Triple Love Score (25 page)

“That all sounds good. I could do that. Especially the crepe part.”

“But that’s my Paris fantasy. We have time for yours, too. Tell me. Name one thing that would just scream Paris for you. On a schoolteacher’s salary, it’s not like I get this opportunity all the time, and what, you’re a poet. Let’s enjoy this.”

“Let’s get a cab to the Louvre and start there.”

“Whatever,” Scott said, dancing his jig up the concourse. “We can start there, but you will tell me.”

“Les Deux Magots,” she called out to him.

He stopped and turned around. He cocked his head to the side and put his hand on his hip. “I’m listening.”

She strode forward to him. “I want to write a poem at Les Deux Magots. While having a drink or a coffee or something. I hadn’t thought that part out.”

“Now we’re cooking. I bet I could get my croissant there. Allez-y!”

“So now you speak French?” she asked, walking double time to keep up with him.

“Nope—just that, really, and merci. Which by the way, Merci. Merci beaucoup.”

“You’re welcome?”

“No seriously, Miranda, I haven’t been on an adventure in six years. I’ve missed the way this feels.” He put his arms to the side and fluttered them.

“Free?” she asked.

“Yeah, and light. I know she’s safe with my parents, and well, I can just do this. And I’m not even going to think about the credit card bill until February.” He repeated his Gene Kelly move.

“Oh, this,” she said. Balancing one hand on her suitcase handle she approximated the heel click.

“I’ll give you a seven for effort. We have to work on that.”

Despite the chill of December, many patrons sat on the terrace of the café sipping espresso from tiny cups and enjoying all manner of pastries while the sun warmed the sidewalk. The waiters, in black coats and bow ties, with starched white aprons, moved deftly through the crowd, refilling cups and even pouring wine despite the early hour. The maître d’ led Miranda and Scott to a table on the edge of the terrace, giving them a view of the whole café and the street that ran alongside it.

“Hemingway wrote here,” Miranda whispered to him. “And Joyce, and Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. Picasso, too.”

“And now you, too. Shall I order for us?”

“Do you do that in French, too?” Miranda asked.

Just then the waiter appeared. He introduced himself far too quickly for Miranda to understand. Scott opened the menu and pointed a few times and then held up two fingers. The waiter nodded and slipped off into the stream of other waiters entering and exiting the café proper.

“What did you order?”

“Well, I’m not sure. Let’s just hope for the best.”

And the best it was. A complete petit dejeuner with croissants, coffee, apple juice and some tartlets. Each morsel tasted better than the last. “Ah,” Miranda said, a bit of croissant melting on her tongue. “This is wonderful.”

Scott didn’t bother to swallow before responding. “It is,” he said, mouth full of tartlet. “I might need two croissants after we visit the Mona Lisa. But we aren’t done here. You need to write your poem first.”

Miranda winced. “It doesn’t quite work like that. It’s been so long since I wrote a real poem, you know with paper and pen. It might take me a bit. I don’t want to waste our time in Paris.”

“Would this help?” he said, pulling out the smallest travel Scrabble Miranda had ever seen. “I brought it so we could play on the plane, but I forgot. I got so wrapped up in talking to you and then we fell asleep. In Turkey, there was no time.”

“You can say that again! I can’t imagine that kind of wedding. Too much.”

“Really? You wouldn’t want all that? The big dress and the parties?”

Miranda took the Scrabble board from him and opened it. She started to select tiles and move them around the board. Even though it would be saccharine, she needed to start with Paris. Scott began to finger the tiles as well, making words for her to review like light and pastry.

“After my mom died, I didn’t think I ever wanted to be in a church again.”

“A wedding doesn’t have to take place in a church.” Scott laid out Seine.

“Seine—good one. I need Louvre. This will be real touristy. I know they don’t need a church, but that’s what my mom always talked about. We would go to other people’s weddings, and she would say, ‘When you get married, we’ll decorate the pews with bows,’ or ‘The organist will play this.’ You know, she planned everything.”

“She did, didn’t she? Always liked to know exactly what was going to happen next.”

Miranda had Paris and Seine and Louvre.

The waiter reappeared. He leaned down and arranged love from the v in Louvre. “Pardon,” he said. “L’addition.”

Scott handed him a credit card and added, “Merci.” The waiter again disappeared into the sea of tables.

“Good touch.”

“Allow me,” Scott said. He turned the board and took a picture.

“I know it’s not done, but it’s a start. I don’t want to waste our whole time here. Let’s go find the Mona Lisa. But wait—” Miranda fished through the letters again, adding Mona and Lisa. Scott snapped the new picture.

They returned to the airport with under an hour to spare and bags of posters and chocolates for everyone at home. They found a framed print of one of Degas’ ballerina paintings for Lynn and the Mona Lisa painting for Scott’s classroom. Miranda bought postcards to send to Dani and Omar and Omar’s parents to thank them for the hospitality. They collapsed into the plastic airport chairs, exhausted from the last few days but buzzing from all the chocolate chauds and crepes they had consumed.

Their flight left at midnight. Scott looked at his watch. “Which time zone do you want to celebrate in?”

“Celebrate?” Miranda asked.

“New Year’s Eve, silly. It’s almost midnight here. Midnight already happened in Turkey.”

The flight attendants emerged from a door next to the flight stand with three bottles of champagne in hand. “Everyone,” they said, first in English then in French. “Before we board, let’s toast to the New Year.”

The mix of clearly exhausted vacationers lined up to receive their champagne in the tiny plastic cups. They counted down to midnight, “Dix, neuf, huit, sept, six, cinq, quatre, trois, deux, un.” Then cheers of “Bonne Annee” went up over the loud speaker and then came the Choral des Adieux. Based on the music, it was clearly a French Auld Lang Syne.

Miranda wiped at her eyes. “Damn it,” she said. “This always makes me cry.”

“Here,” Scott said, “let me take your mind off that.” He leaned down and kissed her. He pressed the whole length of his body against her and wrapped his arms around her back. She moved her hands to rest on his shoulders and stood on tiptoes to meet his embrace.

She wasn’t sure how long the kiss lasted, but she knew it was the first time she would remember a New Year’s kiss.

“To many more?” Scott asked, raising his plastic cup.

“To many more,” she said, lifting her own.

While they waited for their luggage, Miranda finally turned on her phone. The staggering number of email messages, mostly from Ambrose, overwhelmed her. Two hundred and fifty of them. She scrolled through the list, pausing at the subject line. Classes cancelled. Then the next one from the President of the College with the subject line, Request for Meeting. Then her phone faded to black. No battery. Again.

“Scott, can I borrow your phone? I think something has happened.”

“What? Are your parents okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Nothing like that. Something with Ambrose. And my job.”

Just as Scott handed her the phone, the luggage conveyor belt fired up with several shrill beeps and an asthmatic whirling wheeze. The speed must have been set too high as the carousel spun rapidly, sending everyone’s luggage and golf clubs wildly around. Some bags lost their purchase and flipped off at the feet of the people waiting. It became a mad scramble. Miranda handed Scott his phone back and began searching the wreckage for their luggage.

As they got to her car, Scott’s phone rang.

“Lynn,” he shouted. “We’re back!”

Miranda watched the giant smile spread across his face as they loaded the bags into the trunk. She could hear the faint chirrups of excitement through the phone as Lynn told Scott all about snowboarding that day. Scott pointed at the phone and then pointed at Miranda. He pantomimed driving, his hands at ten and two on an imaginary wheel. She nodded and got into the driver’s seat. As much as she wanted to call Ambrose and the president of the university, she wanted to listen to Scott try to get a word in with Lynn. The music of their conversation washed over her like sunshine. She watched his animated gesticulations explaining how tall the Eiffel Tower was and how many crepes they ate while walking around Paris.

Miranda navigated the car to the exit, paid for the parking, and stopped at the intersection with no idea which way to go—to her apartment and her laptop or to her parents’ house where Lynn would be tomorrow morning.

It was strange being in her parents’ house without them home. Lynn had told Scott on the phone that Avery and Stanton decided to come out to ski, too. “Only they don’t ski,” Lynn protested. “They just sit in the lodge and watch other people ski.”

They dropped their bags in the foyer and immediately headed for the kitchen. Despite their French pastry bender, after the long flight, Miranda’s stomach growled.

“Where’re the take-out menus?” Scott asked. “I know Avery must have a stash that would rival a college student’s.”

Miranda pointed to the small desk in the kitchen. “Just get me something. Anything. I need a shower. And then a drink. And then some food.”

The warm water felt good on her back and shoulders. As she stood there, she tried not to think about being alone with Scott. But the idea of it was too much. Sleeping in the same bed for four nights. Pretending to be married. The kiss. She heard the doorbell ring downstairs. But she didn’t want to move from under the shower or stop replaying the last week in her mind.

A knock on the bathroom door startled her.

“Yes,” she said.

Scott cracked open the door. “I thought you could use this.” His disembodied arm held a glass of white wine. The glass fogged immediately in the heat of the shower. “Wow, you like it hot,” he said.

“Yes,” she said resisting the temptation to say something like, I think you’re hot or some other come-on. Every ounce of her body wanted to open the shower curtain and take the wine glass. Or maybe pull him into the shower with her.

“I’ll just leave this here,” he said. “Food’s here. I’ll put it out while you dry off.”

The wine glass clicked on the marble of the vanity, and the door softly thudded back into place. Miranda stood there, hand poised to draw back the curtain, until the hot water finally gave way to cold.

The wine, cold and white, which she swallowed all too quickly, did little to relieve her feelings of what she would have liked to have happen in the shower. A jersey wrap dress in a blue color that Avery always told her highlighted her eyes hung in the closet. Avery would leave hand-me-downs there, and every few months Miranda would open her girlhood closet and find new treasures to take back north. She fingered the soft fabric, considering the dress. It would be low cut on her. But it wouldn’t be her. Instead, she pulled open a drawer and pulled out sweatpants with the University of Connecticut logo peeling on the front and a flannel shirt from a high school boyfriend. The wine only made her more aware of her hunger.

Downstairs, she found Scott in much the same outfit, only his sweatpants were from Yale. “I see you got the dress code memo,” he said, reaching over to turn on the giant television in Stanton’s study. Lynn’s nature video, polar bears this time, filled the screen. “Do you mind if we watch something else?” he asked. “She makes me watch this all the time. And I get it, circle of life and all that, but I am so tired of watching all the animals struggle. I really don’t know what she sees in it.” He handed Miranda a takeaway container of fried rice and some chopsticks. “Plates seemed like too much. We were just in Turkey, right?”

“Yup, Turkey. And Paris.”

“And you were my wife.” He didn’t look up from the television as he said it. He was flipping past the sports channels, finally settling on an NHL replay.

“Yup, I was,” she said. The power play clock started, and the players on the ice fired up in frenetic patterns, hammering the goalie with shots. The goalie blocked one with his chest, caught one in his glove, and sent one back to the middle of the ice with a kick off his skate.

“I meant it all, Miranda. Please don’t think being home changes that.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No, it doesn’t. I am going to be more direct. I love you. I thought too much time had passed, that it was just part of being kids together. And then at Thanksgiving, it all came back. I couldn’t stop looking at you. And then you got that text at Christmas, and I just about lost my mind. The idea of you and that guy, a guy who would send a wonderful, smart girl like you dick pictures, I couldn’t stand it. When Danielle called, I knew I had to go with you. Miranda, I love you. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it; there’s too much between us to risk wrecking it on just a throw-away relationship.”