real ballet. Nothing that wasn’t done by kindergarteners with glitter face paint. What’s Swan Lake about?”
Justin chuckled, then sobered. He stared over the Seine, watching the mated swans drift away, side by side. He sighed. “Finding yourself and who you were meant to be, through true love.”
“I thought it was a tragedy. Isn’t there an evil black swan?”
“It’s got everything from a classic fairy tale: a prince, a beautiful maiden, an evil sorcerer. The prince comes across a maiden who, by day, is trapped in the body of a white swan, cursed to float on a lake of her tears forever. At night, she resumes her true human form. The prince sees her then, and they fall in love. She tells him the curse can only be broken if someone who has never loved before declares their undying love for her. But when he is ready to declare his love, the prince is tricked by a sorcerer, who has spelled his daughter to look like the white swan. His daughter is the black swan. The prince declares his love for the sorcerer’s daughter, but he finds out he’s been tricked, and he runs to the white swan. But it’s too late. Brokenhearted, the prince and the white swan drown themselves in the lake of her tears.”
Wes stared at the ground, at the gravel beneath the toe of his boot. “He was meant to love the white swan?”
“But he was tricked by the black swan.”
“They were together in the end.”
Justin tipped his head to Wes. Quirked a tiny smile. “That’s why it’s a love story.”
He didn’t know why he did it, but he held out his elbow for Justin. Maybe it was the wine still sloshing in his veins, half a bottle on half a lunch and half a crème brûlée. They’d shared a single plate, eating like they were a couple on a date. Everything had been dreamy since, the edges of the world fuzzy, reality blunted, the Parisian evening taking on a warmth and a glow that had him feeling like anything was possible. Even Justin taking his arm again.
Inexplicably, Justin did.
The sun was still up when they arrived at the Eiffel Tower, and they posed for the photos that every tourist snaps: holding up the tower, arms over their head or to their sides. Wes pulled out the sepia-tinted, old-time cowboy photo, and they hunted for the closest spot they could get to recreate the image: Wes in the same pose, with his hat on his head, gazing at the photographer with his thumbs hooked through his belt loops. He beckoned Justin to join him when Justin’s laugh burrowed too deeply under his skin, and then they took selfie after selfie, the two of them side by side, Wes plunking his cowboy hat on Justin’s head, Justin mugging for Wes and the camera, glaring like he was Clint Eastwood in a dusty old Western.
Eventually, hunger demanded his attention, and he led Justin to a parade of food trucks and told him to pick one. They ate brie-and-ham crepes as the sun set, turning the Eiffel Tower into a torchlit Monet, all the colors of Paris refracting off the old iron girders. They watched the sunset in silence, and then Wes led Justin into the Champ de Mars, the park that unfurled beneath the Eiffel Tower. They had an hour to kill, and he bought two beers from an Algerian barker rattling cold Heinekens their way, opening Justin’s for him before passing it over and tucking the bottle caps into his pocket.
Something sang in the space between them, like the sway of their bodies was charging the air, the blood running in Wes’s veins, the thoughts running wild in his head. Take his hand. No, don’t risk it. His eyes slid sideways, watching Justin tip the beer to his lips, watching his throat rise and fall as he swallowed. He held your arm today. What did that mean? It meant he was drunk. Park lights were winking on, Victorian-era lamps casting puddles of light across the dusk-hued lawns, the dirt pathways. He was meant to love the white swan. But he was tricked by the black swan.
I could fall in love with you, if I let myself.
It was Paris, and it was summertime, and it was the wrong place and the wrong time. He wasn’t ready for this yet, wasn’t ready for his heart to catapult out of his chest and chase this man, crave him. He wasn’t ready