Diana’s breath left her.

There he was.

He was wearing a blue velvet waistcoat with tails, trousers that were buttoned at the knee, and stockings, which of course was the fashion of that time. A tricorn hat completed the costume. Though he was facing away from her, she knew it in an instant. Stéphane had had a physique that most men would’ve killed for—he was tall and athletic, lean but substantial. She’d especially loved the look of his posterior, the way he filled out his jeans. Though many men these days would have taken issue with donning stockings, Stéphane wouldn’t have, for good reason—he made even stockings and the frilly blouses of the time look masculine. He wore the ensemble—it didn’t wear him.

This man made all the other men, though they were all dressed in very similar finery, look like court jesters.

She stared at him as he strode across the balustrade, hands clasped behind him, like he often used to do while strolling from class to class at NYU, in an easy way, like he had not a care in the world. At the edge of the railing, he met a waiter and, after pausing to push his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, took a glass of champagne. He nodded cordially in thanks and said something to the waiter, who smiled as if his day had been made. That was Stéphane. Always excessively polite—to everyone.

Her heart twisted. She only realized she’d forgotten to breath when she began to feel a dizziness swarming her head.

Suddenly, someone nudged her elbow. “Excusez-moi,” an elderly woman next to her said, motioning with a wrinkled finger. Diana looked down and realized her hand was still fastened around the handle of the ladle, and the helping of food on her paper plate was in danger of running onto her dress.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Here,” she said, shifting the handle into the woman’s grasp and stepping out of line. Eyes still planted on Stéphane as he weaved his way among the guests, she drifted toward him, her feet moving almost entirely of their own volition—as if she were a puppet on a string.

She approached the stairs and realized she couldn’t both hold her food and lift her enormous skirt to ascend at the same time, so she set the plate down on a pedestal. Food was the last thing on her mind now.

Darkness was falling, and the second the sun slipped behind the trees. Someone somewhere must’ve flipped a switch because the gardens lit up in a gorgeous display. Millions of little white fairy lights dangled from the trees, and spotlights illuminated the statues. But Diana barely noticed it. She grabbed her skirts and floated up the stairs, thinking of the last thing Stéphane had said to her all those years ago.

Je t'adore, mi amor. We will be together again, in Paris!

So what if it had taken a few extra decades? Now, after all those years of wondering “what if,” it felt like a lifelong dream was finally about to come true.