La Belle Vie was the name. A beautiful life. He stopped at the window, pressing his fingertips against it, like a kid staring longingly inside a candy shop. There they were—mirrored shelves upon shelves of perfume bottles like he’d seen the other night. He squinted, and swore that in a far corner of the shop he could see a sapphire-blue bottle.
The one she’d wanted. He ran for the door, and stopped short when a hunched over man in a faded blue sweater was locking the door, then swinging around a sign that said FERMÉ.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Consumed
Enough tears were shed. Enough emotions were spent. Enough time was devoted to all this space. Space sucked. Feeling sucked. Loving sucked. She left the gardens and walked into the gift shop, desperate for a book to help her get out of her head. Something to numb all these feelings in her chest.
She wandered past calendars and mugs with water lilies on them, and found a tall set of white shelves with books about art history, and coffee table books of Monet’s paintings, and a huge tome about the Impressionist masters. She spotted a small sturdy paperback on the gardens themselves. Opening it, she flipped through the pages, bursting with details about all these flowers. How to grow tulips like Monet, climbing roses like Monet, even lilies like Monet. Information, facts, details. Nothing more. It was precisely what she needed. To blot out everything else.
She walked up to the cash register and bought the book, wishing her trip hadn’t come down to this moment.
But it had. Oh, it had. It came down to comfort in the form of a book about gardening.
She was the butt of her own joke, only nothing felt funny. Nothing felt right. Nothing felt good.
* * *
“You’re closed?” he asked the man in French.
“For lunch. Yes,” the man replied.
“But I just want to buy that blue perfume bottle,” Jack said, pointing through the window of the shop to the back wall.
“We will be open again in two hours,” the man said, tucking a newspaper under his arm, and taking a step away from the door.
“Can you just sell me that blue bottle now? I’ll be fast.”
The man shook his head. “No. I am meeting my wife for lunch. I have lunch with her every Saturday. Rain or shine.”
Jack placed his palms together. Suddenly, it felt vitally important to get her the perfume bottle NOW. “I’ll pay you double. S’il vous plait.”
The man clapped him on the arm. “You can come back later. I will sell it to you then. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will regret it more if I miss lunch with my wife.”
The man turned and walked down the covered arcade and out into the Paris afternoon, that word trailing behind him like the last notes of a song fading out on the radio.
Regret.
This man would regret being late to lunch with his wife. And he’d chosen her over a business transaction.
Jack stumbled into the wall with the realization. It was simple. It was so goddamn simple. He’d let this regret define him. He’d dressed himself in it every day. He’d come to rely on it, like a fucking crutch. He needed to be that man walking away, content with the knowledge that he’d regret not seeing his wife for lunch.
Like a cloud rolling away to reveal the sun, Jack knew instantly what he’d regret more. Not telling Michelle everything in his heart. Every single thing he felt for her. Because it was no longer muddled. It was no longer messy. It was as clear as the closed sign on the door. It was as defined as the sapphire-blue bottle he wanted to buy for her. It was as easy as having lunch with your wife on a Saturday.
Distance and muting weren’t the solution. They were the essence of the problem. Already, in a few short hours of her being gone, he missed her so much it was driving him mad. Insane with longing. Desperate with the need to see her. If he couldn’t get his act together and just tell her how he felt—regardless of the risks, real or imagined—he’d lose her for good.
He couldn’t chance that.
He didn’t need an elaborate plan or a complicated strategy. He needed to speak from the heart. The thing he was most afraid of doing. His biggest fear was speaking the full truth about his feelings. But he’d lose her for sure if he didn’t do more than try. Trying was for other men. Trying was not remotely sufficient any more. He needed to do.
Fully, completely, without reservation.
He grabbed his phone from his pocket and called Michelle. She answered on the third ring.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“I’m standing in the doorway of the perfume shop, and I need to see you. I need to talk to you. I need to tell you exactly what I should have told you the last time I was here. I need to tell you in a thousand ways,” he said, because that’s all that mattered. He needed to submerge himself in the words, to drown out all the other things he hadn’t said. To start now, and start over, and start better. To stop being so damn terrified of love.