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we only said goodbye with words (i died a hundred times)
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Christopher found her, that summer.
She was always told owls were clever, clever enough to find the addresses of people you didn't even know - he found her in the scorching Parisian heat after she let him out before boarding the train, thought border control was unlikely to let an owl through. 'You'll find me, won't you?' she asked, swallowed and felt awful - looked away; felt stupid, talking to a bird like people talk to their dogs. She was trying to hold back tears - tears at the thought of what she would do if she lost him. What if it was her fault? What if she hadn’t actually done everything she could?
'It's okay,' she said. 'Don't be scared.'
She felt stupid again - talking to herself.
He took a few days. She doesn't think she slept. There were too many things to do, anyway. Unpacking and buying food and mapping out her new commute. She rented out a chambre de bonne on rue du cherche-midi; so small she has to drape a sheet of plastic over her bed when she showers so that splashes don't wet the covers. In the late 90s, the streets of Paris are littered with dog shit when she walks them, crowded with screaming kids on Micro scooters, racing through the Luco before school. Every morning, she takes the fourth, straight from Saint-Sulpice to Réaumur-Sébastopol and in the Metro, she listens to people talk. Doesn’t know much French but the sound of it is pleasing. She briefly closes her eyes like the soft tune of instrumental music without the burden of lyrics to decrypt. In her head, she is somewhere else - she’s just not sure where.
Once, she heard a soft knock in the evening, the tapping of a beak against her sixth-floor window. Christopher's feathers were ruffled and dirty but he bumped his little head against her arm as soon as she let him in and asked for biscuits - she gave him treats and cried and said: 'I'm sorry.'
Things got better. She settled in: learnt to buy food at l’arabe du coin when she comes home late from work, learnt that paracetamol is only found in pharmacies, learnt that the best crêpes are in Montparnasse. Christopher still rarely goes out, acting like a teenager who eats everything and can’t be bothered with anything; he sleeps while she is at the office and greets her in the evenings, flying to stand on top of her shoulder. She pets his head like she would a cat and it makes working twelve-hour days sowing pearls and cutting patterns more bearable. At night, she goes out for walks to clear her head and he follows her; she sees him in the trees, feels as though he’s checking if she's alright, from up above. He nibbles at her fingers when she lays on her bed, drawing, or, whenever he wants attention.
It’s September, now. The air is still hot but the light in Paris is colder than London. It’s not just the grey - everywhere in this city: the clouds and the stones of the buildings and the tarmac of the pavements - even when the skies are clear, there’s this layer of powder that seems to float in the air and tires out the blue. She likes the autumn, though, like cinnamon and warm tea and rust-coloured leaves. She goes to the Tuileries and watches them fly in the wind.
Her friend Bastien comes for dinner. He’s always there, multiple times a week. He makes her smile. The other intern at Gaultier - started the same day she did - they tried to pit them against each other. His father is English; he grew up here. She wonders if she’ll have kids like him one day. A large circle of friends he’s introduced her to; they all went to these fancy lycées in the Sixth and smoke menthol cigarettes. Think it’s quirky she has an owl, although Bastien himself just curiously asked how she got it. They sit and share saucisson and cheese and a bottle of cheap red wine, the window open to let the air in.
The sun is setting, that night, the golden hour kissing slated rooftops - there is no view of the Eiffel Tower, but a faraway glimpse of the Panthéon. Mia sits on her bed and Bastien yawns on the one chair she owns, backed against the wall, his long legs extended and crossed at the ankles on the tiled floors. He talks with his hands and she's never seen him dressed in anything that didn't contain sequins. Sometimes, she convinces herself he can see into her soul. She's never met anyone like him. Or perhaps, she just hasn’t had a real friend in a while. It's easy to sit here in silence and not try so hard - for once. He likes to tell her about the boys he sees and she likes to listen.
Some things never change. She likes to listen.
Christopher nibbles at the phalange of her index finger. Bastien is in the middle of a story. She thinks about him. Not about Bastien, or his lovers. Not about Christopher either.
And: 'What was his name?' her new best friend asks, once.
She toys with the wine in her hand. A film of red liquid against the glass. She shakes her head. Bastien rolls his eyes.
He is out for blood on this one. She made sure he would be. Presented the story the way it should be when you’re single and twenty. She met a boy who slept with her on and off for eight months and broke her heart, dumped her after sex and punched her father in the face. It's not a lie. She hasn't spoken to her father in months.
'God, you won't even tell me his name,’ Bastien says, loud. There’s about a glass’ worth of wine left in the bottle. ‘Was he famous or something?'
'Yeah.'
He laughs.
The thing is: sometimes, she wonders if the way Bastien asked how she got the owl wasn't also his way of telling her he knew about owls, in general. Without actually telling her he knew about owls, because no one can know about owls. And she wonders if there are people-who-keep-owls in France, too (didn't she meet that bloke at the pub who said his wife was French, once? The memory is distant, another life). She wonders if maybe she should have pushed it. But: she is slightly drunk, now, and it matters less, and it is a million degrees under the Paris rooftops, and there are little lights in the sky outside and she is tired and slightly sad.
She thinks about him and thinks she could tell Bastien his name and see. She could also go back to England and sell her story to a lot of papers for a lot of money. She wonders what that would look like, her moving face on the front pages of their magazines and almost smiles. It would look bizarre - like someone who holds grudges and seeks out revenge - like someone she’s not. He’d probably get into a lot of trouble for telling her about owls in the first place.
She shakes her head and keeps him close instead. Protected. She isn't even sure why. She wants him to stay hers, like that. Her secret - no one else’s. She wonders if he thinks of her as often as she thinks of him and comes to the conclusion that he probably doesn't.
Christopher nibbles again. She gives him a bit of bread and lets him burrow against her chest, sitting in her lap. 'He wasn't all bad, you know?’ she shrugs and tells Bastien. He wasn’t a bad boy. ‘He gave me the owl.'
Bastien's gaze narrows. 'Right, yeah.'
He did a lot more than that, she knows, a lot more that she'll never tell anyone. And, when Bastien asks if she still loves him, she's not even sure what to say. That part of her probably always will. That it's okay. That she tried so hard to hate him and it didn't work, so now, she just holds Chris and lets the heartache come, lets it pass, and maybe one day, she won't think about it as much. She doesn't even want to hate him.
'He made me feel like I wasn't alone,' she says, then. 'That was a good thing.’
And, Bastien smiles, shakes his head. 'You're not, babe.'