NEVERMORE : A twist to the tale

Flutes of champagne were served with toasts on golden trays to match the splendor of the event. Statues were aligned in a spirit of renaissance. The crowd was gathered in front of Spectre’s wall, probably gossiping about his contemporary genius.

I had no desire to step further into either the crowd or toward that jerk’s wall, so I remained by the Aries wall, crossing my eyes with Ajax from across the room. The intensity of his stare roamed over me without shame, making my heart leap into my throat. He was scorching me from across the room, his intention solely on me, contemplating me like an art piece. He attracted a few people close to him, most of them women, from whom he recoiled, sparing them a single glance. A grin shouldn’t have tilted my lips, but it did.

And so I pretended to be busy admiring the artwork and, most importantly, eating all the buffet. I grabbed three toasts in a row, which seemed to displease the server, judging by his lips twitching downward as if it was impolite to eat the free food. Hell, it was free. And it was food.

“Those toasts are divine.” I tried to strike up a conversation about the avocado, shrimp, and other fancy things inside that mind-blowing toast. “Don’t worry, I won’t go near the paintings with it.” Except for Spectre’s wall, but that would be wasting good food.

The server’s lips stretched into a thin, tense line, and I swore he was about to scream, “Guards, take that impostor away!”

That was my clue to not monopolize the buffet anymore. I felt like a deer among hyenas, or more likely, a hyena among deer.

I positioned myself in front of the nearest painting and brought my tongue back against my teeth, hoping I hadn’t caught a piece of food. Focusing on the painting and not my treacherous heart, I hooked a hand on my waist and analyzed the white canvas with a couple of black spots and a blue line in the middle of the page. I bowed my head to the side, skeptical. The description next to it was insanely long, and to be honest, I could have painted that. Especially for the price it was selling at. I could have made ten of each in one single day.

“What do you see?” Ajax’s voice brushed my back when he arrived by my side, his face imperceptible.

“Honestly?” That I should stop writing and produce money by splashing paint, an alternative therapy, instead of investing in a punching ball. I raised a brow, considering my inner monologue. “I see a shovel with a splash of dirt. Unless the artist stepped on his canvas and swept it with his broom. In that case, the name of the painting should be Sweeping the Dust Away and not that speech about the universe and the degrees of human emotions.”

“You have a wild imagination,” Ajax replied simply, and a laugh slipped free from my lips at the thought that he wasn’t seeing anything in it either.

“They should hire me to write their—”

“Excuse me.” The man in the colorful plaid jacket faced us with the sharky smile of someone who wanted to sell you everything and anything. He was Bernard Dupont-Brillac—the rude artist who got sent off like a stray bullet after colliding with Ajax’s back on purpose, and a man I unfortunately knew. Long story short, he was the teacher of one of Paris’s most exclusive art schools, Les Beaux Arts. I used to pose there as a model to make some cash, and he indeed was the asshole who fired me. Hopefully, he didn’t seem to remember me. But did it mean he heard—?

“Clemonte.” The man in question nodded at Ajax, who had a hostile frown plastered on his face. Bernard then focused his attention on me with his vile little eyes. “I’m the artist of this piece you’re contemplating. In case you were wondering, the line symbolizes the longevity of life. The boredom. It’s a straight and long, monotonous routine, until the end invades us and we die. The tragedy of men and their loss.”

“It’s not really optimistic,” I mumbled. “Life is not flat but, on the contrary, full of twists and turns. A line can’t possibly describe it all. We go through so many emotions as human beings, right?”

Bernard’s face snapped close, his nostrils flaring. A winning point for the incompetent muse. “And what do you know about art, miss? To admire a work requires a delicate openness of mind.”

“Oh, I don’t do delicate. I do direct and messy.” I attempted a joke that no one laughed at. I could already hear Emma’s voice in my head telling me to not cause a scene, but it was stronger than I.

I opened my mouth to speak again but was overtaken by Ajax, who had stepped in front of the man, overwhelming him with his imposing stature.

“Art is popular, and if you have to explain your piece with boring and over-the-top words, it means your piece simply lacks a message. Art speaks for itself. It shouldn’t be imposed. May I say that you also deliberately plagiarized another artist’s words with that sentence—” Ajax’s jaw tightened, his eyes locking firmly on the man. “Destiny has a way of connecting people. Sometimes the timing is wrong until it’s right. I believe that was the original sentence.”

Bernard lacked words, his defense retreating with Ajax’s fierce attack.

“My date—” The way he said it, possessive and strong, caught me off guard and sent a bolt of fire down my stomach.

It’s me. His date. He was talking about me.

I was someone’s date, and I wouldn’t freak out. Both of them had their stare stuck on me as I held my hand to my throat, feeling like a piece of shrimp was stuck in it.

“Please continue.” I waved at them, half choking with a semblance of a smile before swallowing a full glass of water from my lovely server.

“She saw a shovel, and you should be glad she was able to see the morbid message you failed to deliver, Mr. Dupont-Brillac.”

“Art is subjective, after all.” Bernard’s sharky smile was weaker. “If you’ll excuse me, I have other people to… enlighten.”

Bernard disappeared in the blink of an eye from my field of vision. The way Ajax closed this man’s mouth with brio was inspiring, but it also was the reason why I needed to keep my distance from him. I didn’t trust this world, nor men, and he was definitely part of it to have memorized a sentence by heart.

“Did he truly copy someone else’s pitch?”

“Yes,” Ajax affirmed with all his aloofness. “Lots of people do to fill their lack of inspiration and hope to be in the shadow of the success obtained by someone else.”

“Some humans have no morality, and yet, we still want to believe in the good in people. Otherwise, life would be too painful. The good news is that no one can steal your essence.” I needed to find a way to stop this topic ASAP, or else I might tell a complete stranger about my family history and my everlasting list of every delusion I had. “So, you believe in destiny? No one quotes a sentence that quickly if it doesn’t speak to them.”

“I believe we’re making our own, yes.”

I hadn’t realized we were slowly sweeping toward Spectre’s dreaded wall until now. I kept my anger in check and refrained from pouting at the elation of the people around it.

“And you?” Ajax’s voice brought me back to reality.

Confronted face-to-face with Spectre’s works, which were a mix of beautiful and tortured, portraying heavy emotions of love to hatred, I somehow managed to reply, “I’m a believer, so yes, for the better and the worse.”

His artwork on the wall seemed almost inhabited—more alive than the ghost that he was. It felt like an angry wave that would wash over me at all times and crush me underneath the aphotic zone of the ocean. I didn’t like the effect it had on me. I didn’t like the pang in my heart. Fortunately, I had never come face-to-face with The Sad Girl.

In these paintings, their faces were almost imperceptible, if not for the emotion that increased tenfold, hidden by some sort of floating veil. On one, two people tried to join their hands, drawn by rough and thin lines. But the couple was separated by the precipice that dragged down one person. As for the other, he was consumed by the weight that fell on him.

In each of his works, there was a message. On another, it was a man who walked with swords behind his back, each of which symbolized contemporary elements like money, social media, betrayal… He didn’t use realistic colors but sharp ones, like mixing navy blue with blood red and black with gold. He wanted to shock and make an impression. The last ones were morbid: from the grim reaper to one of a man sitting in the fetal position against a wall with words written like an impossible equation. The man was tearing off his face and screaming like a patient in a mental asylum. It was morbid. Morbid enough I had to hide the goose bumps on my forearm with my hand.

I disliked everything this man made me feel.

I held myself back from rolling my eyes and throwing champagne glasses at his art, when the crowd’s point of view on his persona shifted, and my interest was piqued to the point I had no shame in eavesdropping on their discussions.

“We hadn’t had a new Spectre painting in months. I think he was just an ephemeral trend,” one older woman said to another.

“His work is so gloomy. Is it the only thing he can do?” she replied. “It’s always the same thing. That man must be tortured.”

“All geniuses are,” a man interfered in the convo. “It’s a shame if he were to be old news, but I fear he can’t reinvent himself. It’s truly a shame. Dupont-Brillac, on the contrary, is—”

“You seem offended,” Ajax cut in, and I stopped eavesdropping.

“I’m not,” I spoke too fast. “It’s just I’m not really fond of Spectre’s enigma.” I quoted it with my fingers and a dash of sarcasm. “For me, he’s just a man trying too hard to appear cool, while he sounds more like an egocentric jerk to me.”

This definitely wasn’t Spectre’s night.

Ajax’s eyes remained fixed on me, and a nerve flickered in his jaw. “Why would you think that?”

“He’s a coward, not daring to show himself, and he created this whole thing about him like he’s some kind of god or whatever. His art is—”

I gazed upon the paintings. No matter how much I hated him, this man had talent. A lot. The knot in my chest persisted, and those silly goose bumps had difficulty disappearing. But I couldn’t admit it.

“Pretentious” was the word I settled for.

“Sometimes you’re forced to go to lengths you’re not used to taking to deliver a message.”

I delivered a smile that probably looked more like a death threat. “Are you siding with him?”

“I would never dare stand with an egocentric jerk.” I believed he’d almost made a joke.

We pulled away from Spectre’s wall to stroll across to the other paintings in the room.

“Good.” This time, the curl of my lips was genuine. “Why are you into art? You have knowledge, so you must like it somehow.”

“I like the fact that an artist can immortalize an emotion, a moment, for life. It’s very powerful.”

I agreed with him, but a question hung on the tip of my tongue. “Do you work in this universe? Are you an art seller or something? Maybe a gallerist?”

Ajax stopped walking, deliberately ignoring my question, shifting his whole body in my direction. “Why do you write?”

“I write to make people believe in better days. To beautify life. It’s like the need to breathe—I need to do it. I can’t give it up. You know that everywhere I go, I carry a notebook with me so I can draft any inspiration that comes through my mind.” I opened my little red bag and showed him my notebook and my pencil. “See? I’m always prepared.”

As soon as I experienced something strong, I needed to write what I felt like to capture an emotion and make it stay in time. It was like a personal diary in a way where I was free to expose my flaws and thoughts without judgment—maybe it was my way to be seen and heard.

“Why didn’t you write anything tonight? Are you not inspired?” He closed a few centimeters between us, and I couldn’t step backward, or else I’d have collided with the barrier behind me that prevented people from getting too close to the paintings.

The distance between us was not socially acceptable, and his smooth, subtle scent of musk and a fresh aroma made me travel to a sea of silken sheets. Clean and proper, it sounded just like him. My heart missed a beat. If I were that kind of girl, I’d blush. He was dangerously attractive, and on top of that, Ajax looked like a human shield—one you’d want to lose yourself in his embrace.

“I—I haven’t been able to write anything for a very long time. You can’t write what you don’t believe in anymore.” And here I was, gasping for air as if the room was deprived of it by his mere presence. “I mean, I do write for my job as an erotic writer, but it’s different. I’m a ghostwriter, so it’s not my work.” He waited for me to continue, probing me with that devastating stare of his. “And now, this is my last chance to have a stab at my dream to publish a novel. One that would prove that I was right to believe. That happy endings do exist.”

But for that, I had to become the person I’d been before.

“If you could write anywhere, where would you be?”

I thought this through.

“I think I’d like to be by the ocean, the sun radiating on my skin. Nothing else but the sand. This way, I could bring an oversized hat and a black bikini, holding a juice in my hand and pretending to be all rich and powerful in a villa way too big for a single lady.” A smile tipped off my lips, and a laugh slipped free. “That, and starlight skies.”

“I can inspire you.” He was dead set, wearing a poker face as if he was carved from marble.

I wasn’t sure if he was overly confident or if he truly believed he could solve my problems like some charming knight. Wrong target.

“Let’s get out of here.” His impulse caught me off guard. He went from a controlled Ajax to someone striding across the room, ready to fire up this place.

“But—where are we going?”

He stopped on his way, drilling his midnight eyes into me. “Do you trust me?”

“No, I don’t.” I wasn’t that foolish. “I barely know you. Plus, trust isn’t something you give away and—”

He gave me a scowl that almost stretched his face like a normal person. “Good. You shouldn’t, but I need you to pretend just for tonight.”

“Pretend?”

“Yes.” His voice brushed my skin like soft velvet. “Let’s pretend just for one night. Give me one night to change your mind and be inspired.”

I lost any notion of time. The sound of what was happening inside of me leaped through the crowd. The thumping of my heart. The fear in my gut. The desire growing in my core.

“I’m sorry, I should go. It’s late.” It was ten, and even if Cinderella had until midnight, fairy workers, evil or not, had to wake up early. “Thank you for everything, but this is not my place. If I’m honest, I probably agreed to go on a date with you for the wrong reasons. Not that I used you—you’re great. I just have issues. Lots of them. You don’t want to deal with them and—”

“I get it, Aurore.” He didn’t seem offended. “Grant me two hours. Let’s say until midnight.”

My heart was beating faster and faster like a pressure cooker about to combust, and I wished I could just shut it down.

“Please,” he said. “At the first strike of tomorrow, I’ll disappear, and until then, let’s pretend we’re not us. Not our pasts nor our fears. Just two characters.”

He was speaking directly to my author self. “The words you’re using are so not fair.”

“I can be convincing when I want something.” A thin line etched its way across his face. “I know a place that can inspire you.”

“Don’t tell me it’s your apartment because I’m not into that, and that’s a creepy line,” I countered.

“My apartment is average, so no, that isn’t it, nor something implying to have sex with you if that’s what you meant.” He loomed closer, and my eyes came to the height of his broad shoulders, which stretched the fabric of his suit that clung tight to his very well-defined biceps. I immediately lifted my chin so I encountered his stare back. “I’m a patient man, Aurore. I’m not in it just for that.”

Just for that? What was he in it for? I tried to probe his soul with a skeptical gaze and made a decision I was sure to regret. “Fine, let’s get out of here.”

The next few minutes were blurry in the grip of adrenaline. We rushed outside, heading in the opposite direction of everyone else to step out in the dark of night.

“It’s nearby. We can go by foot.” Ajax readjusted his suit, observing his surroundings. “We’ll pick up your bike right after.”

My lips parted, and the fresh breeze didn’t lower my body temperature. My bike? No way. He had seen me arriving on the verge of a mental breakdown. My moment of shame was cut by my phone ringing in my bag. I searched for it in the midst of the mess, dropping a few curses. People knew better than to call me because I was most likely to never pick up the phone—unless I was in a very shit mood.

“It’s nothing. I—” I shut it off, and alongside the missing call, I had a Google call invitation that was in the US time zone, asking me to hop on a call with Spectre at 4:00 p.m. his time, which meant 10:00 p.m. mine. “Damn it!”

Ajax’s brows slanted inward. “Is something wrong?”

The number called again, and I had never been more determined to pick up my phone. “I’m sorry, I really need to take this. I won’t be long.”

He simply nodded, giving me enough privacy to deal with the jerk.

One beat later, I picked up my phone. “Hi.”

“Hi, Miss Bardot? This is Spectre’s—”

“I’m glad to finally be able to put a voice to the man who stole my image, and don’t try to impress me—I’m not. Do you know how I felt when you portrayed my private moment? Don’t you dare—” I unleashed a flood of hatred that was cut off by the older voice.

“I’m sorry, Miss Bardot, but I’m only Spectre’s agent.” Of course. “I’m calling you because I’d like to schedule a meeting with you to discuss The Sad Girl, and I’m hoping we could come to an agreement. I’d like to know your availability for next week. I’ll be back in Paris.”

“I’m pretty much available. How’s Sunday afternoon?” This would give me enough time to prep after work and not enough to stress and kill myself with anxiety.

“How about 4:00 p.m.? I’ll email you the address.”

“Perfect. Have a great night.” We hung up, and that’s why I loathed phone calls—this would have easily taken two seconds by text message and wouldn’t have made my heart race.

I walked over to Ajax, who was also busy typing something on his phone with his forehead creasing. The moment I arrived back to him, he put his phone away in his suit pocket as if he had felt my nearing presence.

“Is everything okay? You look tense.”

“It’s just an issue I’ll solve very soon. Now, let’s see your place.” I shut my eyes for an instant. “Not your place as in your apartment but your special place.”

“I’ll lead the way.”

“So, this is how I got elected Miss Ballerina of my hometown.”

Telling Ajax about my personality-shaping childhood stories wasn’t part of my plan, nor was telling him about my weekend job at Ever After while we passed by the lit-up art galleries under the vaults of the columns.

“What did you wear?” And somehow, he still didn’t seem bored by them.

“My mom sewed my tutu. It was awful because first, it was green, her favorite color, because we were short on purple, and she was terrible at it. I looked like a bush instead of a daisy.” I chuckled, remembering my teenage years. “And then, I had to perform a dance. This was my main-character moment. Luna was recording everything on the camera, and I—”

Only then did I realize we were standing on an arched bridge that spanned the Seine. My heart raced at the sight of the gilded sculptures, the nymph reliefs, and the belle époque architecture. It was the Alexander III bridge. One of the streetlights was flickering, the light about to go out.

My face closed up, and my lips thinned, flashbacks trying to pierce through me.

This was the bridge of The Sad Girl.

“Aurore?” Ajax called.

I faked a smile and continued crossing that damn bridge, balling my hand into a fist.

“Then, the day of the show, I slipped. The floor was wet, and I broke my ankle. End of the story. I’m not even sure I was that good.” For all I knew, it was more proof that I wasn’t meant to be the main character.

I struggled to breathe under the weight of my heavy heart. I had avoided this bridge like the plague for years. I couldn’t tell if Ajax had answered me or not, the wind whistling in my ears and my footsteps crossing each other faster and faster until we stepped off the bridge. We plunged into small cobblestone alleys, and Ajax stopped in front of a small back door that seemed to lead into an abandoned gallery on the street corner. No one was in sight.

He turned the handle of the door, which squeaked open with a creaking sound like in a horror movie. “It’s always open. No one knows about this place.”

And for good reason—this place looked creepy as fuck. What was I doing? I’d be on the news tomorrow with the discovery of my corpse. All of that trouble to have followed a man who looked too good to be true.

This didn’t stop me from entering, already thinking about my obituary and the words people would say during my burial. I had always thought my eulogy would be “To the one who followed her dreams.” But now it would be “To the one who followed the Greek warrior and for what reason? None other than stupidity.”

Ajax took the looping old iron stairs and leaned on the ramp, dust coming away from it. “It’s on top.”

Step after step, we trudged higher, passing broken windows and creaking sounds. Crossing the final stairs, he slammed open a door with a forbidden warning sign, and the light of the moon radiated in shades of blue. Ajax advanced on the mansard roof, holding out a hand to me, and I thought I was dreaming. Windows with golden lights and the illuminated Eiffel Tower contrasted with the darkness of the landscape.

“This is wonderful!” The wind blew into a breeze as I joined him in the center of the roof. “I’m so glad I didn’t stand you up and that you didn’t bring me here to murder me.”

“I used to come here during my teenage years. I was more of a rebel.”

“You?” Undemonstrative, clean-cut, arctic him. “A rebel?”

I took my shoes off, balancing on my tiptoes. A slight smile slipped away for a brief moment, and I carried my heels in my hand. I ambled on the line of the roof, exploring the immensity of the world just for ourselves.

“You can’t drop something like that and expect me to not follow up on this,” I added, the weight of his gaze on me trying to destabilize me. “How were you as a teenager? I told you my story; now tell me yours.”

I tripped over, wanting to keep my gaze on his, but he caught me with one strong arm hooking me in his embrace. He pulled me to his chest, the moon shimmering on half of his face. I had trouble breathing when I muttered, “I’m okay.”

My two feet touched the ground safely, and we pulled away. A knot formed in his jaw as if I were repelling him or triggering something unwanted.

“I used to work temporary jobs to survive, hoping I’d make it on my own. I was a different man.”

So, Ajax had grown up poor. Perhaps we weren’t that different.

“That must have been hard. I understand the struggle.” But something about the way he said it, almost robotically, showed he was hiding something. “What changed, then?”

“I got exactly what I wanted and became who I wanted.” His hand flexed for a second. “And that turned out not to be enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“Most humans are a disappointment.”

“I agree, but this can’t be the case for all of them,” I said, his scars calling out to me, his stone heart beating in harmony with mine. “That’s why you’re all closed up? Your past made you this way?”

He waited a moment, so I added, “It’s much easier sometimes to confide in a stranger.”

Someone you’ll never see ever again.

“I’ve never let my past shape me. I’m in control of who I am, not the others.” His eyes read into mine, inking a powerful message within me. “And what’s your story, Aurore?”

“Me?” I laughed, half-apathetic, half-desperate. “I was like every kid, I suppose—happy and so hopeful, imagining countless stories. I was the good girl with ballet slippers, ruffled pastel dresses, and ribbon in her long locks of hair. The hopeful one who believed in the promise of happily ever after and the lies that it could someday be her turn. I wanted to become legendary and be a storyteller that would inspire the ugly world. For me, nothing was impossible as long as you believed. How cliché.”

I sounded ridiculous. He must have taken me for a naive freak with the way his whole face tightened, probably wondering why he’d bothered to ask.

“I did witness love in its pure and magical shape, growing up with parents who couldn’t keep their eyes off each other at the dinner table. My father used to bring yellow dahlias to my mom every time he was back from his business trips, just like he’d carry me on top of the packs of hay and calculate the age of ladybugs with me and my sister,” I added, confiding in a stranger that couldn’t care less about my backstory or had no desire of becoming my personal psych. “But all those memories were a lie I created to blind the obscure truth.”

The one where my father had abandoned my mother, my sister, and me—and our fairy-tale life.

My mind rewound through the memories. At the dinner table, Mom would hold her fork until she broke it to hide the ugly truth from us. My father brought my mom’s favorite flowers, hoping she’d forgive him for having a double life and breaking her heart all over again. He took me on a walk so Mom could cry alone and clean excessively to remove all traces of the other woman and the kids he had elsewhere. The family he chose over us.

One bad news always brings another, and my sister paid the price for my father’s lies.

“Something happened, Aurore,” I remembered my mom sobbing on the phone. “The school called. It’s Luna.”

My heart thundered, the memory so vivid.

“She got into a violent fight, and… I didn’t know. She never told us… This has been happening for months.”

“You speak in the past.” Ajax’s voice saved me from falling deeper into the void, his eyes searching for the truth underneath.

“Because I’ve been hurt.” I admitted my vulnerability for the first time before letting my heart solidify again. “I mean, we all get hurt, right?”

“I suppose,” he stated simply. “How did you know it hurt you this way?”

What a strange question. “Because as much as I want to be that person again, I can’t, and that’s my problem. Now I’ll probably end up as the hostile old woman children whisper scary tales about. The one who wears a long, fake-fur coat and writes dark crime novels with a diabolical laugh,” I joked with a nervous laugh, to which he didn’t even give me a semblance of a smile.

“This is how you see yourself?” His tone was dry.

“You know—” I played nervously with my fingers. “—that life has been taken away from me. I became who I needed, someone strong and fierce, someone I could rely on in order to survive. If I go back to being that naive girl, I’ll sink. Does that make sense?”

Our eyes met, and the steel barrier around my heart broke slowly. “It’s nothing. It doesn’t make sense. I—”

“You needed a hero in your life, but you had no one to take care of you, so you became the villain.” He put into words what I couldn’t explain. “I get that, more than you think.”

“What makes you one?” For the first time, I felt free to be who I was. A side character who didn’t have what it took to be the hero, who slowly turned into the bitter, pathetic villain of her story.

“I sacrificed everything to become who I am, and I’d do it again, selfishly.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me something about you. Something that is a part of you but you’ll never say out loud on your own. Like a secret. A confession. I want to understand you.”

If I were to tell him and we ran into each other again, it’d be embarrassing, but then again, it was unlikely to happen. We seemed to belong to the same category: the ones who don’t get happy endings. “Fine, but only if you admit something too. And something very personal.”

“I will,” he promised.

I joined my hands together and admitted my vice. “I have a collection of fairy-tale dresses. Ball gowns I never wear. And I think I do that because I would love to take the place of a romantic heroine inside a book. It’s stupid, I know, but I have no choice but to be stubborn and fight to prove that life is not all sadness and broken hearts. That it can also be wonderful and magical. I want to continue to believe in it from all my soul, even if I’m incredibly mad at happy endings. But is it too selfish to want the same happiness as those heroines?”

Well, well, well, it looked like that part of me wasn’t buried as deep as I thought.

“That’s noble,” Ajax said. “But sometimes, life is empty.”

Empty. That word echoed in me like a knife cutting me piece by piece. Life was empty, meaningless, without a dream and love. Empty and lacking inspiration. Just like me.

“Life would be too depressing without a dream. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe, but you have to force yourself and continue, even if you don’t want to, and one day, it’ll pay off. We forge our reality.” I hope. “When I used to tell stories to my sister, I thought I had a superpower. It was an escape from reality.”

His lips turned into a thin line I interpreted as a smile. “That’s very main character of you to say.”

“But I’m no main character. She’d be the perfect one who has the whole world at her feet with just a glance. The one everyone would declare a mondial war to save her. I’m more of the sarcastic side one who will hunt you to death if you break the heart of someone she loves. The one with a bad temper and a tendency to fuck things up and serve only as moral support to the main character. The one you don’t go to war for.”

“And don’t you think that side character deserves her own story? Sounds way more appealing to me than the other.” His voice made me believe he was interested in reading into me. “Those characters are fools if they don’t go to war for you. Because with you, they could win.”

“You don’t mean that.” I shook my head, my skin prickling like a barrier, ready to defend me, but he didn’t budge with all his seriousness. “All right, your turn, Mister.”

He cleared his throat. “All night, I had one thought that I couldn’t get out of my head. One that consumed me.”

“Which one?” My voice was weak.

“About the taste of your lips.”

“My lips?” I repeated, my nerves racking.

“Yes.”

Time floated in the air, a mystical pull drawing us together, closer and closer. We inched forward, the starry night our only witness—like a black curtain enveloping us under its veil, keeping the secret through time. Just one night. All my senses became alert, inhaling his scent like the last day of summer and a goodbye kiss.

We were close enough so we could breathe the same air. It was the part where I’d close my eyes and hope for the magic of that first kiss, lust melting with angst. But it didn’t happen. The moment was broken when Ajax pulled away. His inscrutable mask was on again, to the point I could believe this was all a figment of my imagination.

Of course, that perfect kiss fantasy wouldn’t happen. Because life just wasn’t like that.

“We should head back.” His tone was drier than usual.

It took me some time to get my spirits back. “Wait, a second, I think I want to write something.”

“You’re inspired.” He paused. “I’ll wait for you by the stairs.”

Alone, I dug out my notebook and pencil. Tonight, I had something to say. A moment to magnify.

That feeling of déjà vu. Once, a cruel and sad moment, and another one so beautiful and enchanted that the first stroke of midnight would come much too soon. Is it better to stop it now before the disillusion?

“You didn’t have to bring me home, you know?” I turned my keys in my hand. “I have pepper spray in my bag.”

Cold and stern, Ajax was holding my bike on his shoulder like it weighed nothing to him until we arrived in front of my apartment, a typical Parisian studio with expensive rent.

“I still have two minutes to share with you.” He positioned my bike on the ground.

I stood up on the ledge, and yet he still managed to stand taller than me. “It was nice to meet the real you tonight, Ajax Clemonte. I’ll be sure to search for you online properly when I’m home.”

“I have no doubts. Thank you for accepting my invitation.”

The tension between us was so unbearable that I immediately made a dramatic bow and dropped like an idiot, “Maybe in another lifetime, we will meet again.”

Thirty seconds remaining.

I didn’t give him my number.

He was staring.

I was panicking.

Ten seconds.

I wrenched open my door and—

“This is not over, Aurore. It never is.”

At midnight, Ajax disappeared through the cobbled path, and I closed the door on the most enthralling night I’d ever had.

A night of reverie before jumping back to reality with only reminders, the butterflies in my stomach, and the pound of hope.

“Come on, Aurore. Don’t be fooled. It doesn’t last. It’s ephemeral.”

But for a moment, I let myself be transported, rediscovering the desire to be inspired.