24 Hours in Paris

Original Edition: Chapter Five

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?"