Page 92 of Exquisite Things

“Bram makes everything about him,” I say.

“Then teach him not to. We can only grow through honesty delivered with love.”

I nod. I take Changeling in my arms when Lily stands up. “Tell him to come upstairs. It’s his room too.” Changeling licks the dry tears on my cheeks.

Bram steps into the bedroom quietly. “We missed you,” he declares.

“Maud isn’t angry with me?” I ask.

Bram peels his clothes off until he’s in nothing but his underwear. He jumps into bed. Straddles me. “Of course not. She even raised a glass to you at the George.”

“The George?!” I sit up, alarmed that they would step into what we all know is enemy territory.

He laughs. Carefree. Drunk on nothing but his own righteousness. “It was fine. It was fantastic. If you were there, I would’ve kissed you in front of every vile man who called us perverts.”

“Then I’m glad I wasn’t.”

He bends down and kisses me hard on the mouth.

“Bram, stop. I’m not in the mood.”

He throws himself off me. Lies next to me. “Je t’aime,” he whispers.

“Don’t remind me,” I say.

“That I love you?” His eyes are on the cracked ceiling. “Or of Paris...”

“Both.” I stare up at the ceiling too. “I saved for months. Booked our flights. Got us a little hotel on the Seine. Felt it was time to walk along a new river.”

“That sounds beautiful,” he says. “Let’s do it another time. We can walk the Seine while eating a box of—”

“Macarons?” We look at each other. “That was already a part of the plan. Macarons and the Eiffel Tower. I even memorized a French poem to read to you on the Pont Neuf.”

“We don’t need to be in France for you to read me French poetry,” he says. Then, “Which poem?”

“Romance.” I pronounce iten français. “Rimbaud.”

“When you are seventeen, you aren’t really serious.” Of course, he knows it by heart already. Probably in multiple languages.

I echo his words in the poem’s original French. “On n’est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans.”

He smiles, impressed. Perhaps even moved. A love poem written just for him, my unserious seventeen-year-old taking all he can from life, too lost in eternal youth to see the premonition of what’s to come.

“He’s one of my favorite poets,” Bram says. “So sad he was taken so young.”

“Is it?” I ask.

“Of course it is. He was, what, forty when he died?” he asks.

“Thirty-seven,” I say.

“Even worse.” He sighs. “Nothing is sadder to me than artists who die before they’ve expressed all they had to say.”

I shrug. “I spent years wandering foreign cities thinking of sadder things.”

“Hey,” he whispers as he holds me close. “I’m here for your happiness and for your sadness. I’m here for all of you. Just... don’t push me away. Please.”

“I won’t,” I say, but I hear the uncertainty in my own voice. “I’m not... leaving you. That’s not what this is.”