The Bridge

by Jill Cox

  “You’re not intruding,” I said quietly. “But you still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

  Drew let go of my elbow, crossed his arms and turned to look outside. “I had this whole thing planned. I was going to take you to dinner tonight, and we would walk past Notre Dame, and then over that little bridge over to that Saint-Louis island. I even made reservations for us in some crêperie, and I’ve been practicing how to order just the right thing in French.”

  “Wait… how’d you know we should do all of those things?”

  “I have my ways.” Drew turned to me, lifting his thumb to my cheek. “I’m so tired, Fee. Aren’t you tired?”

  “Sure,” I laughed nervously. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night, and you must be jet-lagged.”

  “No.” Drew slid his fingers into my hair, and then kissed me – just once, and then once more. “I’m so tired of fighting this.”

  And just like that, he was kissing me like I’d always imagined he would, like there was nowhere in the world he would rather be.

  NINETEEN

  The number one thing about Drew that no one ever believes is that he is a morning person. I don’t mean like the I-wake-up-at-dawn-to-practice-yoga-and-eat-kefir sort of way. No, no.

  Once he’s up, everyone’s up. Whether the moon is still out or not.

  Which is how I found myself sitting in Marie-France’s kitchen at half past five on a Saturday morning, my hands wrapped around an enormous cup of coffee and my eyes propped open with imaginary toothpicks while Drew prattled on about his plans for the day. Turns out he’d bought Greg’s Guidebook to Paris a few weeks ago – the latest edition, with a couple dozen photos courtesy of the one and only Ian Sullivan – because he refused to see Paris from the beaten path.

  “Any idiot can find his way to oversized radio towers and flying buttresses, Fee,” he chided through a mouthful of pain au chocolat. “Today, we visit the places you won’t find on the hop-on-hop-off bus tours. Today, we’re going somewhere I bet even you haven’t been.”

  Ever since the ninth grade, Drew had been obsessed with the Roman Empire. It was the reason he’d picked history as his major. So when we arrived at the Musée de Cluny later that morning, I had to laugh. He was right. Drew had found someplace in Paris I had yet to explore.

  How the Cluny guys had decided to construct their abbey above Roman ruins six hundred years ago, I had no clue. But one look at Drew’s face as we entered the courtyard of the gothic castle-like structure, and I knew this was a better choice for us today than, say, the Louvre, with its thousands of visitors and security lines out the door. After he bought our tickets, Drew slipped his hand in mine and guided me toward the Roman frigidarium.

  I’m not going to lie: something about the way he was taking charge today had me imagining Drew as some towheaded knight, sporting chain mail with a sword in his free hand, ready to defend his lady if some Huns leapt out from the emergency exit.

  “What?” Sir Drew the Fair whispered, a smile spreading across his whole face. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised I found this place on my own? I did learn how to read, you know.”

  I wanted to quip back. I wanted to tease him, or make him laugh, but I couldn’t. All I could really do was let myself feel what I’d spent two months trying to escape. A voice inside my head begged me not to let my guard down, that the timing was too weird considering… well, considering who else I’d let inside my head recently. But I didn’t listen.

  Today, Drew deserved a chance to prove me wrong.

  Half an hour later, we entered the dimly lit room of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. I had to suppress a laugh as Drew tugged me along behind him from one image to the next, because I already knew what he had not yet realized. Everyone under the age of forty had seen these tapestries a hundred times. When we paused before the sixth and final tapestry – the one with the dark blue tent – Drew’s eyes widened.

  “These are in the Gryffindor Common Room,” he said reverently. “Well, at least in the movie version, right? Did you know these tapestries existed in real life?”

  “Greg’s Guidebook doesn’t say anything about them?”

  “I didn’t read past the Roman section,” Drew laughed under his breath. Then he pointed at the banner above the young lady’s head. “What does that say?”

  “À mon seul désir.”

  “Well, I can read that much for myself.” A crooked smile formed on Drew’s lips as he pulled me close. “What does it mean?”

  “I’m not really sure what it means in this case, because… well, if you read it literally, it says something like ‘to my only desire.’ But if you take it in the context of the other five tapestries, which represent the five senses, maybe it means she’s renouncing her humanity to serve a greater purpose? Or that she’s exerting her free will? Or, wait… she might be giving her heart to the man who gave her that necklace she’s holding. What do you think?”

  He lowered his face to mine. “Why have I never taken you to a museum before now? This nerdy side of you is hot, Fee.”

  Drew’s lips were suddenly on mine and he was pushing me breathlessly up against a wall in the nearest dark corner. Good thing the only other person in the room was a docent who had fallen asleep at the other end, because this kiss was different from last night’s. Today, as if he knew my resistance had finally broken down, Drew seemed to be making up for lost time.

  And maybe I was too, because when Drew paused for a split second, I took a lesson from the tapestry lady and exerted my own free will, maneuvering us around so that Drew was against the wall instead. Neither of us breathed for long stretches of time, but that didn’t stop us from kissing harder, faster. Drew cradled his fingers around the back of my head, pulling me closer as his lips searched mine, our bodies nestled against each other.

  Drew pulled away first, breathing heavily. Then he held me tight like he had yesterday when he first arrived. “I’m sorry,” he said softly into my hair. “I should never have waited so long. I just… I didn’t want to mess up what we have, and now…”

  As we stood there in the dark, holding onto each other like the world might explode into tiny little pieces if we shifted even one millimeter, I knew exactly how he felt. For every ounce of happiness this brought me, there were at least two ounces of regret. If only he’d told me sooner how he felt – would it have been worth giving up Paris?

  Drew had barely been here twenty-four hours, and already I missed him.

  TWENTY

  It was weird enough that Drew knew Pete from their fraternity. But yesterday, just as we got back from our class walk, I’d heard Dan Thomas inviting Drew to his shared birthday party with Kelly tonight up in Montmartre. It made sense, after all – Dan was a Sigma Phi Beta too. But for whatever reason, my stomach had flipped, and as the hours ticked down to the party, those stomach flips earned themselves Olympic gold in both the individual event and the all-around.

  Okay, okay, not just any old reason. It rhymed with Pete Russell.

  At lunch, Drew had suggested that we walk from my apartment up to the party in Montmartre, and I’d agreed, because seeing Paris through Drew’s eyes was making me swoony all over again. So we’d left my apartment at three, crossing over to the Right Bank of the Seine just at the Place de la Concorde. A decision I quickly regretted as we passed the Tuileries’ entrance.

  “Hold on a minute, Fee,” he said, tugging back against my hand as I tried to speed forward. “Is this… isn’t this the Tuileries?”

  I looked over at the gilded gate to our right, which so obviously marked this as a place of importance. Of royalty. “Yep,” I said as flatly as I could, scowling. “Wow, look at the crowds. This place is always crawling with tourists.”

  “I’m a tourist,” he said. “Can’t we take a short detour? You know, just in case your future boyfriend’s waiting? A promise is still a promise, after all.”

  Drew’s eyes were laughing, but I felt the air fleeing my lungs as I soldiered forward onto th
e gravel walkway, feeling like the biggest turncoat on two whole continents, unsure which Sigma Phi Beta brother I was betraying most by being here. But I knew it was past time to tell Drew about Thursday night. Even if I kept some secrets locked far, far away.

  “So, they had this Big Band concert here on Thursday night,” I blurted, just as we reached the second reflecting pool – the one where Pete and I had hung out after dancing. I noticed our two chairs sitting almost exactly where we’d left them, and nearly lost my breath again. Drew, who had been vaguely listening to me prattle on up to that point, followed my gaze to the chairs, and then stopped in his place.

  “Yeah? Were they as good as Jamie’s band?”

  “Not even close.” I slid my fingers in between Drew’s. Hearing him call my dad Jamie always made me smile a little bit. All the rest of my friends called him Mr. Sullivan, but Drew and my dad were tight. Like on a scale of one to hero-of-the-century, my dad was off the recordable scale as far as Drew was concerned.

  The leaves on the Tuileries trees had exploded in such bright orange and yellow since Thursday night that I felt like we were walking in a Dr. Seuss book. Or maybe it was just the strangeness of marking time in a place that had once been a joke with Drew, and then a dream with Pete. The wind had picked up again, just like it had on Thursday night, and as though my friends’ voices were still echoing inside the garden walls, Drew asked the most obvious question of all.

  “Did anyone go with you? To the concert, I mean?”

  “Well, sort of.” I felt my face flush, and hoped he thought it was the wind. “I mean, there was this all-night festival happening, and it was super cold. We’d planned for all six of us to see the concert, but then there was some movie inside the Louvre, so…”

  “You went by yourself? Fee, that’s…”

  “I didn’t go by myself.” Dropping my fingers away from Drew’s, I pulled a scarf from my purse and wrapped it high around my neck. “Pete came, too. He didn’t want to see the film.”

  Drew walked along in silence for a few seconds, and with each crunch of the gravel, I could almost see the thought bubbles forming over his head, growing bigger and louder and uglier by the moment. But he never said a word. Instead, he took my hand again, tucked it under his elbow, then gestured toward the Orangerie. “What’s this building on the left? It looks grim. Tell me it used to be a prison. Or a torture chamber. Seriously, Fee, there has to be something ugly about this town. I get the feeling Paris wants me to believe she’s the place you belong.”

  The expression on his face made my heart ache in all the worst ways. “That’s a museum,” I said, wrapping my free hand around his arm and squeezing it tight. “Lots of Impressionists. They’ve got two whole rooms dedicated to Monet’s water lilies.”

  “So that’s where the real ones are?” Drew laughed ruefully. “I hope you didn’t move nine time zones just for Monet, Fee. That would be a real waste. They sell fifty versions of that print at the Highgate bookstore. Half the girls at school have those water lilies hanging in their dorm rooms.”

  Had I not just dodged a Pete Russell-sized bullet, I might have asked Drew how he knew so much about the girls’ dorms. Instead, I started back into tour guide mode, explaining the importance of the Egyptian obelisk rising before us in the Place de la Concorde, thanking my lucky stars that Monsieur Salinger had gone into such explicit detail during our class visit the week before. Within two minutes, Drew was so distracted by all the history on every corner that I had to wonder how different things might have been if he’d flown here last weekend instead.

  Or worse, how different they might have been next weekend.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Even though the sun had already begun to set, the cobblestone streets at the Place du Tertre still bustled with frenetic energy. Artists bartered with tourists, caricaturists mobbed teenagers entering the square, and accordionists jostled in and out of the crowd, hoping to recreate that quintessential Gene Kelly ambiance for anyone expecting real life to mirror An American in Paris.

  As the light faded and the artists and musicians began to leave the square, Drew and I wandered back the short distance to the Sacré Coeur Basilica, the last moments of the sunset bathing Paris in a rosy glow. We sat on the steps just down from the church, and I slid my arm again into Drew’s, resting my head on his shoulder.

  About thirty steps below us, a very slight, very drunk Edith Piaf impersonator wearing an enormous black feather boa began to sing Hymne à l’Amour. Ah, the “Ode to Love.” Her voice wasn’t perfect, but she crooned each word with her whole heart and half of Celine Dion’s. I was so transfixed I didn’t feel Drew nudging me.

  “Hey, Fee.” He squeezed my arm against his side. “Sit up. I want to ask you something.”

  “Just a minute,” I whispered back, patting his thigh. “This is my favorite part.”

  “Come on, Meredith. I really need to talk to you before the birthday party.”

  I shifted my gaze lazily away from Edith to find Drew digging in his jacket pocket. When he produced a flat black box the size of an old-school cell phone and flipped it open, I sat up at attention. There, staring back at me, was the very necklace that I had seen prominently displayed between Lindsay Foster’s two best assets the day we drove to Normandy only six weeks before.

  Sigma. Phi. Freaking. Beta.

  “This is a lavaliere,” Drew explained, as if I’d been living in a convent for the last two years. “It’s a stupid tradition, I know. But I was hoping that, you know, maybe you’d wear mine?”

  I felt my chest tighten as I met his gaze. “You’re serious.”

  “Um… that’s sort of the point. Giving someone your letters means you’re ready to tell the world you’re exclusive. I flew five thousand miles to see you, Meredith. Is that not romantic enough for you? Should I have scheduled our names to flash on the Eiffel Tower instead?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, your gesture was plenty grand,” I said snidely as my cheeks began to burn. “I am curious, though. Was I supposed to magically forget that this seriously symbolic necklace was draped around Lindsay Foster’s neck until five minutes ago?”

  “Not five minutes ago,” he scowled. “A month.”

  Below us, Edith belted out the bridge to Hymne à l’Amour. Those lyrics were some of the most beautiful words I’d ever heard, but in that moment? It was all wrong. Not only had Edith shifted to the wrong key, the specter of Lindsay Foster filled the space between us; her perfect blond hair, her perfect smile, and her perfect everything else taunted me with all the times Drew had been hers and never mine.

  Under normal circumstances, the panic crossing Drew’s face at the exact second Edith’s voice went pitchy might have made me laugh. Instead, tears filled my eyes and rolled down my cheeks without even a second’s warning. What was the matter with me? All I’d ever wanted for years was to be with this guy, and now, I was ruining it for both of us.

  Drew shoved the box back into his pocket then cupped my face in his hands, his thumbs brushing desperately at my tears like he could rewind the last three minutes with his touch. “Tell me what to do, Fee,” he begged. “I don’t understand where I’ve screwed this up. Everything I planned, everything I imagined would win you over has been wrong. So, just tell me what you want from me and I promise to make it happen.”

  While the caterwauling continued below us, I took Drew’s hands away from my cheeks and held them in mine. “See, you zoomed in here yesterday without any warning and started setting up all these new parameters with symbolic jewelry and off-the-beaten-path itineraries and…”

  “The kissing?” He smiled. “Tell me you haven’t hated that part.”

  “No,” I laughed softly. “But see, my brain is still standing in front of the Centre Lafayette with the cab driver, trying to process the fact that you’re here. I don’t know how long you’ve been planning this trip, Drew, but I haven’t caught up to you yet. And for the record, it has not been a month since you broke up with Lindsay. It’s been a
handful of hours and eighteen days. Maybe nineteen. I’m not really good with time-change math. In any case, it hasn’t been long.”

  “Okay then, eighteen days, give or take a time zone.” He lifted my chin so our eyes met. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t have… I’m just… Meredith, I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t answer. I just looked down the steps at Edith, who was now serenading a bunch of Italian teenagers with the jaunty Mon Manège à Moi. When I looked back over at Drew, he was taking the little black box out of his pocket again. He slid the lavaliere onto his palm, then smashed the box under his foot. After the tiniest fraction of a pause, he jogged down the steps and laid the lavaliere inside Edith’s tip jar where she’d see it, and then bowed to her before he jogged back up the stairs to pull me up to my feet.

  When he wrapped his arms around me, I understood: Drew finally got it. The two of us had no reason for golden letters or any other symbol. We had each other. That was all that mattered.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The café known as Plus Ça Change was not far from the Sacré Coeur, and as Drew and I ambled down the serpentine streets of Montmartre, I realized we must look like those credit card commercials I’d been known to mock. You know the type: two people gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes as they tarry along the cobblestones, filtered within an inch of their lives in lilac and coral hues? Yeah, I hated those ads. But tonight, I wasn’t fighting my mushy side anymore.

  Bring on the fromage, Paris. My hometown boy was here, and I was finally happy.

  But even after all that extra time I gave us, Drew and I still arrived at Dan and Kelly’s party a quarter-hour later than we should have. There were five other groups celebrating inside the tiny bistro, which was hardly surprising. This place was famous among college kids the world over for serving wine in baby bottles. When Drew and I arrived at the table, Dan jumped up from the center of the left side, his face flushed from either the wine or the not-so-festive mood.