The metro came to a stop and so did my reveries. I was at my destination: the Place Charles de Gaulle. After visiting the Arc de Triomphe, I climbed up all 234 steps to get to the Sacré-Coeur. From the top, I stared at the city of lights, feeling the breeze stir my hair free from my ponytail. Then I went shopping on the Champs-Elysées, mostly window-shopping, though I was drawn to the glittering storefront of a perfume shop like a moth to a flame. There I spent a ridiculous sum on a perfume whose name I couldn’t even pronounce.

While I was eating lunch at an outside café, taking more pleasure in cracking the surface of my crème brûlée than in actually eating it, I allowed my brain to turn to him finally. I’d been avoiding the thought of him all day the way one tries hard not to scratch at an itch. It doesn’t make the itch go way, of course – it only prolongs it.

I wondered what he was doing. If he missed me. I decided to go and find out. Why not? my brain asked. I wasn’t able to come up with a response.