LITMIR.BIZ

      In young love, there are rarely specific dates. When you are in that all-consumed state, love has no number. Love is your first kiss in seventh grade outside the gym – sweaty palms, blue jeans, and curled hair. It is the boy who left you heartbroken the summer before senior year just as you made the varsity soccer team, and the wondering what happened to the guy you met on a family vacation to Hawaii.

      Love is a marker of moments passing and standing still. It is a time and a place. And that is where this story begins…

      Twenty years ago. Paris.

      It was late fall, or early winter. The leaves were gone, but the sun still shone, and two Americans rode the streets on bicycles.

      Lindsey and Jack met at the Sorbonne. She was an art student; he was a student of life with a major in business.

      Lindsey had moved to the City of Lights in September to study art at the university as an exchange student. Jack, though an American, had lived in Europe for most of his life. His father, a hotelier and restaurateur, showed Jack the world through his businesses. While Jack was studying the economy in class, he was learning it firsthand at his father’s latest hotel in Paris.

      Though it may have seemed as if they came from two separate worlds, they were more similar than many would believe. They both worked hard—she at painting, he at pleasing his father. Jack had plans to own his own hotel one day. Each had dreams of the future where life was grand, yet they also understood the importance of the moment. As twenty-somethings, they lived young and carefree.

      The contents of their bike baskets jiggled along the cobblestone streets. The colors in her paint box shook with every pedal stroke, and the baguette peeking out of his picnic basket bobbed up and down. They spent many days on their bikes, weaving in and out of the hidden parts of Paris.

      “Let’s stop here,” Jack said as they approached the Place Du Tertre, a square at the heart of the Montmartre quarter where a penniless Picasso had once lived. Lindsey happily obliged. It was one of her favorite places to paint.

      She appreciated small ways Jack supported her, like this—choosing to picnic in a spot she loved. He understood her, despite not being an artist himself.

      As they leaned their bikes against a lamppost and locked them up, Jack pointed to a man painting portraits with a cat beside him.

      “We should get one done,” Jack said.

      “A portrait? Really?” She viewed this kind of painting as a cheesy tourist attraction meant to sucker men into buying things for women. Plus, where would they hang it? His place or hers?

      “It’ll be fun.” Jack grabbed her hand and gently guided her toward the man’s easel. “You need something to remember Paris by once you go back to New York.”

      “But I’ll have you.” Lindsey didn’t need a generic painting to remember her time with Jack.

      “How much?” Jack asked the artist.

      The artist looked at them. “Thirty francs, but if you hold my cat, I give you a discount.”

      How could she say no to a man and his cat? She looked at Jack and smiled, then turned to the artist. “We’ll do it.”

      Jack handed the man the money and pulled his red knit hat off his head. Lindsey fluffed his brown hair to make him presentable, then grabbed the gray-and-white cat and placed it between them as they sat close on a small chair. Jack leaned over and kissed her windblown cheek.

      “That kiss. That is, what do you call it? The… the… essence of the two of you. That is what I shall capture.” The artist made rounded strokes as though sketching the shapes of their heads in black charcoal against a pre-painted backdrop of the Eiffel Tower.

      Though she knew the painting wouldn’t end up in a museum one day, Lindsey felt her heart lift with happiness. She reached over and squeezed Jack’s hand. This moment she would remember forever, regardless of whether the sketch captured anything at all. It would be a reminder that life could never be fully planned. If she’d arranged every detail of the day, they wouldn’t be getting a painting done right now.

      Lindsey had come to Paris to learn how to paint, not with technical skills but with the kind of passion she felt every time she entered the Louvre. She hadn’t come to fall in love or find “the one.” She was young and looking to a future where she might one day have her pieces hanging in a gallery. She’d come to Paris with a mission. Nobody would interrupt her process. She was strictly there to perfect her craft. However, the first time she’d seen Jack’s blue eyes, she’d known she was in trouble.

      After the first two weeks with Jack, her vision of the future had changed. And now, she couldn’t imagine life without him.

      Her time at the Sorbonne was nearly over, and she and Jack had discussed their future. After he finished school, he would come to New York. She needed to know what it would be like if he was part of her world—not in this fairytale land, as Paris often felt like to her, but New York City. She knew everything about him, and she wanted Jack to see the other part of her

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