sweet nothings

la Saint Valentin

The wind swept her long blonde hair across her face as she gazed across the crowded streets, passersby each in their own little world, a world that she would never see the way they did. Each tourist, each resident, each businessperson walked their own path through the bustling city--each had their own story.

And she watched them go, and in that moment her problems were gone, dissolved in the pure Paris sunlight, forgotten as if they were a whispering breeze.

Lola closed her notebook full of curling scrawl and breathed in the sweet scents of the open air cafe, conversations of those around her drifting past like a lazy butterfly, in rapid French that she could understand perfectly as if she had been born speaking it.

"My grandmother was shopping for limes."

"Scarlett wanted to see the Eiffel Tower..."

"You said you wouldn't tell!"

"I love you."

She opened the little black book that had journeyed so far with her once more and began writing again, her letters becoming more lopsided as she rushed to keep up with the words flowing in from all sides, wanting to record every detail as if each one was a frame of a movie, a square of film, snapshot in time.

Warm sunlight on her hair.

Street musicians singing.

Laughter.

Croissants.

Clear sky.

August in Paris.

Lola was alive in her own little world as well, her own story, as she wrote the words, words that no one besides her would ever see but tasted so sweet to her, words that meant nothing and were merely just another work of an unknown artist, a novel that would never see the light of day. But fame meant nothing to Lola, for she only lived to see these sweet nothings cascade from her fountain pen.

The buildings of Paris rose up around her as she stared up at the sky, sky blue like her own eyes which filled with curiosity as they looked up at it, as though she had never seen the world before. These buildings held untold stories too, of mystery and romance, bound together by the ivy-like balcony railings and sealed a key and lock. And there, across the river of cars and strangers and rows of golden chestnut trees, rose the most familiar structure of all--the great steel pinnacle of culture and history.

La tour Eiffel. The Eiffel Tower.

"What is a lady like you doing alone on the day of love in the City of Love?"

Lola gazed up at Armand Moreau through her eyelashes, admiring the greatest mystery, the greastest story, the greatest work of art of them all, greater than his own drawings he doodled on napkins in gray when he was not working. He spoke in a heavy French accent and was dressed in a simple white shirt as the other waiters in the cafe were, but he seemed to glow like no other man. The sheen on his dark hair, the way his chocolate colored skin contrasted with that white shirt, how his dark eyes saw past Lola's flaws.

If only he knew her name and watched her the way she watched him every day she wrote at that cafe. If only she could tell him.

She smiled warmly up at him, encompassing every unsaid word in the smile, feeling these words through every limb of her body. And he smiled back, his face framed like a true masterpiece by every smile line and crease in his face.

"What would you like this afternoon?"

Lola set down her pen and book and lifted the menu, pointing to the word macaron, then lavande. Then she closed the menu once more and smiled.