“I’ll let you wear it on odd days.”
“Deal.” A light lingered in Mat’s eyes for a heartbeat more. It felt as if, in our awareness that the light existed, he extinguished it.
He cleared his throat and I pointed across the Seine. “Let’s circle Notre Dame then take the Pont de l’Archevêché over the river again. The restaurant is just a few blocks back toward the apartment.”
We walked down the street and when Mat turned to the left, I gently pulled his hand to the right. Once redirected, he didn’t let go and I moved my fingers to find that perfect intertwining within his hand. The fact that he didn’t shake free felt deeply compassionate with the tantalizing hope of something more.
“Painful to see, isn’t it?” He gestured to Notre Dame as we passed from a towers-only view to her battered flank. He was right. I hadn’t been to Paris since 2014, five years before the devastating fire. I hadn’t seen her wounds. Almost three years post-fire, they were still overwhelming.
“They’ve put up scaffolding?” I pulled him to a stop and pointed with my free hand. “I thought they were still debating the approach.”
“That scaffolding was there before the fire and much of it got infused into the church.”
“I wonder what will happen. I can’t imagine it being anything other than what it was.” I stared at the cathedral and, after a few moments, felt Mat staring at me. I twisted toward him.
“And what was it?” His look held a teasing gleam. Again, I got the impression I was about to get a history lesson. I smiled. This was Mat.
“Notre Dame.” I swallowed the bait and fully faced the church. “The beautiful and impressive church you see right there.”
Mat did the same, and launched. “What you see started small in 1160 with a simple broad, low building.” He swiped his hand wide as if painting a picture in the air before us. “Then they laid a cornerstone for something grander, adding the choir and the double ambulatories in the last years of the twelfth century. In the early thirteenth, they started building the spine to the west, the basic blueprint of what you see today. Then during the late thirteenth to mid-fourteenth century, the two towers got added, as well as a spire at the intersection of the nave and transept. In the eighteenth century, while reconstructing the roof, they removed the spire and the lines changed again. Then, after an extensive reconstruction project in the mid-nineteenth century, another spire was added. That’s the one you see under the scaffolding now and believe has been there all along.” He turned toward me again. “We face that point again—an ever-changing discussion between the past and the present with an eye to the future.”
“Applicable to both life and a building.” I smirked.
“I couldn’t pass on such an easy setup.” Mat chuckled and started walking again to the next bridge, the Pont de l’Archevêché.
I smiled and half-skipped to catch up. In talking of history, he’d forgotten himself and the awkwardness between us. We were going to be okay.
On the other side, we followed a charming street in the sixth arrondissement, allowing only one lane of traffic, with wide stone sidewalks and again flanked with expensive shops and cafés. Our final turn was onto a pedestrian thoroughfare. It reminded me of Boston’s Acorn Street. It was equally narrow and cobblestoned, sloping to a rise in the center. But the similarities ended there. This street was bustling with restaurants, cafés, people, and languages.
Le Procope sat halfway down like the grand dame she was, with her sidewalk tables and bright red and royal-blue striped chairs. Inside we found more red. Red walls, red leather banquettes, and red and blue carpet running up her sweeping white marble staircase. I gestured to a plaque on the wall. Le Procope. Cafe-Glacier depuis 1686.
“It’s the oldest restaurant in Paris.”
“Your mom must be well connected.”
I nodded. “I’m beginning to think she might be. She always was the extrovert parent before . . .”
The words drifted away. I had no need to go back there anymore.
Soon settled in the rich leather banquette of a cozy corner table, we ordered. I started with escargot and tried not to laugh as Mat gingerly pulled his first snail past its plug of parsley, butter, and garlic with a tiny fork. One bite and his skepticism vanished. He brightened and dug those buttery dollops out as fast as he could snag them. He commented he couldn’t taste the snail, but loved escargot.
I grinned. “That’s because it’s only a conduit for butter, garlic, and parsley. Three of my favorite foods.”
We then moved on to cassolette de ris d’agneau for Mat and filet de boeuf, sauce Bérnaise, and frites maison for me—basically a country stew and steak and fries. Every bite worked its magic and I soon found we leaned toward each other more, smiled with greater ease, and truly laughed without holding back.
The real surprise came at dessert. Before we even ordered, a chocolate soufflé and the house tiramisu arrived without prompting.
“Your mother ordered these for you and paid the bill, with her compliments.” The host arrived aside our waiter.
Mat raised a brow in an annoying I told you so manner.
Rather than give his smug look any reply, I reached forward and snagged a bite of tiramisu. He countered with a spoon to my soufflé.
“I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so well.” He finally laughed, swiping my ramekin and scooping out the final bits of chocolate. “I live on a chicken I cook every Monday and a heap of salad fixings. I can stretch the whole thing out a week.”
He surveyed the room, now filled with the harmonious sounds of tinkling glass, china, and soft conversation—like an orchestra playing the first notes of a perfect night. “I couldn’t have imagined something like this.” He looked at me and tilted his head. “But you . . . the London House . . . I didn’t know that about you in college. You must go to places like this all the time.” His gentle lilt lifted his sentence to a question.
My mind shifted back to my Sunday arrival, reading letters with my mom. Something she had quoted . . . “There are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.”
Mat’s tentative question was all the encouragement I needed.
“Not really.” I cracked the door open to my childhood a little wider, for him and for me. “When I was young, my brother was a teenager and into every sport imaginable, and he was a good student. Weeknights were spent following his games or his studies. After he left for college, the same fall Amelia died, there weren’t many family dinners. And now, fancy dinners out aren’t my style, nor any of my friends. We’re more of a pub burger than Neptune group.”