glass. Damien moves to the bar and sits with the unhurried confidence of a man who has no interest in looking alone or accompanied. He is simply there.
I look down at my notebook. The line I was writing ends in the middle of a word.
Ridiculous.
I finish it because unfinished words offend me. For twenty minutes, we do not speak. That’s the part that makes it worse. If he had crossed the room immediately, if he hadused the coincidence as an excuse, I might have filed him under handsome, arrogant, and predictable. A common enough species, though usually less skilled with herbs.
Instead, he stays at the bar. He drinks red wine. He speaks to the bartender in French. His voice is too low for me to hear clearly, but I catch the rhythm of it, the way the language sits differently in his mouth than English had. Not native. Fluent. Used. He looks at the room once, then at me, then back to his glass.
He does not pretend that he hasn’t seen me. He also does not assume seeing me gives him the right to arrive. That’s more dangerous than flirtation.
The bartender comes to my table with another glass I didn’t order.
I look up. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“I know,” the bartender says.
I glance at the bar.
Damien is not looking at me now. He is looking at his own glass, which is very convenient and entirely unconvincing.
The bartender sets the wine down.
“From him?” I ask.
The bartender’s mouth curves.
“He said it’snotfrom him.”
