The next song is also a salsa, for which I’m glad because the afternoon wine and my jet lag are starting to catch up with me and I’m not sure I can learn another step so quickly. Or maybe I’m just terribly out of shape and a few minutes of moving on the dance floor with Camille have left me winded.

“You’re doing great,” she says, curling an arm tighter around me, pressing her breasts into mine. I feel her fingers on my neck in a tight grip, and I consider that I don’t mind being led by Camille like this at all. She’s showing me her city, her Paris, and the life she enjoys here, making me a part of it.

I’ve only been here two days, and already I never want to leave again.

Chapter Twenty-Two

On Tuesday, when Camille has to go to work, for which I had to wake her up with persistent kisses on her grumpily cramped-up cheeks, it’s just me and Iris in the house. It’s strange to be in Camille’s house on my own. It makes me feel out of sorts, like an intruder. Because I’ve only been here such a short amount of time, and these are my first hours without Camille since our reunion, I’m suddenly faced with all the time I will need to spend without her while I’m here.

I remember last year’s hiatus from the show, when I was busy trying to salvage my relationship with Rebecca—to no avail. It’s different having time off in a house that’s not my own, where my routine is non-existent, and my life revolves around another person entirely.

As I walk through the house, Iris doesn’t leave my side. Camille was right. She has already started associating me with the new person in her territory who will give her food whenever she meows insistently enough. Camille has given me strict instructions not to spoil the cat in her absence. “Besides,” she said, “you’re in Paris. You don’t want to spend all day in the house.”

I don’t. Not only because the house feels too big and cold without Camille’s presence to fill it, but also because I want to see all of Paris that I can.

Yet, there’s an unexpected sort of lethargy keeping me inside this morning. An inexplicable unease about what lies beyond the garden fence. When I look outside the window, I could be in an affluent suburb anywhere in the world. But I know that as soon as I close the door behind me, turn the corner of the street, cross the square, and head into the Métro, I will unmistakably be in Paris.