Paris Adieu #featured #Wattys2017

Chapter 16 - Being Where I Belong

"You're a performer, a star. I'm a peacock. See what I mean?"

He sure got the second half of that statement right.

"You are a peacock, but I'm not a pea hen. I'm a performer now, but I'm not sure I want to keep on being one. I 'm not star material." There. I'd breathed life into the thought that had been nagging at me for so many months. I wasn't Madonna, and I was never going to be her or anyone like her. It just wasn't me.

"Of course you are. That's what drew me to you in the first place." His eyes lit up at the thought of whatever glittering image he had of me when we first met.

"That was then, and this is now." I took off my black and white turban and tossed it in the trash.

"But what do you mean? You're a performer. It's your destiny to be a star."

"While you were away, I realized I don't want to be a star. I want to be a songwriter."

"Eh voilà. I'm a journalist, and you're a songwriter. Two writers who don't compete with each other. Parfait."

"Not parfait, Arnaud. I'm going back to New York."

"But – then what about Pierre?"

"I told you this has nothing to do with Pierre," I yelled. I needed to get back to where I belonged, that was all.

"What has nothing to do with me?" a voice chimed in.

Sacré bleu! I looked around to see Pierre standing under the streetlamp, his brown eyes trained on mine with remarkable focus.

"My decision," I said calmly, although I felt anything but calm inside.

"What decision?" Pierre asked.

I took a deep breath.

"Arnaud and I are no longer seeing each other," I said, not daring to look at my former love.

I'd made more life-changing statements in the past five minutes than I had in the past five months. I was scared, but it was a good kind of scared. I had stood up for myself, for what I wanted out of life.

Pierre's eyes swiveled to Arnaud. Mine too.

"Is that your wish, then?" Arnaud asked, looking directly at me.

I nodded. No sound came out. There was no point to say anything more.

"Bon. C'est ça. Then we're done." Without so much as a glance at Pierre, he turned and walked away, his back straight, his stride jaunty.

It didn't fool me. He'd probably walked out of the life of the woman called Mélanie like that once upon a time. Then, he'd carried a torch for her forever after. Now, he could carry another one for me.

Pierre looked steadily at me. "I came to ask you something."

"Why I ran away – " I began. "I needed to – "

"Non. Not that." He cut me off, searching my face.

"Then what?"

"You know what."

"Do you mean, what's – "

"I mean, what's between us."

I nodded. Of course that's what he meant.

"What is between us?" I asked, wanting to hear him put words to what we already felt.

His hand slipped into mine as naturally as our feelings for each other had slipped into each other's hearts – without fanfare.