Chapter Text
I met Paul the day that I landed in Paris but we didn’t talk properly for weeks.
Our first conversation happened ten weeks and two days after Conrad Fisher had told me he loved me. Ten weeks after Jeremiah Fisher had called off our wedding my worried parents had offered to pay for my tickets to Paris. Nine weeks after my mom had managed to contact Finch on my behalf - pretending to be me - to get me back into my exchange program (with Steven’s help, of course). Six weeks and five days since I arrived at my tiny room in a small, dark flat in the Marais.
I had been very lucky to get the room, as other, more organised, exchange students liked to remind me. I’d missed the deadline to get into the dorms, which was sort of a relief - there were eight other Finch students doing the same study abroad program, and I didn’t want to be living near anyone who might have heard what went down over summer from one of Jere’s frat brothers. But my friend Anneke had gone to high school with a girl called Rachel who went to college in Vermont but was also headed to Paris for the year. Rachel added me to a WhatsApp group with other American students, and when one of them posted that they had found a flat in the Marais district but needed a fourth housemate I took them up on it straight away, even though it would stretch my budget.
When I arrived in Paris it was the middle of August and most of the stores were still shut. It turns out that most Parisians, including the shopkeepers- running the Boulangeries, Patissieres, Charcuteries and Magasins de fruit et légumes - flee the sticky Paris summer for the countryside every August.
I didn’t mind. In the past, I had been one of the lucky ones who fled a sticky summer in the city for the cool ocean breeze - in my summer house, with my summer boys. Now I was one of the people left behind as others left for their versions of Cousins. Fitting, as I was pretty certain I would never be invited back to Cousins.
When I was at Cousins I always swam to clear my head. I don’t know why I never tried to find a pool in Paris. Instead, whenever I had time off class I wandered the streets, aimlessly, pausing after hours for a pain au chocolat or croissant aux amondes at a local Boulangerie. Conrad had once told me that when I swum, he didn’t think I’d notice if the house behind me was on fire. In Paris, walking felt the same. I was walking through the most beautiful city in the world, down boulevards of white stylised apartments that were lined with big green trees, but I passed in a daze. Weeks passed, Summer turned into Fall, the shopkeepers returned and the brown leaves scattered the streets, and still I walked around like a zombie.
My first conversation with Paul happened on a Tuesday morning. My classes didn’t start till the afternoon on a Tuesday, and I had woken with a jolt at dawn - as I did so often these days. I’d spent the morning wandering around the Bastille neighbourhood as it slowly woke up, which didn’t happen till after ten in the morning - people got up so much later here than at home.
‘Do you eat anything other than pastries for breakfast?’ he asked, pointing at the half eaten almond croissant I was holding in a brown paper bag.
‘Sometimes I just have a hot chocolate’ I replied. There was a patisserie two streets away that made a milk hot chocolate topped with a vanilla infused cream. I loved how the cream slowly melted into your drink as you sipped it.
‘At least yours is French’. He tucked a strand of blonde hair behind his ear while he nodded at his bowl of cereal on the bench. Colourful hoops bobbed around in the milk.
Paul was clearly a Froot Loops man. I’d noticed that someone else in our flat shared my love of sweets - that much was clear from the packets of brightly coloured cereal and snacks in our pantry - but had assumed it was one of our other housemates, Sophie or Sarah, not this wiry, tanned man who towered over me.
‘I’ve been meaning to try more local places while I’m over here’
‘I can show you some spots’ I offered.
‘Oh thanks! That would be great’. He hesitated. ‘You don’t have to, though, if you don’t want to’.
‘Why would you think that?’
‘No reason, really. it’s just that you seem like someone who wants to keep to herself.’
‘What gave you that impression? You barely know me’
‘Exactly. We’ve lived together for more than a month and barely spoken. You don’t seem to know any of the others in the program, and we never see you at any of the Erasmus parties. I’d love to go check out some spots. I’ll ditch my cereal and head out with you now if you’re free . I just didn’t want you to feel pressured to hang out, particularly when we live together, which makes me difficult to escape.’
He was right. Since landing in Paris, I had felt too overwhelmed by everything that had taken place over summer to really make an effort with the other students. Plus, I was someone who chose to go to the same college as my boyfriend and my best friend - I wasn’t good at making new friends.
But. I was only in Paris for a year, and I was missing it. I could hear my mom’s voice in my ear, urging me to take a chance.
I looked up at Paul. ‘Meet me back here in five, we can go and grab a hot chocolate together’.
‘Sounds good. I think this is for you, by the way - I noticed it when I picked up the mail.’
He handed me a bright white envelope with my name written in neat black cursive.
Picking it up, I could see that the stamp had been hand cancelled. Conrad Fisher had written me a letter.
I couldn’t help myself. I had to know what it said. I ducked back to my room and tore it open:
‘Dear Belly,
As I sit down to write this, I wonder where you will read it.
It’s strange not being able to picture where you live. I knew your loft at Laurel’s with the fairy lights, and I knew the blue wallpaper mom picked out for your room at Cousins. And although I tried not to picture you at Finch with Jere, I knew what the dorms looked like from Jeremiah’s college tour.
Now you live somewhere I’ve never seen, and I’m back in California, which you’ve never seen. Did you ever try to picture what my life looked like during the four years we were separated?
Either way, you’re in Paris now, and I’m in California. We’re an ocean and a continent apart, which feels appropriate after everything that happened.
I have felt my Mom’s loss so deeply in the last ten weeks. She was the glue that bound us Fisher men into a family. We are so poorly equipped to managed the fall out from the wedding without her. Sometimes I torture myself by thinking about how different the last few years would have been if she was still here - would my relationship with you have stood a chance if it didn’t start in the shadow of overwhelming loss?
But rather than getting lost in hypotheticals, I need to take responsibility for my part in what happened.
I should never have told you that I loved you two days before you were meant to marry my brother. I shouldn’t have told you two days before, because I should have told you years before. And for that, I am truly sorry.
Sincerely,
Conrad Fisher