“Where are we going?” I ask, as we get on the train toward Châtillon.
“My favorite place.”
I bump his shoulder with mine, a playful reprimand for not telling me anything, but inside I love it. I love that he’s planned this, even if he only planned it as the sun rose this morning. We change trains at Invalides and the whole process feels so familiar—dodging other bodies through the tunnels, following signs, boarding another train without thinking anymore—that I’m struck with the painful thought that no matter how much it’s starting to feel that way, this place isn’t really my home.
For the first time since I arrived nearly a month ago, I know with absolute certainty that I don’t want to leave.
Ansel’s voice pulls my attention to the door. “Ici,” he murmurs, taking my hand and pulling me through when the double doors part with a blustery whoosh.
We rise out of the métro and walk a couple of blocks until the view appears and I stop without realizing it, my feet planted on the sidewalk.
I’d read of the Jardin des Plantes in the guidebooks Ansel would leave for me, or the tiny maps of Paris I would find tucked into my messenger bag. But in all my days exploring I still haven’t been and he must know that because here we are, standing in front of what must be the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen.
It seems to stretch for miles, with lawns so green they seem nearly fluorescent, and flowers of colors I don’t think I’ve ever seen in nature before.
We walk along the winding paths, taking in all of it. Every flower that grows on French soil is represented in this garden, he tells me proudly, and in the distance I see the museums housed on the grounds: one each for evolution, mineralogy, paleontology, entomology. Such honest and pure sciences but couched in arches of marble and walls of glass, they remind everyone how noble they are.
Everything in my vision is earth and soil but so colorful my eyes never stop moving. Even as I stare at a thick bed of violet and lavender pansies, my attention is pulled farther down the path to a blinding patch of marigolds and zinnias.
“You should see the . . .” Ansel stops walking and hums, pressing two fingers to his lips as he thinks of the word in English. Although he rarely struggles to translate something, I can’t help lovingly obsessing over it when he does. It could be the little cluck of his tongue, or the way he usually gives up and says the word in soft, purring French anyway. “Coquelicots?” he says. “A delicate flower in the spring. Red, but also sometimes orange or yellow?”
I shake my head, uncertain.
“Before it blooms, the buds look like testicles.”
Laughing, I guess, “Poppy?”
He nods, snapping his finger and looking so pleased with me I may as well have planted all of these flowers here myself. “Poppy. You should see the poppies here in the spring.”
But the idea dissolves in the air between us and without our acknowledging it; he takes my hand again to keep walking.
He points out everything in front of us: flowers, trees, sidewalk, water, building, stone—and gives me the words in French, making me repeat them in a way that seems to grow more urgent, as if by weighing me down with knowledge I won’t be able to simply climb on a plane and lift off in a few weeks.
Inside the canvas bag, Ansel has packed bread and cheese, apples, and tiny chocolate cookies and we find a bench in the shade—we can’t picnic on the grass here—and devour the food as if we haven’t eaten in days. Being near him makes me hungry in so many aching, delicious ways, and when I watch him lift the bread from the bag, tear a bit off, and the muscles in his arm tense and pull with the movement, I wonder how he’ll touch me first when we get back to his apartment.
Will he use his hands? Or his lips and teeth in that teasing, nibbling way he has? Or will he be as impatient as I feel, pushing fabric aside just fast enough for him to be over me, inside me, moving urgently?
I close my eyes, savoring the sunshine and the feel of his fingers sliding across my back, curling around my shoulder. He talks for a while about what he loves about the park—the architecture, the history—and finally he lets words fall away as the birds take over for us, flapping and chattering in the trees overhead. For a perfect minute, I can imagine this endless life: sunny Sundays in the park with Ansel and the promise of his body all over mine when the sun goes down.
IT’S THE FIRST time we’ve been together for an entire day and we’re unable to undress, touch, have sex—which really is all we’ve known. After nearly eleven hours of walking and seeing everything we can fit into daylight, I’ve watched his lips pout his perfect words and his broad, skilled hands point to important buildings and his mischievous green eyes fixate on my lips and my body enough times that all I want now is to feel the weight of him moving on top of me.
I cling to the thought and the easy familiarity we’ve cultivated today as just us—Mia and Ansel—but as soon as we’re back in the apartment, he kisses the top of my head and pours me a glass of wine before powering up his laptop to check his work email, promising to be quick. While he sits at the small desk with his back to me, I tuck my legs beneath me on the couch, sipping my wine as I watch the tension gradually return to his shoulders. He fires off an email that must be heated because his fingers hammer on the keyboard and he clicks send, before leaning back in his chair and running a frustrated hand through his hair.
“Putain,” he curses on a tight exhale.
“Ansel?”