“Bye, Mom,” Bri says, giving her a small wave.
Vanessa leaves, the bell jingling behind her.
Then, Brianna comes back to the table with bags of goodies and spots my empty cup. “You got the big one today.”
I chuckle lightly. “Needed it.”
She slides into the chair across from me and swings her feet. Then, almost as an afterthought, “Are you still sad about Mya?”
I nod. “But don’t you worry about grown-up stuff.”
Brianna rolls her eyes. “I’m not a baby. It must suck for you.”
“It sucks for all of us.”
“Yeah. It does,” Brianna says quietly.
47
MYA
Paris fits me in ways I didn’t expect.
I’ve been here for six months now, and the city has stopped feeling like a temporary escape and more like home.
I live in a shoebox of an apartment on Rue de Turenne, three blocks from the Paris office, with creaky wood floors, a slanted ceiling, and a balcony barely big enough for one chair and a mug of coffee. But when I open the French doors in the morning and watch the street waking up—boulangerie downstairs, scooters whining, someone yelling in French about deliveries—it feels like I did the right thing coming here.
We had our first official site visit today on the W.H.M. project, and everything was where it was supposed to be. The structural team showed, permits were cleared, and the local architect didn’t pitch a fit about us Americans coming in to “modernize” history. We actually got compliments. On a European site? That never happens.
I’m high off it.
I rent one of those electric scooters on the way home just because it’s sunny, and zip across the Seine, hair whipping behind me, grinning like an idiot. Paris glows at magic hour. It dares you to be sad.
I stop on the bridge and take a picture and send it to Seraya.
Look at me being Parisian.
A second later, she sends a photo back.
It’s a plant. A huge, ridiculous plant with a pink bow on it and a note.
Seraya:
RAFAEL LEFT THIS AT MY DOOR.
It says “for your oxygen”
WHO SENDS OXYGEN AS A GIFT???
I burst out laughing right there on the bridge.
Your landlord is in love with you and also unhinged.
Seraya:
I told him I don’t pay rent to date him then he said “we can negotiate”
COME BACK AND SAVE ME.