A Second Chance at Paris

by Cole McCade

  What she had to do was get over her fear, her hurt, and say something.

  Yet after the beep she remained silent, barely breathing, before she struggled out, “Ion, it’s Cel. Mary. Whatever you want to call me. I’m the same person. And one thing I never told you is…is how I feel about you. That was never a lie.” Her chest ached. “Please talk to me. I only lied because I thought you would turn me away, because I was blind and immature and insecure. But everything else was real. I swear—everything between us. Every moment. I never faked who I was for a second with you, no matter what name I used. I’m still me. Dorky and awkward and incapable of being anyone else, even if I was stupid enough to think I should be. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for lying. Sorry for hurting you. Please give me a chance to make it right.”

  Part of her hoped he was listening, and any moment now the phone would pick up. But there was only the particular hollow silence of voicemail recording, waiting for her to find the right words.

  She was starting to think those words didn’t exist.

  Her breath hitched wetly. “I’m still looking up at that same sky,” she said. “I hope you are, too.”

  Then she hung up, and looked down at the phone for long minutes.

  It didn’t ring.

  Nor did it ring in the days after, when she moved her boxes into the garage lab and spent hours with her father: converting the lab into a dual workspace, remembering the first time he’d taught her to use an electron microscope, dwelling on memories of brighter days. Where the ache of Ion’s absence stung, Celeste filled the hole with family—and remembered how to laugh when she and Ophelia chased each other with paint rollers, getting more paint on each other than the walls.

  But still by night her bed felt too empty, too cold. And as she looked up at the ceiling she thought of him, and wished on every last one of her glowing paper stars.

  The last room they overhauled was hers. It was time. Time to get rid of the curtains covered in planets and galaxies; time to paint over the pastel purple walls only a teenage girl could love. Time to throw out the old notebooks and the yearbook, too, or at least pack them away. The childish things needed to go. It was time to grow up.

  She dug out a half-empty box from the attic and hauled it downstairs. When she opened it she found, among a jumble of scrapbooks and dented silverware and boxes of photos, her purple footie pajamas.

  Maybe she could be childish for just a little bit longer.

  With a laugh, she wriggled out of her clothing and into the pajamas—then burst into uncontrollable giggles when she saw herself in the mirror. She couldn’t believe they still fit. Breathless, she flopped onto the bed and curled against the pillows to sort through the box, rearranging the mess to make room. She lifted out a carton of faded photos, and smiled as she ran her thumb over a picture of their mother, taken the day Ophelia had been born. Her sister was a tiny squalling bundle tucked against their mother’s breast.

  Celeste flicked through more photos. Most were of their parents, extended family, cousins tumbling across their grandmother’s front lawn. Ophelia’s first birthday, and her bright smile. Celeste’s first birthday, and the scowl on her sister’s face at losing the spotlight. She chuckled to herself—then froze at the faint click and flash of a camera.

  Her head jerked up. Her father stood in the doorway with the digital camera she’d given him last Christmas, an impish light in his eyes.

  “Dad!” Mortification heated her face. She was a mess—no makeup, scrunchified hair, and she was wearing purple footie pajamas.

  “So I wouldn’t forget.” He grinned, sank onto the edge of the bed, and peered at the photo in her hand. “Even now, you’re still just like that little girl.”

  “I wish. That girl wasn’t afraid of anything.”

  “Sure she was. She just did what she wanted anyway.” He studied her. “Why the long face, starlet?”

  She smiled faintly and looked down at the handful of photos. “Dad, I…I think I like a boy.”

  “I seem to recall having this conversation once before.”

  “Yeah. Same boy. Didn’t go over so well this time, either.”

  He slid an arm around her shoulder. “Did you try talking to him this time?”

  “Yeah.” With a sigh, she leaned into him and breathed in his scent. He’d always smelled like cherrywood and pipe tobacco; the scent never failed to envelop her in a sense of safety. Of home. “I don’t think he wanted to listen.”

  “You never know.” He squeezed her arm, then looked up at the stars on her ceiling. “Make a wish.”

  “Sorry, Dad. All out of wishes.” She shuffled through a few more photos, then paused, frowning at the topmost. Her father—young, maybe in his early twenties, with his arms around a pretty redheaded woman. A sullen-looking little boy clung to the woman’s legs. Celeste didn’t recognize her from any of the family photos. “Hey Dad? Who’s this?”

  He glanced down, then plucked the picture from her fingers, brow creasing. “Where did you find that?”

  “In the attic.”

  He shrugged and tucked the photo into the box. “Just a friend and her son.”

  “Just a friend?”

  He gave her a fondly exasperated look. “We dated before I met your mother. We weren’t right for each other. Not like your mother and I.” He kissed the top of her head, then stood. “You’ll find the one who’s right for you, starlet. When it’s time.”

  She watched him go, before looking down at the stack of photos again. Her fingers drifted to the necklace resting in the hollow of her throat.

  I found him, she thought. I found him years ago.

  But he’ll never speak to me again.

  * * *

  Once the house was back in shape, Ophelia left for her backpacking trip—hugging Celeste at the airport and leaving an odd sense of melancholy behind. With nothing else to distract her, Celeste found a job. Not a great job, but it would pay the bills and cover her father’s care. She had applications pending in Stockholm, Paris, Utrecht, Milan—but it would be months and miles of red tape before she heard anything. So she made ends meet as a lab tech for a New Orleans pharmaceutical company, driving Ophelia’s obnoxious pink car to an office where she conducted dozens of monotonous drug solubility tests a day—and sent out dozens of job applications a night, in between stalking people from the conference on LinkedIn. She only needed one connection to play out.

  She saw Ion on television a few months after the reunion, chatting with a red-haired reporter on some talk show. His smile was easy and charming, as if he didn’t hate being in front of the camera when she knew he was likely grinding his teeth. She listened to him talk about his books for a few moments, before she couldn’t stand it anymore and turned the TV off. She was meeting Lily and a few other friends for karaoke, and if she showed up moping they’d just get her drunk. Lily especially. With her due date coming soon and liquor off limits, she liked to live vicariously by plying Celeste with Skittles vodka shots. Last karaoke night had ended in a hangover and a narrow miss with matching tattoos.

  Lily had turned into one of her best friends, but Celeste was learning to watch her drinks around her.

  It had been Lily who’d helped dye the blue streak in her hair, and who’d laughed when HR complained and Celeste dared them to show her where in the employee handbook it said she couldn’t have highlights in any color she pleased. It was a risk, but she still had her job when it was over. And she was tired of playing it safe. Ion had been right about her. She’d been so busy trying to forget who she’d been that she was afraid to be who she was. She was done—and done avoiding risks. Even the silly ones.

  She made bolder choices in the jobs she applied for. Reaching higher. Going farther. Sending resumes across the world, and hoping someone would bite. She had nothing to lose and everything to gain, and she was tired of sitting in the corner asking other people for permission to think she was good enough.

  And maybe, while she was being bold…next time she was
in Paris, she’d try to see Ion.

  Just because she could, she sent him a few of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s books—Death by Black Hole and Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. She hoped they’d be useful. Maybe part of her hoped for a response, but the only answer she got was a delivery confirmation stating the package was signed for by I. Blackwell.

  She sighed and shook her head with a smile. Even if he wouldn’t talk to her, at least she could try to help.

  Winter had set in, brisk and damp, by the time the first letters came from potential employers. With them came a minor metric ton of snail-mail paperwork. Friday afternoon she begged off work half an hour early, skipped out to hit the post office before they closed, and mailed off her application packets. But as she stepped out of the post office and pulled her coat collar up against the wind, she paused as a window display across the street caught her eye.

  Purple hair. Violet. The girl grinned from a giant cardboard cutout above a row of books, with the title Violet Sparks: Supernova splashed in tall, glittering letters.

  Celeste drifted across the street to the bookstore window, pressing her fingers to the glass. He’d finished the book. And hadn’t changed it, no matter how angry he was. She still couldn’t believe Violet had been based on her. Not Lily; she’d just been too insecure to see the obvious signs. He’d been in love with her, and she’d ruined it.

  But at the bottom of the display, a line of banner print made her heart sink.

  Out today! The seventh and final book in the Violet Sparks series—with author exclusive!

  Final. Maybe she’d really made him hate her so much he couldn’t stand to write Violet anymore.

  Ion, I’m so sorry.

  She started to turn away, then paused, worrying at her lower lip, arguing with herself—before stepping into the bookstore. She snagged a hardcover from the display, then wandered into the young adult section. The entire series was shelved there; it gave her a hard, sweet pang to see his name printed on the spine. She loaded her arms up with the other six books, then headed to the checkout counter.

  When she thunked down the stack, the girl behind the counter—her nametag read Becca—murmured something and hardly looked at her as she scanned barcodes. But when Becca glanced up to tell her the total, she froze, eyes widening.

  “Oh my God.” She blinked rapidly, eyelids rattled like blinds in the wind. “You’re her!”

  Celeste looked up from fishing out her debit card. “What?”

  “You’re Violet. The real Violet. Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re in my store!”

  Something funny tightened in her chest. “I…what? How…?”

  “It’s all here.” Becca snatched up the seventh book and flipped it open to the end, nearly ripping the pages. “Look—look look look!”

  Celeste stared at the page while her heart tap-danced and her palms slicked with a hot sweat. A Word from the Author. Next to a block of text was a picture of her curled up in bed in her footie pajamas, sorting through a box with her scrunchied hair straggling into her face.

  Dad, you are so dead.

  Becca sighed. “It’s so dreamy, isn’t it? When I saw him talking about you on TV, oh my God. You’re so lucky. He’s so hot.”

  Celeste ignored her, staring down at the book. Staring at Ion’s words, and forgetting to breathe as she read, unable to believe what she was seeing.

  When I was in high school, I loved a girl. Mary. Everyone called her Hairy Mary. I never knew the story behind it, but I hated it. To me she was just Mary, bright and free and full of starry-eyed daydreams, with the sweetest smile and the craziest blue hair I’d ever seen. That girl became a dream, to me. The dream that created Violet Sparks.

  You wouldn’t know it to look at her today, until she smiles. It’s the same smile, but it belongs to a woman: brilliant and beautiful and decidedly un-blue-haired, though I bet you could talk her into it on a dare. She laughed, fingering the blue streak in her hair, her throat choking and her eyes filling. She calls herself Celeste now. She tries to forget who she was, little realizing she’s still the same girl, all grown up—and the girl I loved then has become the woman I love now.

  The Violet Sparks series is ending, to make room for something new. Something better, I hope. Something I want to build with her at my side. Celeste London, Mary Haverford, whatever you want to call yourself…I don’t care. A name doesn’t matter.

  All that matters is that I miss my starry-eyed daydreamer. I’ve been looking up at the same sky every night—and I’ll be waiting. Forever if I have to. You know where.

  And this time I won’t turn away.

  This time, I’ll say everything I wanted to say all those years ago.

  The words blurred. She finally remembered to breathe when her head tingled and swam. Oxygen deprivation. Right. She clutched the edge of the counter. “I…I think I need to sit…”

  Becca cocked her head owlishly. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I just…oh my God.” There was that spinny sensation again. That Auntie Em, Auntie Em, a tornado took me away to Oz sensation, like she was tumbling and didn’t know if she’d ever hit ground.

  She pressed her face into her hands. She couldn’t believe he’d done this for her. Months of silence, months of thinking he hated her, only for this. She didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry or both.

  Or maybe throttle him for not saying a word this whole time.

  “Hey.” Becca cleared her throat. Celeste peeked over her fingertips to find the girl tugging the neck of her shirt down, baring the satiny edge of her bra. A heart tattoo with the name Bradley peeked out. “Will you sign my boob?”

  “What?” Celeste blinked. “No—wait, what?”

  “My boob. I’ll lose a piece of paper.” The girl smiled brightly. “I won’t lose this.”

  “But it’ll wash off,” she pointed out numbly. This couldn’t be happening. Next there’d be a rabbit in a tailcoat fussing with his pocket watch. Or a cowardly lion. She was mixing stories again and—

  “Not if I don’t shower!” Becca chirped, dragging her back to reality.

  The girl thrust a Sharpie at her. Celeste just stared. Sign…her breast. And she had a hunch arguing wouldn’t do much. When you couldn’t be a day over eighteen and already had a shiny-fresh tattoo with the name of a boy you’d probably dump in three months, listening to reason wasn’t one of your strong points.

  “You’re not ringing me up until I do it, are you?” When Becca’s smile only widened, Celeste groaned and took the marker. “Okay. Okay!”

  She uncapped the Sharpie, leaned across the counter, and scribbled her name over the pale curve of flesh, though she hesitated on what to sign—then settled on Mary Celeste London Haverford. It arced in a black scrawl over the girl’s breast, almost overlapping the Bradley tattoo.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she muttered, snapping the cap back on.

  Becca tugged her shirt up, nearly bouncing, grinning fit to pop. “Thank you! I’m going to show it to everyone.”

  “…you’re going to show your breast to everyone?”

  “Oh.” Becca blinked as that visibly clicked in blank eyes. “Maybe not.”

  Celeste eyed her, then pressed her fingers to her temples. She just couldn’t brain right now—not even remotely. This insanity wasn’t helping. Without a word, she offered her debit card. Becca stared like she didn’t know what it was for, then smacked her forehead.

  “Oh! Right. Fifty-seven ninety-two.”

  “Thanks.”

  Becca swiped the card, then handed over the receipt and started bagging. “You really didn’t know?”

  “Guess I’ve been busy.” Busy thinking he hated me. She shrugged with a weak smile. “And the book just came out today.”

  “You gonna call him?”

  “I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. No. I don’t know.” She toyed with her debit card. “Seems almost anticlimactic. He can never let things be as simple as a phone call.” And…she was ba
bbling at a stranger. “Anyway, we’ll see.”

  “Oh my God, you love him. You looooove hiiiiiim. Oh my God.” Becca scrunched her fists under her chin. “Call him now!”

  “I…think that’s something I’d better do in private.” With a polite smile, Celeste took her bag and backed away. “Thanks for your help.”

  Becca’s squeal followed her out the door. She shut herself in her car and promptly hyperventilated—then dug the book out, tore it open to the last pages, and read it again. And again, just to be sure she wasn’t imagining it. Ion. Ion Blackwell, Mr. I like My Private Life to Stay Private, had bared it all on the pages of books sold to millions.

  For her.

  Grinning, she hugged the book to her chest, then jacked the car into reverse, backed out of her parking spot, and headed home. She had to figure out what to say, and a long drive across Lake Pontchartrain to do it. The first thing would probably be you idiot followed by I love you, I love you, you idiot, I love you.

  She hardly remembered the drive, and nearly dinged the garage door when she pulled in at the house. She tumbled inside, bag swinging from her hand, and caught her father emerging from the kitchen with a steaming mug of tea.

  “You knew!” She thumped his arm. “You knew and didn’t tell me!”

  “Hm? Knew what?” he asked mildly.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” She pointed at him. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t pretend your memory’s going. You gave him that picture. You knew he was going to—to—”

  “Prove he was exactly the sort of boy I hoped he was? Yes. I’m tired of the Mooks in your life.” Her father’s face softened. “Your bag’s packed. There’s an envelope for you on the kitchen counter. Came by courier after you left for work.” He hummed thoughtfully. “Wonder what it is.”

  The teacup sloshed as she pulled him into a fierce hug, eyes stinging, elation rushing wild and cool through her. “Thank you.”

  Her father chuckled and patted her back. “I told you. Any boy would be stupid not to love you.”

  She pulled back; a pang dug hard fingers into her heart. “You remember that?”