Caught Up in Us (19 page)

“Not even champagne or
cosmopolitans or chocolate martinis? I would think you’d be all
over the chocolate martinis with your sweet tooth.”

“Ugh. No. None of them. Those
fruity drinks and sweet drinks – all they’re doing is trying to add
enough sweet stuff to mask the taste of the liquor. And I can’t
stand the taste of beer. I mean, I drank it in college. But now it
just reminds me that I never really liked the taste even then. It’s
like swill.”

“And hard liquors are out, I
assume?”

“They taste like
gasoline to me. Well, I’ve never had gasoline, of course. My mother
would correct me now and say, ‘You mean they taste like
gasoline
smells
.’”

The flight attendant reappeared
with our drinks. She placed Bryan’s sturdy glass of scotch on his
tray table, alongside my orange juice, and two glasses of water.
After she left, Bryan held up his glass to toast.

“Hand all better?”

“Turns out I just fractured a
bone. It’s pretty much back to normal now.”

“Good.”

We clinked glasses. “To a
successful business trip to Paris.”

“I will definitely drink to that.”
I took a sip of my orange juice. “So, how did it all come together?
The padlock thing?”

“It’s not a done deal. But I’ve
been waiting on the city, and I heard this week that there’s
someone new in charge, and she’s open and wants to meet right away.
There are a lot of tourists coming to the city for the holidays and
then for Valentine’s Day, so they need to make room for new
locks.”

“So here’s a question for you. If
you hadn’t started this company, if you were doing something else
entirely, what would it be?”

“You mean, like playing shortstop
for the New York Yankees?”

“Yes. Like that.”

“Well, shortstop for sure.
Otherwise, I’d have to say rock star.”

“Rock star would be
awesome.”

“And after that I’d write for a
wine magazine.”

I chuckled. “A wine magazine? I
thought you didn’t like wine.”

“I don’t like wine. When you write
for a wine magazine, you can say anything you want and no one will
challenge you.”

“Explain.”

“You just make it up. You ever
read that stuff?”

“Well, no. Obviously.”

“Oh, I do. Just for fun.” He
launched into an imitation of a wine writer, pretending to hold a
glass and swirl it with one hand, while taking notes with the
other. “Mmm, I taste a little sandpaper. Yes, sandpaper and fresh
soil.”

He sniffed an imaginary glass.
“Faint aromas of shoe leather mixed with lightly toasted tar. It’s
full bodied, velvety and long. With just a touch of gravel. Gravel.
I mean, who the hell knows what gravel tastes like? But they write
that. They say wine tastes like gravel.”

“I don’t think I’d want to taste
gravel.”

“What are those writers doing?
Getting down on their hands and knees and licking the road? The
tar? The gravel? Just so they know exactly what the wine tastes
like?”

I gestured to my orange juice.
“You know, my orange juice tastes like it came from the
sunshine-kissed regions of Florida, with just a hint of a tropical
flavor, and an extra dash of pulp.”

Bryan raised his hands up, palms
out. “See, you can do it, Kat. You can totally do it. You know what
I’d like to really write about in a wine magazine?”

“What would you like to write
about?” I took another drink of my juice.

“I’d say, ‘I
like going to Bob’s Java Hut down by the ball park and getting an
egg salad sandwich before a Yankees game. That and a $2 Bud. And I
don’t even like Bud. But it’s good before a baseball game.”

I started laughing again, but I’d
just taken a drink of my non-drink.

“The complexity of the egg salad
sandwich, the mayonnaise from the grocery store, the smoky balance
between the mayonnaise and the eggs.”

I laughed more and wasn’t quite
able to swallow my drink at the same time.

“Sometimes I can even taste the
shell from the egg. I can almost smell the chicken from where they
failed to clean the egg.”

I felt a cough building in the
back of my throat. I covered my mouth with my hand, trying hard not
to spit out the liquid. I put my other hand on my chest, looking
down at the tray table. I kept coughing.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Kat.” Bryan
handed me a glass of water. I shook my head, still coughing. My
throat had constricted. I couldn’t swallow the juice. That left two
ways out for the liquid – mouth or nose. I felt the orange juice
swim into my nose. I reached for a napkin to cover my face,
coughing more as the juice made its way out my nostrils and into
the napkin. Hiding as best I could, I dropped my face onto the
table.

“Are you okay, Kat?” He placed a
hand on my arm.

I spoke in a muffled voice through
the napkin. “You can’t take me anywhere. You should send me back to
coach.”

“I couldn’t live
with myself if I banished you to the land of smelly feet. I’m
keeping you up here.” Bryan gently pet my hair. Even the soothing
touch of his hand after my display of dorkitude felt good.
“Besides, it was all my fault.”

I sat up straight. “You’re right.
It is all your fault. You made me laugh. You totally did it on
purpose. You sit there and launch into one of your riffs and you
make me snort juice.”

“They say laughter is the way to a
woman’s heart.”

I lowered my voice. “You already
have my heart. You know that.”

“I’m just trying to keep it
then.”

“You’ve always made me laugh.
You’ve always made me happy.”

Bryan looked out the window for a
moment, at the dark of the night rushing past the plane. He turned
back to me. The look in his green eyes was intense and
unreadable.

“What is it?”

“There’s something I’ve always
wanted to tell you.”

“This can’t be good.”

“It’s not bad, I swear.” He placed
his hands on his thighs. He parted his lips but didn’t speak right
away. I watched him as he fumbled for words. I watched his throat
as he swallowed. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them to
hold my gaze, a tight sharp line between us. I felt as if I were
hanging on to something that could crash in an instant. “Do you
remember when you told me you loved me the first time?”

That memory never hovered far from
the surface. It was always there, waiting to be harnessed. How
would anyone forget her first love not loving her back?

“Yes.”

“And I didn’t
say it back. I said
I have to
go
?”

“Do we need to reenact it?” My
face tightened, and I stared hard at the seat in front of
me.

“No. Because it was a
lie.”

I turned back to him, as if he’d
just spoken Russian. “What?”

“It was a lie,” he
repeated.

“Why?”

“I was crazy in love with you
then. Just like I am now. I’ve always loved you. I never
stopped.”

My head was spinning. My heart was
sputtering. I felt as if the plane had disappeared and I was
flailing in the cold, dark atmosphere, not knowing which way I was
tumbling.

“Why did you say that
then?”

“Because after we walked around
NYU together all I could think was that I would be holding you
back. That’s why I was so quiet that day. I just kept thinking it
would be wrong. That it would be unfair to you if you went to
college and were already saddled with an older boyfriend. I wanted
you to go to college, and meet other guys, and figure out what you
wanted in life. I didn’t want to be the guy who dragged you down. I
didn’t want you to go to college and feel burdened. I wanted you to
experience life on your own terms. And I knew I was going to be
leaving the country, and it seemed so unfair to you to ask you to
wait for me. To be a long-distance girlfriend when I was off
working.”

I scoffed. “So instead, you broke
my heart.”

“I know.” He reached for my hand,
and traced a line across my palm. His touch was so soft, but still
I felt raw and exposed. “Forgive me for lying. Forgive me for
breaking your heart.”

I looked deeply into his eyes,
pools of green I could lose myself in. How I’d loved getting lost
in him, and being found by him again. He leaned closer, pressed his
forehead against mine, and took my hands in his. He whispered to
me, his voice soft and full of brokenness, full of
tenderness.

In some ways, this was what I’d
always longed to hear. That he’d loved me then as I’d loved him.
That it had never been one-sided. Though in other ways, this
admission was a wound re-opened in a new, fresh way. Because he’d
thought he knew what was best for me. But he was wrong. Feeling so
damn unwanted by my first love hadn’t been good for me at
all.

I pulled away from him. “I wish
you had told me that back then. I wish you had let us make that
decision together. Instead, you made me think you didn’t love me,
and it hurt so fucking much.”

“I’m sorry, Kat.
I’m truly, truly sorry.”

He looked so anguished. But that
didn’t make my heart hurt any less, and it was aching right
now.

“Hey, do you
want to watch a movie?” he asked, worry lining his voice. He tipped
his forehead to the screen on the back of the seats. “I think I
saw
Love, Actually
on the list for this flight.”

One of my all-time
favorites.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t just go
back in time with him as if that would take the pain
away.

“I think I’m going to read,” I
said, then turned away and buried myself in a book for the rest of
the flight.

Chapter Twenty-One

The last time I went to the
markets of Paris, I strolled. I lingered. I lolligagged.

This time I was efficiency
personified as I tackled Port de Vanves. I was a businesswoman
powering through table after table, row after row. I scanned
quickly, writing off the items I obviously would never use on a
necklace — candlesticks, picture frames, goblets.

I ignored the old clothes for
sale, the chipped sets of china, and the antique mirrors. I stopped
at a table with miniature figurines, tiny little cows and pigs and
dogs and cats no bigger than thimbles. Some were brushed silver,
some white porcelain. They were cute, and while I wasn’t so sure a
cow was anyone’s favorite, there was something about the dogs and
cats that spoke to me.

I asked the vendor how much. A
round woman in a heavy tarp of a dress barked out a
number.

“Too high,” I answered in
French.

We bargained like that until she
reached her rock bottom, and I scooped up nearly one hundred cats
and dogs, tucking them in my wheeled shopping bag. I felt like a
regular French woman, weaving her way in and out of the stalls,
wheeling and dealing, snagging the best prices.

I continued on, passing
strange-looking garden tools and old kitchen utensils, when I spied
several tables full of brooches and pins. They were tiny things and
would look so very French on a necklace, the perfect mix of new and
vintage. I bought a few dozen, and then moved along to another
aisle.

I walked past a table full of
gray-haired men playing cards as they sucked on cigarettes. They
were seated behind a counter displaying a messy array of hammers. I
laughed silently, picturing a big, rusty hammer hanging from a
slender silver chain. Yeah, that’d be a big hit, for sure. I looked
ahead to the next set of stalls and spied a huge box full of
antique skeleton keys. The box was at the foot of the card table,
and it held hundreds upon hundreds of keys that must have worked in
miniature locks because they were tiny, no bigger than thumbnails.
They weren’t rusted. They had just the right look of weathered to
them.

I asked the men how
much.

“For the keys?”

“Yes.”

A man laughed, showing crooked,
yellowed teeth. He took a drag of his cigarette, inhaling deeply.
“No one’s ever asked before. You want to take them off our
hands?”

“Maybe.”

“Five euros.”

I pursed my lips together and
resisted breaking out in a smile. The keys were perfect. They were
pretty, but they also said something. Keys were staples of charm
necklaces, so they had universal appeal, but these particular keys
had a unique look that stood out, a sense that they could unlock
stories, or hearts, or secrets.

“Sold.”

I handed the man a bill, he
stuffed it in his pocket, and gave me the battered cardboard box. I
closed the tops, and managed to stuff the box inside my cavernous
shopping bag. I wheeled it away, made a few more stops, then hailed
a taxi. As we raced towards the Eiffel Tower, passing cafes full of
people lingering on salads and breads and coffees, and bakeries
peddling croissants and tarte normandes and chocolate eclairs, I
replayed my three days in Paris. At a market in the Marais I’d
found boxes of star, sun and moon trinkets, at a street vendor in
Montmartre I’d stumbled across elegant glass hearts. I’d still have
to do the hard work in assembling the necklaces, but I had the
materials, and they looked both fresh and French. In the evenings,
I’d taken myself out to dinner, at a bistro near Notre Dame, at a
cafe tucked at the end of a courtyard, at a bustling Korean place
around the corner from the hotel. I’d been alone, but Paris has a
way of surrounding you so you don’t feel quite so lonely. I’d also
stayed far away from the W Hotel near the Opera House, and from
Bryan. The fact that I hadn’t set up my cell phone for
international calling helped. No one could reach me
easily.