Chapter 77 Will you be my girlfriend?

Chapter 77 Will you be my girlfriend?
Jean-Pierre takes me to a street that I have not been to before, narrow even by Paris standards, with the buildings on either side close enough that you could almost reach across and touch the window opposite yours if you leaned out far enough and had long arms and no particular concern for anything.

He stops in front of a building which is five stories.

My architectural design brain whirs to life as I look up at the old yet beautiful building.

The facade the colour of old cream, the kind of cream that has been there long enough to have developed a personality. The windows are tall and arched at the top with ironwork that runs along the base of each one in a pattern that repeats on every floor, the same motif from ground to roofline, consistent and deliberate, the architectural equivalent of a sentence that knows exactly what it wants to say and says it the same way every time.

"What am I looking at?" I grin.

"1847." he says mirroring my grin.

"Haussmann period, but the ironwork is earlier. The building was renovated in 1847 however the ironwork on the windows was kept from the original structure, which was approximately thirty years older."
He points at the motif. "See how the pattern at the base of the window references the arch above it? The ironwork is having a conversation with the stone. Two different periods talking to each other across a hundred and seventy years."

I look at the ironwork.

And at the arch.

I see no conversation between them but I keep my mouth shut.

"Hmm, I see it” I say.

"It looks like the Marais building. The one you showed me on the first day with the pretty balcony and the entrance."

"Same principle." he says. "Different language. Paris does this everywhere if you know where to look. Buildings talking to themselves across time." He puts his hands in his pockets. "I thought you might want to see it. Given what you are working on."

"Quintessentialism." I grin, raising my head to look at him.

"The essential conversation." he says. "What a building cannot be itself without. This building cannot be itself without that ironwork. Remove it and it is a different building. Keep it and it is still 1817 talking to 1847 talking to us standing here in October."

I look at the building.

At the ironwork.

At the conversation across a hundred and seventy years.

What does this space need to be itself.

Everything that is here.

Nothing that is not.

"Thank you." I say. "For this. For thinking of it."

"I thought of it immediately." he says. "When you told me the Stage 4 theme. I did my research and was excited to see your response."

I look at him.

“Well, how was my response?”

“A bit bland, but we can work on it.”

His eyes twinkle at his words.

I laugh, “How then?”

"Last time." he starts, his smile fading.
"On the rooftop. I tried to kiss you but you stepped back."

I look away.

"And you said it was complicated." he continues.

"Yes." I say.

"Is it still complicated?" he says.

I look at the ironwork.

At the arch.

At a conversation across a hundred and seventy years between two versions of the same building that found a way to speak to each other despite the distance.

Something in my stomach moves.

Not in the way things move when something is right.

In a way that I notice and that I do not immediately have a name for.

I look at Pierre closely noticing his silver earring shine in the moonlight.

His face in the Paris evening light, open and patient and entirely without performance, the face of a man who has asked a question and is genuinely prepared for either answer.

Is it still complicated?

Complicated meant Callum.

Callum was six years of cooking dinners and missing Sundays and three daughters I never got to name and a man on a phone telling someone to clear my body from his property.

Callum was complicated in a way that was not complicated at all, that was simply bad, that was simply a man who was not good to me and that I spent six years calling complicated because calling it what it was cost too much.

Jean-Pierre is not that.

Jean-Pierre is a man who shows me buildings that talk to themselves across centuries and texts at nine fifteen at night because he thought of something and wanted to share it.

That is not complicated.

But there’s a pit in my stomach everytime I think of moving to second base with Pierre.

He’s been nothing but sweet, but I’m so confused that I don’t know what to say.

I take a deep breath and open my mouth.

"No." I say. "I don't think it's still complicated."
Jean-Pierre looks at me.

“Really?!”
His excited squeal pierces the quiet evening.

I laugh lightly, his enthusiasm infectious.

I nod my head once

“Yeah.” I say softly.

"Then." he begins grabbing my hand in his.

"Can I ask you something properly this time? Not a lean, not a rooftop almost. Properly."

"Yes." I say.

"Sera Calloway, "I would like, very much, if you would consider being in an actual relationship with me. Not another plain date, but this time actually with me. For whatever that looks like between a French baker and an American architect."

My eyes widen in surprise.

Pierre gives me his boyish smile again.

"Architect Sera Calloway. Will you be my girlfriend?