The Nottingham Review - Issue 3 | Spring 2016

8 you’re here for some reason.’

‘I am,’ I say. ‘I wanted to become fluent in French. I want to be somewhere new. I was sick of home, of D.C., this was a great opportunity.’ I wave my hand around in the air and smile, like it should be a given.

‘You know what I mean,’ Ford says.

‘No, I don’t.’

‘It’s just… Paris isn’t a place you can be without a hunger, you know? Especially as an American. There has to be something pulling you here.’

‘And you don’t think I have something pulling me here?’ I ask him. My voice is cold, distanced from myself.

He scrapes a hand through his scruff of blond hair. ‘I don’t know, Lucy. I don’t know, there’s just some pulse that I can’t find in you.’

My heart is beating too fast and I can feel my body tense up, my thighs and shoulders tighten.

He looks thoughtful for a second, looking down at his big fingers. ‘Like I couldn’t quite figure out why something hadn’t happened between us, you know? Why I just never felt the urge to take this further? But I think that’s why.’

Later, I will run through the things I could have said back to him: ‘Maybe it’s because you haven’t been looking?’ or ‘What the fuck do you think you know about my life?’. I laugh lightly until the moment is broken. Ford starts talking about his art, showing me the photographs he got developed yesterday.

My head is filled with wine when I get off of the couch an hour later and say goodnight. He doesn’t offer to walk me home. * A week later, on Saturday night, Ford texts me to hang out. I pace the ten steps of my apartment. What will keep him interested?

What will make him feel bad? I draft and redraft texts. ‘No big deal, but I’d like some space and not to hang out for a while,’ I write. My screen flashes blue quickly with his reply. ‘No worries,’ he writes and then a second later, ‘I understand.’

I curl up on my bed with my phone in my hand. I wonder if Ford is sitting at home, thinking about what he said to me. What does he understand? Is he plotting something, some follow-up text, to show that he’s sorry, that he at least still wants to be friends?

No, I tell myself. He’s out with some French girl he met at some