2 p.m.

Ten minutes into the tour boat ride, Mira was consciously trying not to move. Her right upper arm had been fused onto Jake's burly left arm since the start of the boat ride. For that entire time, the sun had been shining bright, and she now had the distinct feeling that she was sweating. If she dared to move, would her clammy, sweaty arm have a hard time peeling off of his? Nothing about the above sounded the least bit attractive, and on top of all of that she'd left her deodorant in her travelling backpack, which was currently safely stored at the airport. She could only hope that her brand of anti-perspirant lived up to its promise of "twenty-four hour protection."

In the meantime, the boat ride was living up to its humorous potential, as the photo-happy tourists were more ridiculous than she ever could've imagined. She tried her best to focus on that, to get her mind off her sweat-ridden arm.

"Why does that kid have his own digital SLR camera?" Jake said. "He looks like he's eight." He gestured to the kid with the camera that was bigger than his face; he was busy taking endless shots of the river view.

"That's not the crazy part," Mira said. "His parents each have digital SLRs too." She pointed to the kid's parents, who were encouraging him to use his tiny "kid body" to weasel his way to the deck's edge, in order to get the best view of the buildings that lined the Seine River. They then went on to take dozens of pictures of their own, never speaking, never smiling, and never even taking in the view outside the camera's tiny viewing hole.

"So wait," Jake said. "That's like two thousand dollars worth of cameras between one family."

"Even that's not the craziest part," said Mira. "Like what's gonna happen to all these pictures after the trip is over? I bet they'll upload a few thousand pictures onto their computer--most of them redundant since they're all pointing their cameras at the exact same stuff---and which ones will they keep? What if mommy says daddy's pictures are better? Sorry son, find a new hobby."

Jake laughed. "Yeah that kid doesn't look like he can take negative feedback. I mean he's swaggering and he's wearing a backwards hat; I was that kid."

Mira imagined Jake as an eight-year-old who thought he was the best of the best; somehow the image wasn't all that different from what she was seeing today. She smiled but kept the comment to her herself, as there was no need to ridicule Jake when they had so many other easy targets.

"Have you noticed that couple?" Mira said. A stern-looking man in his forties aimed his camera at his equally stern wife. "Every time he takes her picture she sticks her thumb into her front jeans pocket."

"She just did it again!" Jake exclaimed.

"It's like her face is saying she's all business, but her thumb in the jeans pocket conveys she's cool, casual, and likes to have fun."

"That description reminds me of a mullet hairstyle," Jake said. "Business in the front, party in the back, woo-hoo!" He was clearly still a little drunk.

"Yes," said Mira calmly. "Her face and thumb are the equivalent of a mullet; it's a body mullet."

Jake burst into laughter. "I can't tell if you're really funny or if I'm getting dehydrated."

Mira couldn't help but join in the laughter. "Let's just say it's fifty-fifty." All this distracting conversation had made it very clear that Jake was a lot of fun to talk to, and it wasn't just because of the wine. She realized then that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the rest of this day playing out in the "friend zone" way, and maybe she'd even prefer it that way.

"Check it out," Jake said. "The Eiffel Tower's just around the corner. Be on stand-by for the photo-taking tourists on crack."

Jake could not have been more accurate in his prediction, because a second later a sixty-something woman with a round-shaped body started backing up towards Mira.

"A little more!" said a man with a camera, who Mira presumed was the woman's husband. As per the instruction, the woman continued to go in reverse, never stopping until her ass was digging into Mira's shoulder.

Mira immediately turned towards Jake. "That ass almost hit me in the face, and now it's molesting my shoulder."

Jake tried his best not to laugh, and when he'd seen Mira suffer for long enough, he peeled away his arm from hers (it was sweaty as she'd feared), and wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling her towards him. In doing so, he saved her from the offending ass's reach.

"Thanks," she said, trying to sound relaxed while she experienced a wave of emotions. In two seconds flat, her previous thoughts about being perfectly happy to stay in the "friend zone" immediately flew out the window. For the first time she was wrapped up in Jake, both physically and emotionally, and it filled her with the kind of warmth she hadn't felt in a while. When the woman finished posing and walked away, Mira prepared for the moment when Jake would take his arm off her shoulders. To her surprise, his arm stayed exactly where it was, as he stared out at the view with the breeze dancing through his sexy hair. Not wanting to ruin this breakthrough moment, she said nothing.

As the boat approached the stunning gothic Notre-Dame Cathedral, Jake shifted around, though his arm stayed firm around her shoulders. "You know what I was thinking?" he said. "I want to make sure I remember this day."

"Then don't do drugs," she said plainly. He gave her a weird look. "What? Studies have shown that excessive pot-smoking can have lasting negative effects on long-term memory; just letting you know the risks."

He smirked. "Well in case something happens to my memory, I thought we should take some inspiration from these crazy tourists." He pulled his phone out of his pocket and smiled. "Ready for your close-up?"

In the age of "bathroom selfies" and "dinner selfies" and "just because selfies," this was not a big deal at all. And yet, if Mira's best friend Rachel knew that she was currently sitting on a boat with Jake and having her photo taken with him, along with his arm around her shoulders, she would flip. It was exactly the sort of thing that would've needed a three-hour gossip session. A.k.a. a big deal.

Mira did her best not to smile too awkwardly for the photo, and a second later her big day in Paris with Jake was immortalized in time...

***

With the boat ride over and Jake and Mira now safely back on land, they strolled along the river at street level, passing vendors selling a wide array of vintage Paris prints. Jake no longer had his arm around her, and a part of her wondered if the whole thing had just been a friendly move to get her out of harm's way, the harm in this case being a sixty-year-old woman's voluptuous ass. Jake slowed at one of the vendors, who was primarily selling a collection of black and white prints. "I should get something for my mom," he said. "Kinda dropped the ball on that yesterday."

"No," Mira said.

He turned to face her. "Excuse me?"

"I said no. There's way better stuff in the artists' quarter of Montmartre. We'll head there later."

He backed away from the prints and smiled. "I'd really be lost without you, you know."

Mira almost wished the two of them would be trapped in Paris forever, because that way she'd always get to have the upper hand. As it was, she'd just have to enjoy every second of these fleeting hours.

They continued strolling along, and a few moments later, they encountered one of Paris's few pedestrian bridges. Not just any pedestrian bridge, but the one that was famously full of monogrammed locks signifying couples in love; the "love lock bridge." Instead of avoiding this scene of "romance on steroids" for fear of it being awkward, Mira hopped up the steps and onto the bridge's boardwalk. "We have to cross this bridge," she said. Jake didn't seem enthused but he followed.

It was a summer day in Paris's high season of tourists, and nowhere was this more apparent than on the "love lock bridge." At least a dozen couples were buzzing around the railings of the bridges, which were absolutely filled with locks that couples had affixed over the years, adding their initials with a magic marker to somehow prove the existence of their love. Or something. Mira wasn't quite sure, but she knew she was a little cynical for her age.

Jake shook his head. "There's gotta be like a million locks on those railings. How many of those couples do you think are still together?"

Mira snorted. "Ten percent, tops." Yes, she was a little cynical for her age. "You know what the dumbest thing is?" she added.

"That we wasted our whole lives by not being in the lock business?" he said, as she started to laugh. "Seriously, there's gotta be like a million of 'em!" He shook his head again.

"Well imagine even more," she said. "'Because government-appointed workers come here in the middle of the night sometimes, cut off a bunch of the locks, and then throw them away." She laughed. Hard.

"Yeah right," he said.

"It's true!" she insisted. "The bridge would've collapsed ages ago if they weren't always cutting off locks. It's basically an engineering nightmare at this point."

Just then a young woman tapped Jake on the shoulder. "Could you please take our photo as we put on the lock?" she said, her accent thick and German. She gestured to her boyfriend who was crouched by the railing with a lock.

Jake frowned at the woman. "That lock's probably gonna get cut and thrown away in three months; you're wasting time." The woman scurried over to her boyfriend, now visibly distraught. Jake led Mira further down the bridge. "We should keep moving."

"That wasn't nice," Mira said.

"Hey I was just relaying your fun fact of the day." He shrugged.

Before Mira could decide if Jake was cynical like her or actually kind of heartless, something took her full attention. "What in the hell is that..." She approached a section of the bridge's railing and crouched down, now face-to-face with a "love lock" the size of her face. It resembled a heart-shaped iron plate, and on it were the words "Ryan + Nicole = forever" scrawled out with a white marker.

Jake crouched down beside her. "Where do you even buy something like that?"

"Maybe they had it custom made in the romance shop of horrors," Mira said, sneering.

Jake glanced around. "No, I see other ones." Jake was right; she could pick out at least ten more of these monstrosities around her.

"I don't understand," she said, pulling at the giant heart-shaped lock. "This expression of love is blocking out like six other normal-sized locks. It's such a dick move!"

"It's definitely something Kanye would do," he said, causing Mira to burst into laughter.

When she recovered, she turned to him with fiery eyes. "You know what? If I'd brought pliers with me to Paris, or whatever the hell cuts metal, I'd come back here at three a.m. and cut off all these heart-shaped dreams."

Jake laughed, and repositioned his crouching body into a comfier seated position. She joined him.

"Alright," he said. "It's time to have the talk."

She suddenly avoided his stare, even though she wasn't sure what he meant. "I'm confused," she simply said.

"I wanna know where all your love-hating comes from." He crossed his arms, expectant.

Mira was genuinely baffled. "I don't hate love. You must have me confused with someone else."

"Fine then," he said. "Clear things up for me; have you ever been in love?"

In a matter of seconds, things had just gotten very real. "Why does a college guy even want to talk about love?" she said. "That's kinda weird, you know." Mira relaxed a bit, satisfied with how she'd deflected the question.

He smirked. "I'll take that as a 'no.'"

Suddenly her face got serious. "You're wrong," she said. "It was once. Just once."

"Wow...." he said, his face overcome with amazement.

"What?" she said.

"I never knew reverse psychology could actually work; I just totally made you talk."

She punched him in the shoulder and he laughed. "Anyway..." she said. "If you must know...it was one of those high school sweetheart things." She looked off. "It's funny how when you're in the midst of all that, you genuinely believe that you'll never feel as intensely as you do when you're with that person. Like that person is the answer to every hope and dream." He was suddenly captivated by her every word. "But then you realize, it started when you were sixteen, and by the time you go to different colleges you're already different people. And looking back, that person you knew wasn't even all that special." She shrugged. "C'est la vie."

"I wouldn't worry," he said. "You've got plenty of time to meet someone new." He was staring at her again, but she was too busy scowling at a couple across the bridge, a couple that was busy fighting over taking the right selfie with their love lock.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she finally said, her tone of voice heavy with sarcasm. "I was starting to doubt if I'd ever love again at the ripe old age of eighteen." She turned to him. "What about you? You can't ask if you don't tell."

Jake smiled the smile of a man looking back on all his conquests. "I don't know about love but I've sure had a lot of fun," he said.

Mira rolled her eyes. "So you're a quantity over quality kind of guy, is that right?"

He stretched out his arms and put them behind his head. "I'm the kind of guy who doesn't really need to be ordering love off the menu. At least not yet. Get back to me in five or ten years and I might have a different answer..."

Mira slowly nodded, trying not to seem too stunned at the mention of five or ten years, which was a whole lot different than the twenty measly hours they had left...