Ethan and I have many talks over the next few weeks, during which time he seems to forgive me. He tells me that the offer to move in with him is still open on two conditions: I have to let go of David, and he wants me to get divorced. One of those things I can do, and one of those things I cannot. On the day before I’m supposed to move in with Ethan, I buy a train ticket and move to France instead. Divorce is easy, anyone can get divorced—the letting go part is next to impossible. Hearts are wild, uncontrollable things, you can’t just instruct them. I imagine he’ll burn my things when they arrive with the movers, but there’s nothing I’m that attached to anyway. Not even Ethan. That’s a hard ugly truth. It’s sad how much of an asshole I am, but there it is. I thought that after David I could be more open to love, but as it turns out, I’m lost in him.

I have a friend in Paris. Well, friend is a stretch. We roomed together in college and barely spoke the first year, but then decided we liked each other enough to do it again the next. She once told me that if I ever ended up in France I could crash at her place for a while. I’ve never been to France. My determination was for America, so when I step off the train at Gare Du Nord, my eyes are as wide as my mouth. I have the sense that I’ve arrived somewhere familiar. The buildings tower, old and important. They’re snobbier than London’s mismatched buildings. Much of London was destroyed during the war, rebuilt in a different way. The Parisian buildings are not showing off, they’re too gothic to care. I want to be like them. I walk with my head bent back so I can see everything closest to the sky. I walk into people, they swear at me in French, but I don’t give a fuck; I’m a Parisian building now. Paris is going to change my life. I stop for a bite to eat at a cafe and check my e-mails. There’s one from Posey.

Where the fuck are you? she writes.

Ethan is a bloody mess. You’re a real arsehole, you know that?

I am. I know that. I’ve never let it get in my way.

I didn’t want to hurt Ethan. I just panicked at the last minute, per usual. I send Posey an e-mail telling her I’m fine, not mentioning anything about Ethan or where I am. It’s none of her business anyway, she just wants a reason to chew me out. I write Ethan a letter, handwritten on the pages of a notebook I bought at the station. I’d intended to write it on the train, but I spent the whole trip crying and staring out the window. I tell him that I thought I had changed, that I was ready to stay in one place, with one man and grow with someone. I tell him that I’m a coward and a fool, and that he deserves more than some broken runaway. I tell him that my life would have been better with him, in our little flat, but that in my heart I really didn’t believe I deserved that type of life, so I kept running from it. It’s not an excuse, I tell him. It just is. I ask for his forgiveness and sign the letter Yara—no love, no sincerely—just Yara. That’s all I am, isn’t it? Yara without love. I decide that I’m a sociopath.

I arrive at Celine’s little flat late in the afternoon. She’s at work, but she’s left the key with her neighbor. I’m to knock on the door and ask for Pierre. Pierre is an older man, he silently hands me a key and closes the door in my face. Celine warned me that the French aren’t initially warm—they make you work for it. I respect that. I didn’t feel like talking to people anyway. I’m in love with her flat as soon as I walk in. She’s decorated everything with only black and white. There’s no other color, I search for it. I welcome this monochrome existence.

My first task is to find work. So I set up my computer and search for jobs. I don’t want to be a bartender anymore. There is a family looking for an English-speaking nanny for their son. They want him to learn the language. I have no experience with taking care of children, but I send them my resume anyway, and say I’ve spent two years in America and can speak with a southern drawl as well. It’s a joke, but the woman, the mother, e-mails me right away and asks if we can meet the following Monday. Her name is Celeste. I picture her as being tall, and blonde, and…well…celestial. Her son is Lucifer, I think. They can’t find anyone else to take care of him so they’re desperate. Then I wonder if Celine’s monochrome flat is making me feel these extremes of good and bad, heaven and hell. I will fall in the latter in my mind, always.

Celine comes home around nine p.m. I’ve heard this is normal for the French who work long hours, then sit at cafes and drink wine until they have to work again. She is different than she was in college, which is no surprise, yet I am still surprised. In college she was mousy, she wore beiges, which melted into her beige skin. Now her hair is cut into a sleek bob, and she wears makeup and elegant clothes. I hug her, which we also never did in college.

“It’s so wonderful to see you,” she says in her perfectly accented English. “Are you comfortable? Can I get you anything?”

I need so many things: a new personality perhaps, a lot of perspective, a time machine, a mother—but I shake my head and take the wine she offers.

“I eat wine for dinner,” she says. “You’ll feed yourself, yes?”

“Yes.”

I love it here already.