The Bridge

by Jill Cox

  I picked up the package and opened it cautiously. Inside was a gently tarnished silver charm of the Pont des Arts. It must have been at least half a century old, and it was absolutely beautiful.

  “Where did you find this? I’ve been looking all over Paris for one of these charms.”

  Pete smiled widely. “I’ve had it a while, actually. I saw it one day this fall in a bookstall near the apartment. You know, the ones by the Seine? Some lady there sells vintage Paris charms. You should check it out and see what else she has. I can go with you if you want.”

  I stared at the charm, then lifted my eyes to him. “Thank you, Pete. It’s perfect.”

  Pete watched me just like he had in the early morning hours of La Nuit Blanche. Between Drew and Meg and the passage of time, I’d explained away that night’s enchantment as nothing more than a lonely, lovesick girl projecting her imagination onto the chivalry of a well-mannered friend.

  But now, sitting next to Pete as the snow fell on the darkening cityscape outside, I saw a parallel path to the one I’d taken that weekend. And for the first time in two months, I let my heart wonder where Pete and I would be… if only.

  THIRTY

  Pete was blithe and chatty on the walk back to my place, like this was just another day on the way home from school. We threw dirty snowballs at each other and placed bets on what minutia Monsieur Salinger would include on our Promenade Parisienne test. If anyone had seen us, they might have believed we’d only met in the last few weeks, so generic was our banter.

  When we reached my apartment building, I punched in the code and then turned to face Pete. “Thanks for the tea,” I said. “And for my present. See you tomorrow?”

  “Hold on a sec, Sully.” Pete pushed the door open behind me a little wider, his face inches from mine. “I haven’t seen Marie-France in a while. Could I come upstairs to say hello?”

  “Oh!” I gulped. “Um, yeah. Good thinking. She’s been asking about you lately.”

  And just like that we were in the narrow elevator, Pete Russell’s body so close to mine that I couldn’t think straight. My knees locked in place but Pete just watched me blankly, like we rode tiny elevators together all day every day. When the pulley jostled and vibrated to a halt on the fifth floor, it also jostled my knees from their locked position, and I found myself pitching forward, grabbing the lapels of Pete’s coat and holding on for dear life.

  “Oof,” I said, attempting to laugh as I pulled myself back upright. He watched me strangely for a moment, so strangely that I froze in place. But then, as if he could read my mind, he winked and then pushed the door open, gesturing for me to leave first.

  I nodded as I strode past him, hoisting my messenger bag strap over my head as I went. “So, are you flying home Saturday? Because Dan said his parents are taking him on some Mediterranean cruise for the holidays, and if I have to fly home alone with Marshall…”

  Pete lifted an eyebrow as he leaned sideways against the apartment door frame. “You haven’t heard? Marshall’s spending Christmas here. With Élodie.”

  “Wow.” I unzipped the outside pouch of my bag and pulled out my keys. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m a little jealous of Marshall. Christmas in France sounds like the best idea ever.”

  I could feel Pete’s eyes on me as I fumbled with the lock. “My grandmother thinks so, too. She’ll be here Saturday morning.”

  I lifted my eyes to his. We hadn’t spoken about his grandmother’s diagnosis one single time since that weekend Drew came and Pete escaped to Lucerne. I hadn’t been brave enough to ask, and he had barely spoken to me until today. But as I searched his dark eyes, I could see his heart was breaking, despite the easy smile and the casual way he leaned against the doorway.

  I had an overwhelming urge to hug him.

  Instead, I opened the front door to Marie-France’s apartment. The lights were off inside. No sign of Marie-France. No sign of Anne. When I turned back to Pete, he was standing behind me, and in the muted light from the hallway, I could see a grin widening across his face.

  The apartment lights flipped on behind me, and I heard five people shout “Surprise!” at the top of their lungs. How did I not see that coming? It was Wednesday night, and my birthday.

  Pete howled as he grabbed my hand then twirled me into the living room. “I can’t believe we tricked you twice!”

  Dan sauntered over, wearing his favorite bowtie and a toothy grin, and slapped a twenty euro note in Pete’s hand. “Seriously, Meredith. Why do you always fall for his shenanigans?”

  “Don’t give her grief on her birthday,” Harper scolded as she handed me one of Marie-France’s fanciest champagne flutes. “Sorry for the secrecy, but Anne was convinced you were onto us, so we came up with the decoy breakfast. Pete bet Dan he could trick you into mistrusting your own suspicions.”

  I turned to face Pete and shoved him playfully. “And to think I actually believed you wanted my help studying. Hand over my half of your earnings right this second.”

  Pete high-fived Dan then patted me on the head. “Aw, Sully. Can I help it that you’re so gullible? If I’d known all these years how easy it is to sidetrack you, imagine how rich I’d be.”

  He had no idea.

  Anne dragged me into the living room to show me the spread. Marie-France had made my favorite meal: salmon and asparagus. For dessert, the girls had made cupcakes with the Betty Crocker mix we’d bought a while back at the American specialty store in the Marais. They’d even decorated them with twenty-one candles.

  As usual, Marie-France held court at her end of the table, flipping her dark bob and flirting shamelessly with the boys. Our favorite thing about Marie-France was that she had a seemingly endless cache of funny stories about the Americans who had lived with her in the past. She never repeated a single story. My spleen hurt every week from laughing so hard, and this week was one for the books.

  I scanned the faces around the table, warm in the glow of the candlelight. How lucky I was. For the rest of my life, this would be my twenty-first birthday memory: a snowy Wednesday night in Paris with some of the best people in the world.

  After the cupcakes, Kelly handed me a package. “This is from all of us, but to give credit where credit is due, you should know that Anne and Pete did most of the work.”

  “We’ve been putting it together for a while now,” Anne explained as I removed the wrapping paper to reveal a hardback book. “I stole the photos from your laptop every time you weren’t paying attention, which is harder than it sounds since your fingers seem to be surgically attached to the keyboard.”

  “Har-dee-har-har,” I said, flipping through the pages. “Are you sure these are my photos?”

  “They’re yours, but Pete cropped them. We organized them into a book a few weeks ago.”

  I went back to the beginning and turned each page again, more slowly this time. Some photos were of places, most were of my friends, but there was a full-page, two-headed selfie Drew had taken of us right in the center of the book. I looked up from the page to find Pete watching me from across the table, no hint of anything in his eyes except pride in a job well done.

  “And now, for one more photo.” Anne ran to the kitchen and returned with my SLR camera, then handed it to Marie-France who began organizing us in front of her magical Christmas tree. She was so adamant about staging us herself that I should have known something was up. When I downloaded the images later that evening, I nearly marched back down the stairs to ask Marie-France if she knew the English word buttinsky, because this time, she’d gone too far.

  Each of the six of us wore a Santa hat. But framed in the center of the image stood Pete Russell and Meredith Sullivan, with a sprig of renegade mistletoe dangling just above our heads.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Lincoln City’s the sort of beach town people describe as quaint. When I was a kid, I wondered what that meant. My family had chosen Lincoln City when we moved to America because of its location midway up the Oregon coast a
nd its cool, rainy climate, so similar to our hometown in Ireland. For me, everything about it seemed normal and, to be honest, a little boring.

  But now that I’d lived in Portland and Paris, I understood why people found my hometown so magical. You know Stars Hollow on Gilmore Girls, with its quirky town square celebrations and caricatures masquerading as locals? Lincoln City had it all, with idiosyncrasies to spare.

  Sure, the coastline was gorgeous, and you couldn’t beat the weather; at least, whenever the sky wasn’t spitting rain on you. But the real draw of my hometown was the traditions.

  Twice a year we held a Kite Festival attended by people from all over the globe. There were also two Whale Watch Weeks, art festivals, and clam bakes, too. Not to mention a ginger contest every February called the Redhead Roundup, which I’d never won, but hope springs eternal.

  One of my favorite traditions happened from October to May, when people combed the beaches from Roads End to Siletz Bay in search of hand-blown glass floats – hundreds of them, in every shape, color, and size. On Christmas break during my freshman year of high school, Ian and I had stumbled across a green, fairy-shaped float hidden behind a piece of driftwood at the beach near our house. For the rest of the school year, I’d argued with my parents. It was a sign, I told them. Our destiny lay in Ireland, not Oregon.

  But that summer, after too many months of guilt, Ian admitted that he had bought that fairy. Then he’d waited for me to get distracted, and placed it right by the driftwood so I would see it.

  I didn’t speak to him for a week afterward.

  But the tradition I loved best was the annual Sutton-Sullivan Christmas party: a Dungeness crab boil followed by hours of karaoke. By my count, this was our tenth anniversary. Drew’s mom died the summer before fifth grade, so that year, the Suttons invited us to their house on Devil’s Lake for Christmas. Ian, who’s always had a secret soft spot for our friend Drew, was feeling extra sentimental that Christmas and took it upon himself to add some fun to our annual crab boil. So he set up the karaoke machine his new girlfriend had bought him two days earlier, and ten years on, the tradition still stands.

  As stodgy and conservative as Drew’s grandparents appeared to the rest of the world, all bets were off during karaoke. His grandmother Maureen rivaled any Broadway star, but the real treat was Grandpa Andy’s annual showstopper: The Jackson Five’s I Want You Back, performed in full falsetto with choreography executed to the exacting standards of the King of Pop himself.

  Every year, I was so tempted to post the footage online. The good citizens of Lincoln City deserved to know their most beloved dentist had better moves than any boy-bander alive.

  But this Christmas, the festivities ended much earlier than usual. My parents and Ian headed back to our house around ten, and Drew’s grandparents were asleep half an hour later. Which left Drew and me alone on the back deck overlooking the lake.

  The first time I’d come to this house, my childlike mind didn’t understand this space. Why would anyone build a deck sheltered from the sun? What was the point of a room without walls, or an outdoor fireplace?

  But twenty-one-year-old me understood. Every night since I’d come home, the two of us had snuggled up on the comfy outdoor sofa under a huge pile of blankets, with nothing but candles and a crackling fire to distract us. Across the lake the twinkling Christmas lights reflected on the water, and the whole world seemed bathed in happiness. And even though Drew had probably honed his late night make-out mojo here with other girls, I didn’t care. This space was ours now.

  As the clock struck the quarter hour, Drew pulled away from a very sweet, very long kiss with an expression I couldn’t quite understand. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Always.”

  “How come we’ve never talked about our first kiss?”

  I pushed myself a little upright and smiled. “Do we need to? I mean, I know you were jet-lagged and everything that first night, but…”

  “No, Meredith. Not our first kiss in Paris. The first time we kissed ever.”

  My lungs suddenly hollowed out. For nearly two years, I’d never told a soul. Not even Ian.

  In the spring of our freshman year, when Lindsay and I still lived together, Drew had invited me to a Sigma Phi Beta party at some local mansion that backed up to the Willamette River. It wasn’t a formal. It wasn’t even technically a date party, but there was a theme: Famous Gingers and Their Friends. So of course Drew asked me to go. And of course he wanted to dress like Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe.

  At the time, I hadn’t thought much about his choice. Drew had always been lazy about such things, and Anne of Green Gables was my favorite book. So I spent every free minute for two weeks combing Portland’s best thrift stores to piece together our costumes.

  The party itself was just what you’d expect: a hundred or more drunken college students, dressed as everyone from Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz to Vincent Van Gogh and his missing ear. Turns out we weren’t nearly as clever as we thought. Drew and I were just one of six Anne-and-Gilbert pairings, which had outraged Drew so much that he drank twice as much as usual.

  Twice the beer, twice as fast. And that was before the whiskey.

  When it became clear early on that Drew was already a mess, I stopped drinking anything harder than diet soda. By midnight he’d misplaced my favorite newsboy hat, and we spent the next half hour searching every nook and cranny of the house for it. The longer we looked, the more agitated he grew, until he stumbled out to the river dock and parked himself on the deck in defeat.

  “You must be so sick of me by now,” he muttered, kicking his feet in the water.

  “Why? Because you always lose my stuff?” I lowered myself next to him, dangling my legs over the edge. “It’s a hat, Drew. There are worse things you could lose.”

  “I know.” He looked down the river. “I could lose you.”

  If he hadn’t been so pathetic, I might have laughed. Instead, I lifted my hand to his chin and turned his face back toward me. “You’ll never lose me, kid. Not even if you break my heart.”

  And just like that, Drew’s hands were in my hair and he was kissing me. Except it was terrible – desperate, sloppy, and tasting like stale keg beer and half a bottle of whiskey.

  When his teeth knocked against mine and then split my upper lip, I shoved him away. Hard. And then he threw up over the side of the boat dock.

  Ah, so romantic. Exactly how I’d always dreamed it would be.

  Half an hour later, we were back in his dorm room thanks to one of the sober pledges – the ever reliable Dan Thomas, as a matter of fact. I sat up half the night making sure Drew was still breathing and shoving angry tears off my cheeks, swearing to myself never to mention what happened. Never. Not unless he brought it up first.

  But he never did. And by the end of that semester, he was so into Lindsay Foster that he’d gotten a summer job at a dude ranch near her hometown in Wyoming just so they could be together forever and ever. Which is why I’d never let myself wonder what that kiss had meant beyond drunken frat party hijinks.

  And now Drew was looking at me like I was the one who’d betrayed him.

  “So you do remember.” He pushed out a phony laugh. “All this time, I just figured you were as wasted as I was that night. Maybe you should’ve majored in theater instead of French lit.”

  I breathed in steadily, then exhaled. “Why haven’t you ever said anything, Drew?”

  “Why haven’t you? I kissed you, Meredith, and the next day, you didn’t even blink at me funny. For a week afterward, I gave you chance after chance to say something, anything, but you never did. So I started hanging out with Lindsay. I figured if I was up in your face with another girl, you’d show some sign that you cared, but nope. You just carried on like nothing had changed. Cool as ever, checking off to-do list boxes, like your life was the only one that mattered. And this fall, you did it again. You just left for Paris after we spent the whole summer together, like I didn’t factor into
your plans at all.”

  I felt like I might be sick. All this time, I thought I’d been the bait for Lindsay. But she’d been the bait for me.

  I untangled myself from the mess of blankets and blew out each and every candle, one by one, until the smoke rising between us mirrored the fog inside my brain. Drew glowered at me as I settled onto a chair by the fire, but I didn’t care. I needed those extra ten feet to face him for the first time maybe ever. So I took in a deep breath, fixed my eyes on his, and answered.

  “Do you really want to know why I never said anything about that kiss, Drew?”

  His expression softened a bit in the firelight. “Of course I do.”

  “Okay, well, it sounds like you think that night changed everything between us. But what if it changed things in a way you don’t realize?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I curled up in the chair, hugging my knees to my chest. “Have you ever considered how that night felt for me? You got drunk, you kissed me – so unromantically that you split my lip open, by the way – and then you passed out and left me to make sure you didn’t aspirate in the middle of the night.”

  His face blanched. “Well, when you put it that way…”

  “I’m not putting it any way, Drew. These are facts. So before you feel sorry for yourself that I never brought up that kiss, maybe use that clever brain of yours to imagine how humiliated I felt. How maybe I didn’t want to remember that kiss, because it felt like it didn’t mean anything to you. And as for Lindsay…”

  Drew stood up and crossed the deck in two strides, pulling another chair plumb with mine over by the fireplace. “I know,” he said, pulling my hands away from their death grip on my knees. “And I’m so sorry, okay? Using her like that to make you jealous was immature, but –”

  “But what? Do you really think there is anything you can say that will make this disappear? Lindsay was my friend, Drew. She was the only close female friend I’d ever had until you came between us.”