Page 7 of Here in My Heart (Here Together #2)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sylvie sipped her steaming black coffee and brushed away the flakes of her morning croissant. Sunday mornings were a real treat. Colette was one of a handful of café owners who prescribed pastries and caffeine to hungover revelers.

It worked. Every single week, the city’s finest clubbers filed in for their carb load, while the church bells rang across the square.

Sylvie shuffled the pages of her book and scanned the crowd of hedonistic twenty-somethings.

All hair and fashion choices, clashing in color and confidence; they wouldn’t look out of place in the university common room.

She glanced down at the denim jeans and classic cashmere she’d pulled on this morning, a hint of her Parisian roots.

She wouldn’t be caught dead in some of the outlandish choices of her students.

She sat upright, pondering her maturity.

Was she showing her age? With the drama of leaving Paris and seeking a new career in the south, her mid-thirties had snuck up on her.

She liked to think it wasn’t obvious, but in a room full of students brimming with youth, she couldn’t be so sure.

“Can I get you anything else?” Colette asked, balancing a tray of empty coffee cups at shoulder height.

“Not for now, thank you.” Sylvie smiled.

“Anytime, my darling.” Colette peered over Sylvie’s shoulder. “What’re you working so hard on there? You’ve had your head down for more than an hour.”

She sighed. “I’m treading water on my book edits. I don’t know why I put so much pressure on myself. It’s not like anyone will read it.”

“What’s it about?” Colette wrinkled her nose with what looked like genuine curiosity.

Sylvie tried to think of something fun and entertaining. Nope. The truth was she was writing something so academic even her professorial peers had stifled a yawn when she pitched it at last year’s conference.

“Well?” Colette shifted the weight of her tray. “Is it a secret? Some dark erotic fantasy that you’ve been working on deep into the night?”

Sylvie’s scoff attracted the attention of a neighboring table. “Not likely.”

“I find that hard to believe.” Colette winked and whooshed past a group of undergraduates jostling each other on a bench.

A motley crew of individuals, all sharing the same brash optimism and spark.

Their expressions were wild and free, their body language fluid and bold.

As she rested her gaze on each person, their unique collection of clothing struck her.

Androgynous and effortlessly neutral, but exotic and attractive.

Her thoughts drifted to the chaperone in her charge.

Just a couple of years senior to this troop, Ade had a similar look.

Rough at the edges, as if no care had been taken at all.

Yet she seemed to pull off a look that was put together and deliberately magnetic.

Sexy, even. Sylvie had never been attracted to a person with no deliberate definition of their gender.

She shook her head, reminding herself that Ade was also at least a decade her junior. And a member of her staff team. Thinking anything like that would lead to trouble.

But once born, the thought stuck and twisted inside her mind as she twirled the last of the croissant on her side plate before dipping it into her cold espresso. And it was much more interesting denying her attraction than picking up her pages and highlighter pen.

Romantic dalliances hadn’t come thick and fast. Since moving south, she’d kept herself to herself.

But in the year since she’d arrived here, she’d isolated herself more than ever. Her friendship circle had shrunk down to Isabelle, and she couldn’t possibly consider Colette her friend. Including the café owner from next door really was clutching at straws.

She missed Elda and was looking forward to their annual get-together. She scribbled in her notepad to remind herself to finalize this year’s details. The year marched on, and they still hadn’t agreed whether she’d be traveling to England or vice versa.

Her phone buzzed. She opened messages and squinted at the username, not recognizing the avatar.

Sorry to bother you on a Sunday. Do you have any recommendations for things to do in the city? I’m at a ‘loose end.’

Who is this?

Sorry. It’s Ade Poole.

Sylvie chuckled. So Ade was sneaking into her DMs as well as her Sunday wonderings. The interruption wasn’t entirely unwelcome. I was just thinking about you. She groaned. Why had she written that? Of all things. It had just slipped away from her and onto the screen.

I thought of you too. That’s why I messaged.

Sylvie laughed. Of course Ade wouldn’t read anything into it.

Hesitating, she scrolled to her calendar.

A blank Sunday afternoon stretched down the entire screen.

She replied before she had any more time to doubt herself.

How about we go to the cinema? There’s a film on I’ve been itching to see.

Three dots indicated that Ade was thinking about it. Had Sylvie overstepped?

Yes, please. Sounds good.

Meet me at Place Jean Jaurès. At three o’clock.

I will. See you then.

Sylvie second-guessed her invitation at least a dozen times before she wandered to the noisy square where she’d arranged their afternoon meet-up.

Why she’d offered to socialize with one of her staff members, she couldn’t fathom.

But there was something about the simplicity of Ade’s message which betrayed the confidence it took for her to reach out in the first place.

Plus, she was merely a colleague. Sylvie and Isabelle met socially all the time.

What difference did it make that she was, in theory, Ade’s superior?

She forced the doubt from her mind and focused on the kindness she was showing a fellow academic as they found their feet in a brand new city.

She’d shown the very same hospitality and welcome to Elda when she’d turned up as a disheveled and chaotic artist five years ago.

In fact, there had been many folks since, who had drifted in and out of her university circle.

She’d met them for coffee or a glass of wine, enjoyed a concert or open mic night.

None had really stuck around and had moved elsewhere through promotion or marriage.

Making new friends is a good thing. She repeated the mantra over and over as she turned the corner to the familiar square.

Jean Jaurès was already bustling with a late afternoon crowd as Sylvie took a seat at one of the street tables and ordered a glass of red wine. She wasn’t sure what Ade drank and didn’t want to presume. So far, their interactions had proven that Ade couldn’t be read that easily.

After a few moments, she spotted Ade and gave her a wave. “You made it,” Sylvie said as Ade approached.

“It’s not far. I walked down the Rue Foch, and it brought me out by the bakery. Do you know that one? They make the best pastries.”

Sylvie smiled, pleased to see Ade’s enthusiasm for her adopted city.

“If you like pastries, I know a great place. I’ll take you there next time we meet.

” She gestured to the seat next to her, facing the passersby.

“Please, sit. We can watch people come and go for a while. The film starts in forty minutes or so.”

Ade took the seat and drummed her fingers until a waiter came to take her order.

“I’ll have the same, please,” she said, pointing at Sylvie’s red wine.

“Thanks for meeting up with me. Steph told me I needed to go out, and I don’t really know anyone, except you and the students. I didn’t want to go out with them. ”

“So I came a close second?”

Ade’s eyes widened. “No. When I really thought about it, I wanted to go out with you. I really liked talking to you the other day in the lab.”

Ade’s straight talk was nothing short of endearing.

The ability to say something without subtext and leave nothing unsaid was an undervalued attribute.

Sylvie had been criticized badly for doing just that, burning the bridges of her friendships.

She’d walked away from the scorched embers perplexed, as if the other party’s reaction to her honesty was entirely unwarranted.

Perhaps Ade could be an addition to her honesty circle. She straightened a crease in her blouse and leaned in. “I thought we’d watch a British film together. I’ve been meaning to see it for a while, and it’s on at the arthouse in its original version.”

“You’re not treating me to something local?”

“Is your French up to la nouvelle vague?”

“New Wave? I doubt it. But I’m improving all the time.”

Sylvie raised her eyebrow, impressed at Ade’s knowledge of the term. “Perhaps next time. This film is in the same vein. It’s a story told in the woman’s perspective of the male gaze.” Sylvie almost saw the cogs whirring inside her brain when Ade frowned.

“Tell me more about what you teach at the university. I feel like I’ve talked a lot about marine life, but I don’t really know anything about you.”

“That’s true. I know more about penguins than I did two weeks ago.” Sylvie warmed beneath Ade’s curiosity. “So, I’m a professor of European feminism. I lecture four times a week and run five or six seminars, depending on how big the year group is.”

“Sure.” Ade fiddled with her thumb ring. “But tell me why you do it.”

“That’s a more complicated answer.” Sylvie brushed a hair from her eye. “Part of me is passionate about the unheard stories of history. Part of me is half way up the ladder of academic success, and I can’t imagine not reaching the top, so I’m digging in and taking one rung at a time.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I love it.” Sylvie sipped her wine, giving herself some time to find the words to explain to a virtual stranger the depth of her ambition and the barriers that had stood in her way over the last five years.

“I’m writing a book comparing the feminist theory of Virginia Woolf, a British author, and Simone de Beauvoir, a famous French philosopher. ”

“Wow. That sounds…” Ade looked like she was searching for the right word.

“Boring?” Sylvie asked, anticipating what a scientist would make of her arts and culture major.

“Impressive.” Ade drank her wine. “I’m in awe of people who can read meaning into the world through stories. I don’t have that skill.”

“How do you see the world, if not as a culmination of everything that came before?”

“I see it now. As it is. Take the animals: you think they’ve survived by feasting on a diet of history? No way. They’re all about what’s in front of them, here in the present moment. Fight or die. Fed or famished.”

“Nicely put.” Sylvie leaned into Ade’s space, intrigued by her take on the world.

“It’s not like I don’t respect your field of expertise.

I’m genuinely envious of the curiosity it takes to keep studying something that’s recorded in books and doesn’t have a physical presence in the real world.

I mean, I love the theory of marine science and all, but take me to a tank, even better, the ocean, and I’m in my happy place. ”

“But feminist literature isn’t just books.”

“It isn’t?”

“Look around you.” Sylvie nodded toward someone scribbling in their notebook at a nearby table. “I’ve seen that person perform her poetry at an open mic night near the cathedral. She’s published several novels and is about to go on a European tour with her publisher.”

Ade tilted her head, as if she needed more of an explanation.

“That mural up there is by a female graffiti artist based in Lyon. Her work is famous across the south.” Sylvie paused.

“That boutique in the corner, just off the square,” she pointed, drawing Ade’s gaze toward an elegant shop front, “is owned by a Parisian designer who has opened in all the fashionable French cities.”

“Okay. What’s this got to do with our conversation? I’ve lost our thread.”

“Feminist literature is all around us. Its values, beliefs, and victories won these women a place in art and culture. Without the social commentary of the likes of Woolf and de Beauvoir, women would still be relegated to second place, second class. Maybe even silence.”

“A part of me struggles to identify with all that. Women’s rights are so tied up with binary gender. Isn’t it much more complex? I feel like my right to be, in this moment, is because of who I am, not what’s in my pants.”

Sylvie shrugged. Ade had a point, not that she was going to roll over and accept it too easily. But the gender studies of the past were fast becoming literally stuck in the past. Was her work even relevant anymore?

She drained her glass and signaled to pay their bill.

“Let’s go watch the film, and we can continue our debate.

” She enjoyed nothing more than an interesting tussle of ideas, but Ade’s ability to cut through her rhetoric had touched a nerve.

She pictured the textbooks piled high on her desk back home and the matching stack in her office.

Was she merely a collector of artifacts, of stale ideas gone to die inside the pages of a dusty hardback?

She’d spent her whole career trying to leave a legacy of something worthwhile, to say something that no one had ever said before.

Was Ade right? Did it all just belong in a museum? The career ladder that she was intent on climbing stretched further out of view. What did it mean for her future if all she focused on was the past?