It was the reason why Mira couldn’t manage any excitement in the company chat, and the reason why she’d jumped at the chance to accompany the team on the business trip to Paris. On the night before their departure, Mira had spent hours revising her Paris bucket list in obsessive fashion, a list she’d curated on and off for almost two decades. That list had been a life raft during the strict Indian upbringing that had defined her teenage years, and then the awkwardness of marriage pressure in the years that had followed. Recently, with Mira’s growing success in the corporate world, there had been plenty of opportunities to visit Paris, but somehow all the buildup had made the thought of actually going seem too daunting.

But then the Bloom business trip to Paris had presented itself: a perfect opportunity to escape the event, daunting buildup or not.

Except, here she was, on her last night in Paris with not a single bucket list item checked off. Ever since she’d gotten here, it had been early team meetings over hurried breakfasts, presentations between work lunches and dinners, and then collapsing onto her bed at the end of it all, too tired to even think about venturing out on her own. Even the hotel, a lovely establishment nestled in a quiet side street of the 1st arrondissement, was closer to sprawling attractions she didn’t have time for—like the Louvre—versus anything she could sneak in quickly.

As Mira sipped her wine, she couldn’t escape the fact that a business trip was hardly the appropriate scenario for some freewheelin’ bucket-list fun. It should’ve been obvious right from the start, but that was the thing with cataclysmic personal events—they had a way of clouding one’s judgment.

Her next sip of wine was more urgent than the last, the liquid laced with the sweet nectar of trying to forget.

She noticed Jake re-emerge from the bar, which luckily distracted her from chugging down the entire contents of her glass. She watched as he delivered a complimentary cocktail to the patrons at the nearest table. In his salesman way, he urged each of them to try a sip. Everyone was curious enough to oblige, and then, one by one, every single face lit up.

Jake hurried back to the company table and searched his bag for more cans of Bloom. “Cocktails!” he exclaimed, catching the boss’s eye. “Was I right or was I right?”

Frank shook his head and chuckled. “You were born to be a salesman.”

Mira had no interest in engaging in a Jake-centered love fest, so she turned her attention back to her phone. She noticed the glowing beacon of an email notification, and as she read the contents, every muscle in her forehead tensed into a series of knots.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What’s the matter?” a colleague asked.