Forever, Yours ➹ Timothée Chalamet

1 | So, American

VERA

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WHY THE HELL AM I IN PARIS?

The City of Love. The City of Light. The city that I don't belong in, and the city that I somehow ended up in by a twist of fate and bad timing. It's not like I was 'kidnapped against my will', or anything, but I'm definitely questioning my life more than I usually do.

I saw a tweet back in March saying I should 'romanticize my life, because why the hell not?' and it awoke the once-dead spirit of my high school obsession with Hallmark movies. What's wrong with wanting to romanticize your life?

Don't make me answer that.

I found out the answer, and now I'm embarrassed that I was so easily swayed by the words of em0girl69 on Twitter, decided that romanticizing my life was a need, and took a gap-year to accompany my best friend to Paris, France in the hopes that I'd write a bestseller book about Europe—which, in turn, would make me famous and prone to spending nights in large mansions, while drinking wine and glaring at my typewriter poetically.

But clearly I've been fooled.

I'm definitely not drinking wine in a mansion, or doing anything poetic, because instead I'm drinking San Pellegrino in a rented apartment, while Sinatra plays off a Walkman my mom gave me in 2013.

"You should have just left me at the airport," I announced breathily into the small room, "at least I'd know how to get home."

My words should have been that of a spoken thought, but apparently it was enough to deem a response from whoever was listening. A five foot ten, smokin' hot, drop-dead gorgeous, Greek Goddess strode into the room, her curly hair flipping behind her as she sent me a look of disappointment and batted eyelashes.

No, I'm not hallucinating.

There really is a supermodel sharing my apartment, and her name is Toni. My best friend Toni. Legs long enough to be on the cover of Vogue, and well, she actually has been on the cover of Vogue; somewhere in the background pretending to serve Beyoncé a snow-cone, but it still counts.

Toni ignored my previous remark, bending down to dig through the bottom-drawer of her dresser in search of a hairpin.

"You've been here for a week," she noted, her voice humming softly, "not enough time for you to be complaining about the city."

From the waking sunlight streaming in through the window, she could get a good look at my face from where I was sitting lazily at my desk, my laptop half-open with an empty page pulled up onto the screen. One would have thought she'd find the Parisian view of sunrises and Haussmannian buildings to be more interesting than a fresh-outta-high-school teen moping around, but clearly the latter was the choice.

She puckered her (very perfect, very pink, model-like) lips, taunting me to make another snarky remark about how following her was a mistake.

I accepted the challenge wholeheartedly.

"I should go home," I said, placing my hand on the top of my computer and slapping it closed, "I'm chickening out."

Toni narrowed her eyes, the annoyance seeping off her hazel eyes like spiteful molasses. "You don't mean that."

"I do mean that."

"But then your dreams of writing a 'European-love story that would touch the hearts of millions', would perish," she said, shutting the drawer closed sharply, "because, like I've told you a million times, you can't—"