Giverny with Jimmy in the spring. They explored Versailles together. When Coco graduated, he looked at her mournfully. He was going to Scotland for the summer to stay with friends, back to Vermont after that, and then sailing in Maine, which he did every summer with his family, and then starting graduate school at MIT in the fall.
“Does this mean it’s over, Coco?” he asked her sadly, the night before he left for Edinburgh.
“I think so, don’t you?”
“These were the happiest six months of my life,” he said, as though he was being banished from Brigadoon.
“Mine too, and the easiest.” And then she realized something that made her smile. She was the flash for him. “Now you need to go and play with children your own age, and I do too.”
“Why? We’re good together.” He didn’t see why it had to end, except that he was going to Boston and she was going back to London.
“But we wouldn’t be good together if we tried to make it last. That was never our intention. It just happened, and it made everything more fun.”
“Do you want to meet me in Scotland?”
“No, I don’t.” She had never told him she loved him because she didn’t, and she didn’t want to lie to him. The truth was much sweeter, that they were special friends, and neither of them would ever forget the brief time they had shared in Paris. It would be a sweet memory for both of them with nothing to spoil it.
Saying goodbye to him was one of the more grown-up things she’d ever done. She didn’t try to stretch their affair, keep it or make it grow or drag it into her everyday life. She kissed him when he left and he cried. “Now go find a nice girl in Vermont and fall in love with her, and don’t go looking for the wild, exotic, exciting ones. They don’t last. That’s the best advice I can ever give you. If you chase that, it’s foam on the sand and you’ll wind up alone like me.” He waved at her as he disappeared into the metro to get to his train to Scotland at the Gare du Nord.
She left for London with Bethanie the next day. They gave up the house in Paris. Bethanie had liked her school there too, and was speaking French. Coco packed her diploma, and then they went home. She had allowed herself to be a child for a season, and now it was time to go home and be a grown-up. She remembered now that childhood and youth didn’t last forever, and it was just as well. She had begun to miss being an adult and working. She felt renewed and refreshed and ready to go back to London, to pick up the reins of her life again.
Chapter 18
When Coco came back to London in June, Leslie was happy to see her. There were changes in her life too. Her Danish boyfriend of the last two years had proposed to her. He had never been married before, and Leslie had been divorced for ten years. They were doing it at the beginning of July. She wanted Coco there to run the office when they went on their honeymoon for two weeks. Coco was delighted for her and happy to do it.
“Did you leave the Boy Wonder in Paris?” Leslie teased her. She had gone over to visit twice, and he had come to London so they’d met. “For a minute I thought you were serious, and then I realized you were just having fun.” She had assessed it correctly.
“He’s in Edinburgh now, and then he’s going home to Vermont.”
“Was he heartbroken when he left?”
Coco smiled at the memory. “Just a little. He’ll get over it. Things like that aren’t meant to last. Nothing does, except the real thing, but that’s hard to find. My friend Sam says that I fall for the flash every time, and I have.”
“We’ve all had our share of those,” Leslie said. She’d had her own good times. But this time she had found a good one, and had decided to grab it before she missed her chance. “We’ve had an interesting proposition I wanted to discuss with you. It’s from an investor in New York. He loves our concept, and wants to open an office there. He wants one of us to help him set it up. You know the city and I don’t. He wants to add to