It feels like the city is telling secrets down here, privy only to those who think to listen.

So, this is how it's become? This is how I've become? A walking contradiction? I'm surrounded by people and feel alone. I claim to crave a bit of normalcy but now that I have some, it's like I don't know what to do with it, I don't know how to be a normal person anymore.

Sometimes we meet people and are so symbiotic with them, it's as if we are one person, with one mind, one destiny

I want to ask him where that kitchen is. Where he's from. But he seems guarded. Or maybe it's me. Maybe making friends is a specific skill, and I missed the lesson.

It's funny the things you think you're scared of until they're upon you, and then you're not.

Even if you find him. Even if he didn't leave you on purpose, he can't possibly live up to the person you've built him into." It's not like the thought hasn't occurred to me. I get that the chances of finding him are small, but the chances of finding him as I remember him are even smaller. But I just keep going back to what my dad always says, about how when you lose something, you have to visualize the last place you had it. And I found―and then lost―so many things in Paris.

My first impulse is not to grab her or kiss her or yell at her. I simple want to touch her cheek, still flushed from the night's performance. I want to cut through the space that separates us, measured in feet-not miles, not continents, not years-and to take a callused finger to her face.