Seven Letters from Paris Read Free Page B

later, I hoped it wasn’t too late to put a stop to the cycle. I’d been so afraid of falling in love I’d never truly done it.
    With nothing to lose, I made a decision.
    I was going to apologize to Jean-Luc.
    Letter Two
    Paris, July 30, 1989
    My Lady and Sweet Samantha,
    Your souvenir from France is missing you very much. Everything in me misses you. I want so much to share my time with you that this letter links us together. I am in front of the paper as I could be in front of you—talking with you, but unfortunately not able to exchange touches and kisses. Every time I leave my apartment, I wonder if you are calling me from Nice without me being able to get to the phone. It’s quite an unpleasant feeling.
    If you had stayed, in a couple of days, I would have been able to show you the fabulous French castles and Normandy—a souvenir to your patriots who came forty-five years ago to be killed on the beaches. I would have liked to have shown you Paris and France through French eyes, for you to understand our way of life, different from the bread and wine bottle under the arms. Through the knowledge of France, it’s me I want you to know. Every Frenchman’s life is tightly linked with his nation’s history.
    Sam, I want you to know I feel like a kid writing a letter to his first girlfriend. In my life, I’ve known lots of girls, but few I’ve really liked or even loved. Don’t think that I’ve got (as we say in French) a “sugar heart,” that I fall in love with every girl I meet. It is really not my way of life. But it’s so marvelous to care for someone, to share thoughts, to live for someone else. Life is great.
    Sometimes funny things change your life with the strength of a hurricane. You don’t know how or why, but it does. I like to write when I feel my heart beating on every word.
    I am a boy from the sea, heated by the sun of Provence, but your heat is greater and makes my blood boil in every part of my body. My brain, usually cool, is burning in such a matter that I don’t recognize it. You are a witch on the run from Salem, aren’t you?
    Samantha, believe me when I said I felt so well with you, so well loved in your arms. Your tenderness toward me showed me we were in harmony.
    Our adventure is not of a tourist meeting a stranger in a foreign capital. It wasn’t my purpose since the beginning. You are the Sam I cherish. I hope you share my feelings. In your blue eyes, I want to be lost for a long, long time.
    Avec amour et désir,
    Jean-Luc

The Love Blog
    Now, it wasn’t like I thought Jean-Luc had been pining away for me all these years, sitting around in some Paris flat, crying out, “Oh, Samantha, you broke my heart! I’ll never fall in love with another woman. Why didn’t you write me back? Why? Why? Why?”
    First of all, if he’d said those words, they would have been in French. Second, he probably wouldn’t even remember me. Third, I was fairly certain that he was a player—after all, he was an attractive, smooth-talking Frenchman. Honestly, he could have written dozens upon dozens of letters to other girls.
    This did not change my mission.
    By apologizing to Jean-Luc, I was facing myself one regret at a time, making amends with my past—a kind of twelve-step program for the emotionally disabled. First on the agenda: find him.
    I sat at the dining room table with my laptop, opened up a browser window, and plugged his name and occupation into the search bar. Of course, I didn’t know if professionals in his field actually called themselves rocket scientists, but it was a start.
    I held my breath and…
    Forty-two thousand results showed up—the first listing being Jean-Luc Picard. Now I’m no Trekkie, but I knew my Jean-Luc wasn’t captain of the USS Enterprise . Had he been wearing the adult-sized, tight-fitting maroon and black onesie when I met him in Paris, our relationship