they could talk to us, right?”
He gets it. He gets me. “Like they have something to say. They feel, too, like they’ve seen more interesting things than the ocean, don’t you think?”
He moves his hand in front of him, wiggling it back and forth to imitate the river winding through the city. “Rivers snake through cities. They spy on us. They know what we’re up to. Maybe they know our darker secrets,” he says as something black flickers across his eyes. Almost like he has a deep, dark secret, perhaps one he’s shared with a river. Then he’s quiet, possibly drifting off to thoughts of those secrets. I sense he still has them. I can hear their echoes in the words he doesn’t say, the way he sometimes quiets at the end of a sentence or a thought.
Leaving so much unsaid.
I’m not like that though. Now that I’ve opened up to him, I see no need to hold back. “My love of the river came from my parents,” I say with a contented sigh. “My dad was like that. He was the one who loved it and took me to it, and he was the one who said the river would talk to me.”
“You got that from him,” he says, wonder in his voice.
“I did.”
Daniel stares off in the distance across the Rhône, his profile inscrutable.
Is he thinking of his own family? I want to know what’s in that faraway gaze of his. I’m tempted to ask, when he turns back to me and says, “Do you ever see yourself living any place besides Paris?”
I shake my head. “It’s my home now. I’ve no reason to leave. What about you? What about London? For all intents and purposes, that’s your home base. Even though you’re really only there half the time.”
“I don’t seem to put down roots, do I? I’m constantly drawn to Paris though,” he says, his eyes going flirty, journeying over my body, letting me know that I’m one of the reasons he’s drawn to that city. My God, I hope I can keep being one of those reasons.
I want to tell him to stay in Paris. Don’t go back to London. Camp out, stay with me. But that’s dangerous. That’s so damn dangerous. We’re ending.
Even though the more we talk, the more it feels like we’re only just beginning.
“I suppose I don’t feel like I’ve had a home in a long time, honestly,” he says, his tone melancholy. “I don’t think I’ve really felt that way since my parents died. I’ve been all over the world since then.”
“College in the US with Cole,” I say, prompting him.
“Yes, then I lived in New York. And I’ve lived in Los Angeles. I’ve spent time in Las Vegas. I have a home in London, but I also like to be in Paris. I suppose I feel like I’m everywhere,” he says, a note of mourning in his voice. “And perhaps nowhere all at once.”
My heart squeezes at that wistful note from him. I brush my hand along his back. “Do you like that though? That nomadic life?”
He heaves a sigh, then shrugs. “Maybe it suits me.” He’s quiet again.
Is he wandering back in time? Is he a nomad because of his family? I’m torn between patience and pushing. He seems to like both. He seems to like when I take my time, but also when I ask him things too. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. “Do you say it suits you because your family is gone?”
His eyes squeeze shut. When he opens them, they’re dark again, those blue irises like hard gems. “Nothing will ever feel like home again,” he says, his tone icy but at the same time full of self-loathing. The sound chills me and worries me. “You’re close with your parents, aren’t you?” He shifts the conversation with a question.
I go with the changeup. “My dad sent me a text this morning. It was a picture of his dinner the night before.”
Daniel’s grin is electric, buoyant, and wonderful. Like that’s the best thing I could have ever received. “What did he have?” He sounds deliriously giddy.
“He had a saag paneer. He loves Indian food,” I say.
“I want to see it,” Daniel says, and there’s that desperate tone again.
I take out my phone, click on the screen, then find my messages. I show him the photo of my father’s dinner. “Here you go.”
Staring at the picture, he works his jaw over and over. “It’s