Allison Parr - Running Back

I bit my lip. “I’ve been sort of thinking about that. And I was thinking that if this works out—I really like it in Kilkarten. Of course, it’s impossible to know anything until it happens, but I think I would be happy to have that and New York. I don’t think I would need anything else. Right now, I don’t even want it.” I saw the clock. Almost dinner. “I should go. But Carl said to tell you to come visit. He said you were missed.” I paused. “I miss you, Mom.”

“I miss you too, sweetheart. I’ll see you in two months.”

I clicked off and went downstairs. Mike sat in the miniscule courtyard, eating rolls dotted with large sugar crystals like popcorn. I dropped down in the wicker chair beside him.

“Thank you for taking me here.” I felt light. Whole. Like I’d shed some weight, the burden of misconception and worry and anger and guilt. “I’ve never understood my mother. I always thought it was so horrible, being wrenched away from your family at such a young age and living where she didn’t even speak the language. And I know Mom always talked like she liked it, but I thought that was some weird, messed up psychological thing, because how could you? But maybe she really did. I think I have a hard time admitting other people’s points of view are okay when they’re radically opposed to my own. Maybe I never even listened to her.”

“So you made a conclusion about your parents and might have been wrong.” He gave me that crooked smile I loved so much. “Must be crazy.”

I tilted my head back and saw that same black cat still perched on the turret. “I think my mom’s a lot smarter than I give her credit for.”

He started laughing. I straightened, startled.

“Join the club,” he said, and kissed me between bursts of laughter. “Join the fucking club.”

We had dinner on rue Cler, a pedestrian street made of cobblestones and tourists. We ate outside, a candle on our table, a flower shop on one side, a chocolate shop across the street. I could have sat for hours watching all the people go by: the speeding locals, the chatting shop owners, the tourists who looked from their guidebooks to one restaurant and then another.

Instead, I watched Mike.

He ordered one of every appetizer, and then talked animatedly, hands waving, eyes sparking. He told me about his friends, his teammates, the last season and his hopes for the next. They’d drafted two players that were supposed to be amazing. They’d also traded for a new linebacker.

He made me so happy.

We laughed all through dinner, and then flagged the waiter down for dessert. He looked at us with exquisite boredom. “You will take the crème caramel?”

I ventured a quick glance at Mike. Did something about us say crème caramel? “Um—I was thinking the chocolate cake.” I looked to Mike for confirmation, and he shrugged agreeably.

The waiter’s nostrils flared. “Americans always order the crème caramel.”

Then I definitely didn’t want it. “The cake.”

He raised his chin and left.

Mike was already on it. “Whoa.”

I leaned forward, trying to read his phone, and he flipped it my way. “The president had the crème caramel here.”

“What? He came here?” I spun my head after the waiter. “Maybe we should also get the flan.”

Mike grinned. “I thought you didn’t like being a tourist.”

I kissed him quick. “It’s Presidential Flan. There are exceptions for everything.”

We walked back to the hotel hand in hand. It made my heart fill, like too much had been poured into it, like it couldn’t contain all this happiness. And then we reached our street and a view of the Eiffel Tower. It started sparkling, dancing bursts of light, and I couldn’t help it, I just reached out and started kissing Mike as though I needed him more than oxygen.

“We don’t really need to go to this party,” he said.

I laughed. “But look at my war paint! And my armor should’ve been delivered by now. We have to go.”

The hotel had left the dress on the bed, but I ducked into the bathroom to put it on. Tiny spangles made the dress shine and sparkle. I spun and watched the dress flare. Good thing I’d brought spandex.

I really did look like my mother. I made her face, pursing my lips and letting a tiny sneer crinkle my nose as I widened my eyes at the mirror.

It was so spot on that my giggles carried a hint of shock.

Mike knocked a fist against the door. “If you’re in there all night, we really won’t get to this thing and Rach and Bri will kill me.”

I tugged on the hem and shouted back. “It’s shorter than I thought.”

“Good!”

I grinned and pulled the shoes out of the box. Silver pumps with a slightly narrowed point. How long had Maggie owned them? They were classic enough to fit in today, but I’d bet they’d been around at least two decades. But they fit, lifting me up to six feet. They made my legs stretch on forever and the dress danced against my thighs. At least I had damn good ones from hiking around Kilkarten.

Not quite Cinderella’s slippers, but maybe Ariel’s legs, because I sure as hell felt like a fish out of water tonight.

I pushed the door open, feeling unusually self-conscious. I started to speak for Mike’s attention, but the words dried up as I watched him fiddle with his cuffs. He looked absolutely stunning in his black formalwear. Prince Charming, if we were being thematic.

He looked up with a smile, his mouth already forming a quip, and then I watched it all fall away in surprise. His eyes lingered on my legs, and then slowly rose to my face. “You look incredible.”

I did a little shimmy. “Kinda like a disco ball, right?”

He smiled, but his eyes stayed hooded and focused as he came toward me. His voice wasn’t much more than a murmur. “Not exactly what I was thinking.” His arm slid around my waist and pulled me against him. I lifted my head. With the additional two inches, my lips brushed perfectly against his, and I almost considered staying in too.

But. We were meeting his friends. I drew away. “We’re already in our fancy clothes. Let’s go.”

We took a taxi to the hotel. Mike didn’t say anything, but I saw his lips twitch as he pulled the door open. So. He remembered me making a stink about taxis that spring night in New York.

But I didn’t mind, because taking a taxi in Paris was different than in New York. It was a tour of narrowed streets and old buildings, of trees heavy with greenery and outdoor cafés. We crossed the Seine on a bridge lined with golden statues. Behind us, the Eiffel Tower rose up, bright gold against the blue dusk. “It’s like being in a movie.”

“That’s what I thought when I first moved to New York.”

I twisted around to see him. “You? A tried and true Bostonian?”

He lowered his head close enough that our lips almost brushed. “I didn’t say it was a good movie.”

On the other side of the bridge, we passed palaces dressed as museums, with huge posters of artwork hanging down their sides and lines of people curving up the steps. We turned onto the Champs-élysées, that great, grand boulevard that ran through the center of the city. I caught a glimpse of the Place de la Concorde, where Marie Antoinette and countless others died, where today an obelisk from Egypt struck up into the darkening sky.

The hotel stood just outside the city limits, built sometime in the eighties when nothing was allowed to rise over a hundred and twenty one feet. Even with the new zoning laws, buildings couldn’t rise too high; nothing could ruin the famous Parisian skyline.