Original Edition: Chapter Five

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1 p.m.

Mira sat in a secluded area of Luxembourg Gardens, her chair pulled up to a rectangular pond. She watched as the orange and blue fish raced around just beneath the surface; weren't fish supposed to have a relaxing effect? If that was true it certainly wasn't helping Mira, as she sat there fidgeting and biting her lip.

It had barely been fifteen minutes since Mira had grabbed her bag from the lawn and slinked away, at the same time that Jake had been escorted from the park. She remembered how he'd watched her the whole time. He hadn't seemed angry, but rather a bit surprised, almost as if he was disappointed in her. The idea that she may have disappointed him pissed her off; who was he to be disappointed? He barely knew her! He had no business having these grand expectations of how she should've stood by his side. And even if he had expected something, why did his brain immediately shut off whenever there were girls around? He really needed to work on that.

A sudden sound startled Mira. It was the elderly man napping in the chair beside her. He'd just let out a sound that was a cross between a loud snore and a sneeze. As much as the old man was currently grossing her out, his presence was opening her mind to the opposite side of the argument inside her head. Could Jake have had a reason to be disappointed? She suddenly recalled the scene at the café only two hours before, when her and Jake had shaken hands and pledged to stick together for twenty-hour hours in Paris. Only two hours in and she'd broken the pact; why was it so difficult for her to control her bouts of rage? She really needed to work on that.

Mira got up from her chair, grabbed her bag, and turned the corner of the narrow path, eager to restore her pact. As she neared the exit that her and Jake had entered the park from, she started to wonder if he'd even be there, waiting like a dutiful puppy. Fifteen minutes was a long time; long enough for him to get annoyed, and long enough for him to get lost in the winding streets. She quickened her pace, and with each step she started to get more nervous. She didn't even have Jake's number; how had they not exchanged cell numbers? What was this, the nineteen twenties?! Maybe they'd just assumed they'd stick together, or at least that had been the plan...

Holding her breath, nervous as hell, Mira passed through the exit of Luxembourg Gardens. Suddenly bombarded by a throng of pedestrians and the sound of noisy traffic, she was finding it difficult to focus. She glanced to her right. He wasn't there. Then to her left. No sign of him. She leaned against the park's ironclad fence, suddenly feeling rather ill. She hadn't felt this sick about losing something since she thought she'd left her phone in a college bar, only to find it the next day between the pages of a textbook in her backpack. She now realized she was equating losing a human to losing a cell phone. She made a mental note to not be so obsessed with technology once she got home. In the meantime, she was short one lacrosse player and not really sure what to do.

She noticed an Indian man a few feet away, with a cooler full of bottles of water he was selling for one euro each.

"Bottled water," he said in an Indian accent. "Just one euro. Bottled water, just one euro." He kept repeating it in English as tourists strolled right past him and into the park.

Mira approached him with a cautious smile. "Excuse me," she said.

The man grabbed a bottle of water out of the cooler and shoved it in her face. "Bottled water, one euro."

"No thanks, I don't need water," she said. "I was just wondering if you saw someone fifteen minutes ago. A tall guy? Young? Light hair? Probably wasn't wearing a shirt?"

"Bottled water, one euro." He stared at her blankly.

"I don't need a bottle of water," she said. "Can you just try to remember if you saw this guy and noticed what direction he went in?"

"You want a water or not?"

"No I don't want a goddamn water!" This man was quickly becoming a real pain in the ass. "And by the way, how can you charge a euro for one of those bottles? You clearly just took them from one of those multipacks of twenty-four, which by the way I could buy for like three euros. That's like an eight-hundred percent mark-up for one bottle!"

He shrugged and got back to repeating his one-euro chant. Mira realized that ranting about product pricing was not the best use of her time. She decided instead to check the whole perimeter of Luxembourg gardens, in the off chance that Jake was strolling around in a circle to avoid getting lost. Along the way, she passed families with adorable kids, two ice cream stands, and several attractive French men. She ignored them all, as her foolish mistake continued to gnaw through her insides.

As Mira started to round the final corner that would get her right back to where she started, she found herself coming to terms with the fact that she probably wasn't going to find him. What would that mean in the time between now and tomorrow? She could certainly keep herself busy during the day, but as night fell and things got shady for a woman on her own in Paris, she'd be relegated back to Charles de Gaulle for a night of sleeping on the airport floor. She sighed as the man selling one-euro bottles of water came back into view. Just like she'd feared, there was no sign of Jake.

"Hey!"

Mira felt her stomach take a leap. She knew that voice, but where was it coming from? She looked both ways but saw no one that resembled Jake.

"Across the street!" said the voice that sounded just like Jake.

She squinted her eyes past the four lanes of traffic, and there he was, his head poking out above a crowd of pedestrians inferior in height. He smiled and waved, and Mira felt a rush of relief.

"Cross the street and go around the corner!" he yelled. Without any further instruction, Jake disappeared into a nearby side street, and Mira finally realized she'd better get moving.

One long traffic light later, Mira managed to jostle past the slow-moving tourists, turning the corner to the street where she'd find a waiting Jake. Only he wasn't there. That pit in her stomach was back. She hurried up the street with no plan in mind. Where was he? Did he have an invisibility cloak or something? And why was she thinking about invisibility cloaks?! She suddenly regretted her latest binge-read of the Harry Potter series.

"Boo," said a voice.

Mira gasped and turned to find Jake right in front of her, smirking.

"Where'd you come from?" she said.

"I was inside that gift shop," he said, gesturing to his left. "I was literally staring out the window and you didn't even notice. Just like I was following you the whole time you were walking around the park, but you didn't even notice I was right across the street."

She pushed him hard but he barely moved an inch. "How could you do that? I was worried!"

He smiled. "Aww, you were worried you'd never find me? That's cute."

She felt herself blushing. "Hardly; I was worried you'd get lost and accidentally walk into a neighbouring town."

"Well you really need to work on your tunnel vision." He put his hands behind his back and rocked back and forth, whistling. She waited for him to say something else but he didn't, leaving Mira with the one thing she knew she had to say.

"Alright dammit!" she cried.

Jake made a quizzical face. "I'm not sure what you mean."

She sighed. "I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have ditched you."

He crossed his arms. "And why is that?"

She slumped her shoulders. "Because...we had a pact."

"Exactly, and a woman who breaks her pacts is no real woman at all; don't you think?" He smiled.

He was baiting her, wanting her to get in a rage. She simply smiled. "You're right, I've learned my lesson. But isn't it also true that a guy who does dumbass things just to impress a bunch of girls is no real man at all? Dumb things like...waving around a bottle of wine and getting kicked out of a park?"

He nodded slowly. "I suppose that's true."

"Then let's just put it all behind us," she said. Mira took a step forward, almost like she was leaning in for a hug. When she realized what she'd almost done, she hopped backwards and nearly collided with a garbage can.

"You alright there?" he said, trying not to laugh.

"Yeah I'm cool," she said, reaching into her bag for her notebook, hoping it would cure her embarrassment. She started flipping through the pages and stopped when she'd found something that filled her with inspiration. She grinned and looked at Jake. "Are you by any chance still buzzed from the wine?"

"I kinda am," he said. "I probably should've eaten more cheese."

Mira rolled her eyes. "Pretty sure you ate almost all of the cheese and only saved me the scraps. Which means I'm definitely buzzed as well."

"And?"

"And there's something I'd like to do while we're buzzed in the middle of the day."

"Well I know what I like to do when I'm buzzed." He gave her a sly smile.

Mira shook her head, marvelling at how guys could be capable of having such a one-track mind. Instead of being annoyed like before, she found it kind of funny. "Well it's probably not what you're thinking," she said, "but I have a feeling it could be pretty fun. Wanna join me?"

He cleared his throat. "Mira, I am officially all yours to lead around Paris. So come on, show me what you got!" He took a few steps down the street, then stopped and turned back. "Which way though?"

Mira pointed to the left, but her mind was spinning around at a dizzying rate, as she replayed her favourite part of what Jake had just said; Mira, I am officially all yours...

***

A twenty-minute métro ride and fifteen-minute walk along the riverbank later, Mira and Jake approached the docking point of Paris's guided riverboat tours.

Jake stopped and turned to Mira. "So that's the big surprise?"

She nodded excitedly, but he didn't seem to share her enthusiasm. He stroked his chin like he was thinking. "Hmm...I don't know; doesn't this seem a little basic for your well-researched list of things to do? This feels like tourist trap 101."

Mira wasn't the least bit offended by his assumption. "The goal of the list isn't to only do local-approved things or off-the-beaten-path things," she said. "The goal is to do the best things under the right circumstances. And you know what it's going to be like taking a boat tour with crazy tourists when we're buzzed on wine? Hilarious. It's going to be hilarious."

He couldn't help but smile. "Okay; I can kinda see the value in that."

With a satisfied smile she led him to the winding queue of tourists.

***

Ten minutes later, Jake and Mira approached the front of the queue, waiting for the tour attendant to let the next wave of tourists onto the boat.

"So listen," Mira said, her voice low and secretive. "Once he moves the barrier and lets us on, the key is to elbow past everyone and race to the deck." Jake nodded. "I'm serious, there's no point in going on this boat if we don't get a seat on the upper deck. It's where the most ambitious photo-taking tourists are, and we need to be near the crazies."

I agree," Jake said. "If we don't get a front-row seat of the crazies trying to pose in front of the Eiffel Tower, we might as well just ask for a refund."

A few seconds later the barrier lifted, and Jake raced his way onto the boat, with Mira following close behind. It wasn't normally in Mira's nature to be as impolite as she was being right now, what with her pushing her way past families with small children, but these people weren't on the same timeline as her. With less than twenty-four hours to go, she needed to capitalize on every moment. And also, she'd had a lot of wine, which tended to make her a bit of a jerk; she accepted this.

By the time Mira made it to the upper deck, Jake had somehow already found a seat near the railing, which was quite the feat since most of the spots were already full. He smiled and waved her over, pointing to the spot right beside him. She hurried over and took her seat. In that moment she became incredibly aware that the seats on the tour boat were extremely close to one another; so close, in fact, that there wasn't even a barrier between them. It was then that she realized a very important fact: her body would be touching Jake's for the next half an hour...



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