“The Musee d'Orsay.”
“The one with the big clock.”
I frown. “It's one of the most important impressionist collections in the world, Ian.”
“It's a building full of blurry paintings and a big clock.” He holds up a hand before I can argue. “I'm not saying I hated it. I'm saying I stood in front of that Monet for twenty minutes because you told me to really look at it, and you know what I saw?”
“The genius of light and color capturing a fleeting moment in time?”
“A pond. I saw a pond. With some weeds.”
I laugh. A real one, the kind that starts in my stomach and spills out before I can shape it. “You have the artistic sensitivity of a brick.”
“I'm a realist. It's a pond.” But he's smiling, and there's something fond in it, like standing in that gallery while I talked his ear off is something he's already decided to keep. “I liked the clock, though. The way you can see the whole city through it. Time and Paris all layered together.” He pauses. “That was actually beautiful.”
“Ian the art critic.”
“Don't push it.”
The wine moves through me slow and warm, and the conversation drifts the way it does with us now—easy, unhurried. He tells me about a woman at the market who tried to sell him a fish he's convinced was older than the building. I tell him about the bakery owner who corrected my French so gently it felt like being slapped with a velvet glove. We laugh at things that aren't that funny because laughing together has become its own kind of sustenance.
It's on the fourth glass that the laughter thins.
The Tower is still lit. The wine is still good. The jasmine still drifts up from below. But somewhere between the third glass and the fourth, the warmth loosens something I've been holding tight all day, and the ache behind my ribs swells past what I can hold.
“I miss him.” The words come out small.
Ian doesn't look at me. Keeps his eyes on the Tower. “I know.”
“It's been three months, Ian. And all I get is flowers every six days.”
“That's more than just flowers, and you know it.”
I glance at him. “Proof of life?”
“It's the only language he has left right now, and he's using it to tell you he hasn’t forgotten about you.”
A tear slips before I can stop it. Then another. I wipe them with the back of my hand, but more come, and somewhere betweenthe wine and the Tower sparkling like it doesn't give a damn about my heart, I stop fighting it.
“What was the plan?”
“You know I can’t?—”
“—tell me? I know. But honestly. Am I just supposed to stay here in Paris forever? Just exist and eat and walk along the river and pretend I'm not waiting for someone who might never come back?”
Ian stares at his glass. “He'll come back, Crazy.”
“You don't know that,” I say between tears. “We haven't heard from him. We don't know where he is or what he's doing or if he's even?—”
“He's coming back, Sophia.” No smirk. No deflection. His eyes on mine, green and steady. “I know him. Better than anybody alive. Wherever he is right now, he's not just surviving. He's moving pieces. Putting things in place. Quietly, the way he does everything. That man has been three moves ahead of everyone his entire life. He's not enduring this. He's engineering his way out of it.”
I wipe the tears off my face, leaning my head back, trying to catch my breath. “And what am I supposed to do while he's out there engineering? Sit here and bake bread and pretend I'm fine? I'm not fine, Ian. I can't sleep. I can't think straight. I'm walking through this city like a ghost wearing nice clothes, and every six days I get flowers from a man I can't touch, and I'm supposed to just—” my voice cracks, “—what? Be patient? Be strong? Wait like a good girl while I have no idea where he is, what he’s doing…what’s being donetohim?”
Ian doesn't answer right away. He empties the wine bottle into his glass and stares at the label like it said something he needs a moment to sit with.
“When I met Reth, I was a kid in a bad situation with no way out and no reason to believe out was even a thing. He had every reason to walk past me. It was cleaner. Safer. Smarter.” Ian's jaw shifts. “But he stopped. He asked me one question. And based on my answer, he made a choice that changed my entire life.”
He looks at me, jaw working once.
