A Love Story
French grammar was never my forte, But as I wait for you at Gare du Nord, my mind is filled with the past and conditional tenses.
***
We met as freshmen, waiting to sign up for classes. You were impossibly chic in your black beret. “All that’s missing is a string of onions,” I joked.
***
We could lie entwined in each other’s arms, the spare mattress forgotten on the floor.
***
A week later, I saw you in a bar and offered to buy you a drink. You told me you were on a date with someone else.
***
We could walk through Père Lachaise Cemetery, arm in arm, stealing kisses in front of Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf. Even the rain won’t spoil our mood: we could find a café and make an espresso last an hour.
***
At our graduation, you squeezed me tight and told me to keep in touch. I held you close and smelled the henna in your hair, peeking out from a mortarboard this time instead of a beret.
***
I could move back to the UK. We could find a flat in London we can barely afford.
***
When the girl I was seeing broke my heart, you invited me down to London to help me heal. We ate custard buns from Chinatown and laughed til my stomach ached.
***
I could stumble my way through a speech that I’ve spent hours rehearsing in my head, ring in hand, seeing your answer in the look in your eyes.
***
When I was offered a job in Paris, you saw me off at St Pancras with a kiss on the cheek. As the train began to pull me away, I watched the statue of embracing lovers.
***
For our honeymoon we could go back to Paris, where it all began.
***
We spoke or texted every single day for the next three months. Then one Saturday you were busy, and it felt as if the sun had forgotten to rise.
***
We could move back to Sheffield to start a family. Our daughter could have your green eyes.
***
The train finally appears. After an eternity, the doors open, and I see you emerge. As I watch you walk up to me with a Mona Lisa smile, I can’t help but think of another conditional.
***
You could give me a pitying look as you try to find a kind way to tell me that you don’t feel the same.
***
I could try to keep a respectable distance between us as we walk through the cemetery.
**
We could share an awkward hug at the station before you leave for passport control without looking back.
***
We could only talk once a week. Then once every other week. Then less.
***
Then you wrap your arms around my shoulders and I melt into you, and the past and conditional collide and collapse until there is only the present.
On this day, ten years ago, I was standing in a French railway station, wondering whether I should tell my friend I had feelings for her.
Reader, I married her.
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