“Then why not date a revenant?”
She leaned forward, a sad smile forming on her lips as she wrapped her arms around herself and looked out over the water. “There aren’t many of us around, so the choices are rather slim.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I took her hand in mine and gave it an encouraging squeeze. She smiled, and then said, “I better be getting back home. For Charles. Thanks for the chat. I can’t even tell you how nice it is to hang out with a girl.”
I felt the same way. I hadn’t made any friends here in Paris. And even though it meant spending time with someone who was practically a member of Vincent’s family, I had to admit I really enjoyed being with Charlotte. “We’ll do it again,” I promised.
If you are friends with Charlotte, you’re bound to run into Vincent at one point or another, a little voice in my mind nudged me. Oh, shut up, I told it, wondering if the pain in my heart would ever subside. It had to, I decided. The longer I spent away from Vincent, the better I would feel. I was sure of it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
INSTEAD OF IMPROVING, THE NEXT WEEK I FELT worse, and by Friday a creeping despair began to engulf me as I realized the entire weekend stretched ahead with not a single activity planned as a distraction.
At lunch, I turned my phone on to see my daily texts from Georgia:
Have you seen you-know-who’s ho outfit?
Calculus sucks.
Going out tonight, wanna come?
I hesitated, and then forced myself to respond to the last text: Where?
She wrote me back immediately:
Meet you after school.
At four o’clock, Georgia was waiting for me at the gate wearing an expression of sheer amazement. “No way, Katie-Bean . . . you’re really coming out with me tonight?”
“Depends,” I said blithely, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt. “Where are you going?”
“There’s a dance party at this underground club. The owner’s a very good friend of mine.” She flashed me a sly smile. My sister, the incorrigible flirt. “Seriously, it’s a really cool place, in this labyrinth of old wine cellars that runs under a couple of buildings near Oberkampf. It’s always packed with musicians and artists; you’ll love it.”
Although my heart wasn’t into clubbing, this was my only offer for the weekend. Actually, for the month, if I was being realistic. “I’m in,” I said. “What time are you going?”
“Around nine.”
We took the bus into town, and then changed to the Métro. Once on our street I told Georgia, “I don’t feel like going home yet. I think I’ll wander. Don’t leave without me.”
“I’ll pick your outfit,” she said, smiling, and headed up our street. I turned in the other direction and made my way past the busy boulevard Saint-Germain to drift through the small winding streets crisscrossing the area next to the river.
On a busy corner stood a café with a large terrace where my grandmother took me as a child for the delicious tarte tatin, a baked apple tart served upside down with a caramelized glaze. The café was called La Palette, as in an artist’s palette, its name dating back to when it was a hangout for local painters and sculptors. It was too far from home to have chosen as my local café, but totally worth the occasional visit.
A frigid wind gusted through the streets, and the normally teeming terrace was almost deserted. I pushed my way through the front door into the warm, delicious-smelling café. A waiter caught my eye and gestured toward an empty table tucked into an almost hidden niche behind the front door. Perfect. Anonymity was exactly what I wanted today.
I sat down, stowed my book bag under the table, and began to check out the café’s clientele as I waited for the waiter to return. A group of students rowdily chatting in one corner. Several tables of businesspeople with drinks set atop their documents. A striking-looking woman in her late twenties sitting by herself.
I focused on the last of these. Thick blond, almost white, hair flowed down her shoulders, and her high cheekbones and light blue eyes made her look vaguely Scandinavian.
A man with his back to me approached her from the café’s bar. He sat down in front of her, picked up the coffee cup sitting across from hers, and drained the dregs with one quick motion. Then he reached across to hold her hand, which was lying delicately on the tabletop.
He said something to her, and her gaze dropped from him to the table. I saw a tear run down her lovely cheek, and the man’s hand rose automatically to brush it away. He smoothed a loose lock of her platinum hair back behind her ear in a motion that I recognized.
And with a sudden realization, my heart stopped. As an icy chill overtook me, I grabbed for my bag and knocked the glass salt shaker to the floor, where it shattered loudly. The woman’s eyes flew to me as she said something to her companion.