Paris is basking in the glow of a warm, clear Sunday afternoon. The parks are filled with people eating baguettes slathered in butter and stuffed with ham and cheese, and the carousel near the Eiffel Tower spins merrily under a blue sky, children hanging from the horses and laughing happily as they rotate beneath one of the world’s most beloved monuments.
Holly and River stroll hand-in-hand around the Trocadéro, stepping over the mechanical toys for sale by street vendors, and ignoring their pleas in accented English to check out the tiny Eiffel Tower statues and wind-up dogs displayed on long sheets of fabric.
“You want a coffee?” River asks, tugging lightly at Holly’s left hand.
“I want to go to the top first.” Holly looks up at the majestic tower in the distance, turning her shoulder so that she won’t bump into a woman pushing a stroller. “I’m dying to see the city from nearly a thousand feet in the air.”
“Are you sure? We could get a snack first—our tickets are for two o’clock and it’s only one now,” River offers, leading her through the throngs of tourists wielding selfie sticks and fancy cameras.
“Let’s go down and see how long the wait is,” she says.
The line to get into the tower is long, but Holly isn’t unhappy as she waits. She watches the armed guards circulate around the base of France’s most popular tourist spot. A man in front of them is speaking rapid Italian to his four young children, offering cookies to the smallest one as they wait to be searched by security. Holly opens her backpack in preparation for the checkpoint; she’s already grown used to the necessary step of having a stranger paw through her belongings and look at her appraisingly before she boards a train or enters a building.
The ride to the top is fast, and even the jammed elevator doesn’t quell her enthusiasm.
“We’re going to see everything from up here,” she says in River’s ear. “The Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysées, Notre Dame.” Holly’s feeling rhapsodic at the classic view that awaits them, but she notices River’s hand tightening around her own as they ascend, and he’s staring at the floor like he needs to reassure himself that it’s still there. “You okay?”
River shakes his head, not looking up. “No. But I will be,” he says tersely.
“Wait, is this scaring you?” Holly can’t believe it. Mr. Adventure, Mr. Say Yes to Everything is actually looking pale and slightly clammy. “River, we’re fine,” she promises.
“I think we should go back down,” he says.
Holly laughs incredulously. “Are you kidding?” she asks, knowing that he’s not.
“No. This feels weird.”
“We don’t have to do this,” Holly says, pulling him out of the way of human traffic. “But I wish you would have told me before we came up that you didn’t want to.” They huddle next to the center of the structure and River places his back against the cool metal, watching anxiously as people scamper over to the railings to peer out at the City of Light.
“Can’t say no.” River sounds like he’s short of breath. “Gotta say yes to everything.”
“Look, we can go back down. It’s cool. I can say I’ve been up here,” Holly says gently, holding his hand again. People are walking by, shooting the occasional glance at River. Holly watches the families in matching berets, the children wearing shorts and summer dresses as the mothers tiredly wave people into formation. They hold their cameras in place, no doubt trying to capture Facebook-worthy shots of their trip to Paris.
“No, let’s hurry up and see the city,” River says, looking less convinced than he sounds.
“But we’re at the top of the Eiffel Tower! I wish you weren’t in such a hurry to get back to the ground. It’s kind of a downer,” Holly says. “What feels weird about this? You went on that swing in Amsterdam like it was nothing.”
River inhales through his nose, holds it for a second, and then exhales. “I think it’s the security everywhere,” he says, nodding. “Yeah, it’s making me a little nervous. And the dudes with the machine guns on the ground just set me on edge.”
“So it’s not the height?” Holly takes his hand and starts walking towards the view of the city that’s spread out all around them in muted shades of beige and stone, punctuated by patches of green.
“No,” River says definitively. “I’m not afraid of heights.” The words are barely out of his mouth when a shove from behind sends him plowing into Holly, knocking them both to their knees. The people around them make startled noises, some giving sharp barks of pain as their bare skin hits the patterned metal floor.
“What—?” Holly raises her head, hands and knees still planted on the ground. Her backpack has slipped from her hands and River is crouched on top of it.
Two men in black pants and black t-shirts rush through the crowd of fallen, frightened people, shouting in an unfamiliar foreign language. The woman next to Holly whimpers to herself as one of the men steps on her fingers with a heavy black boot. There is a feeling of chaos and uncertainty as Holly peers up at the men and at the shocked faces of everyone around her.
A siren sounds from below, and a rush of uniformed guards spreads through the confused crowd, fanning out with their heavy artillery. River reaches over and puts an arm around Holly protectively.
“Descendez, reste en bas!” shout the armed guards. “Get down, stay down!” they repeat in English. Even in the middle of the confusion, people obey.
Near the railing that looks out over the seventh arrondissement below, a guard pins one of the men in black against a thick beam. His face is pressed to the metal, hands behind him as the guards chase after the other man. Holly watches from under the shelter of River’s strong arm, heart racing. It’s all happening at lightning speed, but the seconds pass by in a way that feels like time has slowed to an interminable crawl. In these weird seconds and moments, the entire trip so far spins through Holly’s brain like a movie: the flight across the Atlantic; getting mugged (that feels like years ago!); going to the modeling agency by Harrod’s; seeing The Cure in Amsterdam and sending off an email to Bonnie during the stolen minutes while River was at the store. Bonnie! Her mind reels as she thinks of home. She’ll need to email Bonnie again—or, better yet, call her—as soon as she can. River will just have to deal with her breaking the rules of their game. And after this fiasco, how could he not understand her need to reach out and touch Christmas Key in any way she can?
The thoughts that fill her head feel lucid and linear, but as the guards capture and pin the other man, Holly realizes that she’s in shock. She’s watching people with machine guns, actual heavy artillery, as they apprehend suspects, and the only thing she can think of is Main Street. The light posts wrapped in tinsel for the holidays. The front window of Mistletoe Morning Brew painted to reflect whatever is going on inside during any given month. The way people slow in their golf carts to chat with each other outside her office window every day.
“We can get up,” River croaks, sounding a little out of it himself. He gets to his feet stiffly, offering Holly a hand. The people around them look this way and that, making sure the coast is clear before they stand. A new wave of confusion winds its way around the top deck of the tower as people who speak a multitude of different languages try to figure out what’s happening and what just went down.
“What are we supposed to do?” Holly asks, reaching down for her backpack. “I don’t understand.”
River takes her hand and laces his fingers through hers with urgency. He’s holding her tightly and watching the guards for an indication of what happens next.
“I think they’ll have us clear the tower,” he says. Holly’s not sure whether he’s overheard this or is intuiting it, but she nods mutely, leaning into his arm for physical and emotional support.
The two men in black are hogtied and lifted from the ground by their bound wrists and ankles like they’re made of foam, and the guards surround them both as they spirit them away. The remaining guards assume positions near the elevators and start to shout orders in English.
“Line up, single file here, please,” says a woman in fatigues with a severe bun and a rifle strapped across her chest. Her English is precise and barely accented. “We will be taking the elevators down immediately and evacuating the tower as quickly as possible.”
“Stay calm, please do not panic,” says a male guard. He paces through the crowd, eyeing each of them warily. “Please be aware of your surroundings, and do not leave anything behind.”
Holly and River trip through the line behind everyone else, waiting their turn to step into the elevator. It’s a surreal feeling. Everyone around them looks just as stunned as Holly feels.
They don’t speak on the way down to the ground level, and when they step off the elevator, River grabs Holly’s elbow and guides her through the line of people waiting to exit the monument. On their way out, guards search their bags once more and they’re forced to show their identification and to write down contact information in a log book.
The streets around the tower are shut down to both pedestrian and automobile traffic, and there’s an eerie quiet as they walk back up to Trocadéro, taking long steps to get themselves away from the tower as quickly as possible.
“What the hell just happened?” River finally says, stopping in his tracks. Holly stops and turns to face him, hands looped through the straps of her backpack. “Who were those guys?” Several different layers of understanding and confusion are peeled back behind River’s eyes as Holly watches him.
Holly thinks for a moment. “I don’t know,” she says. “But it was terrifying.” Her chest tightens with a feeling that’s as solid and undeniable as concrete. Without another thought, she realizes what she already knows in her heart to be true. “I want to go home.”
“Yeah, let’s get back to the apartment and just grab something to eat so that we don’t have to leave again today.” River holds out an arm so that Holly can tuck herself beneath it.
She stays put. A certainty builds inside of her that she hasn’t felt in a while. It’s the certainty that saying yes to everything can’t be right. Saying yes to some things is good, but there’s a time and a place to tap the brakes, and for Holly, this moment is it.
“No, I mean home. Christmas Key. I’m ready.” She stares up at him, unblinking.
“But we still have a week and a half.” River frowns at her.
Holly shakes her head. “I need to get back.”
A dark cloud passes over River’s handsome face in stark contrast to the blue skies overhead. “You need to get back, or you want to get back?”
Holly shrugs and looks around as people stream past them and away from the tower. “Both, I guess.”
River stares at a spot just beyond Holly’s right shoulder. “So we have one scare and you go running back to the island, huh? Is this how it’s always going to be?”
“One scare, River?” Holly asks incredulously. “In addition to being robbed, we just got caught in some sort of terrorist nightmare at the top of the freaking Eiffel Tower,” she spits, pointing at the iron pyramid in the distance. It stands proudly against the late Spring sky, its solid countenance giving no indication that anything is amiss.
“We don’t know that,” he argues. “It could have been two protestors who got out of hand.”
“You were the one who didn’t even want to go up,” Holly points out. “You said it felt wrong.”
“So maybe we should have gone to the Louvre first.” River makes a face that belies the shock Holly had seen in his eyes as they’d waited to come down from the top of the tower. “Listen, Hol—life is short. We can’t keep pushing things away just because we feel a little fear. Do you really want to be stuck on an island with one paved road for the rest of your life?”
The blood in Holly’s veins runs cold. This again. But this time it’s not from Jake—it’s from River. “I’m not stuck on Christmas Key,” she says plainly.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“But it is,” she says, feeling a calmness that she hasn’t felt since before she buckled herself into her airplane seat in Miami. “Why do people think I have to choose? And why is it so wrong if Christmas Key is what I really want? It’s always one or the other—with everyone.”
“If you’re comparing me to Jake, then you can stop right there.” River holds up a hand.
“I’m not comparing you to Jake,” Holly assures him. “That’s apples and oranges. But I’m tired of being made to feel like the real adventure is somewhere else when the only adventure I really want is fifty miles from Key West in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.”
River’s jaw tightens and he looks at the concrete beneath their feet. He nods slowly. “So this is it. Again. Only this time you aren’t choosing another guy over me, you’re choosing an island.”
“I’m happy not to have to choose,” Holly says, shifting her heavy backpack on her shoulders. She takes a step back and walks in a circle, her frustration evident as she paces. “How did this go from a trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower to us having this conversation right here?” Her nostrils flare angrily.
“You’re just rattled, and you’re taking it out on me,” River says. His voice has grown firm again, and the discomfort he’d felt at the trip up the tower has been erased.
“Rattled? Yeah, a near-death experience will do that to a girl.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” River scoffs.
“Look, you can call it what you want, but I’m done. I want to go home. I’m tired of this game where I can’t call home, or check my email, or talk to Bonnie about work. All of that is a huge part of who I am, and that’s what’s been eating away at me—I’m missing a piece of myself.”
River takes this in. “Okay,” he says, weighing her words. “How about if we find a way for you to check in every day or two?”
“I’m not looking to compromise on this, River.” The indignation that’s been blooming behind Holly’s ribs suddenly wilts. “This has been a good experiment, and I’ve gotten everything I need from it.”
“An ‘experiment’?” He gapes at her. “Coming to Europe with me was nothing more than an experiment for you? Huh.” River’s eyes glaze over as he looks at the tower behind Holly. “When did this train jump the tracks? Because I think I missed it.”
“It didn’t jump the tracks,” Holly says. “There’ve been some really amazing things that have happened on this trip, and there’ve been some not so amazing things, too.”
River takes a step closer and Holly can smell the perspiration mixed with the musky scent of his deodorant. “I guess I need to ask which parts have been so bad.”
“Like I said, not being in contact with home. The idea of saying yes to everything without hesitation is a good one, but the reality is much…harder. I can’t fly by the seat of my pants like you do. It’s not who I am.”
“But you tried,” River says drily. “Or at least you tried harder than when I came to see you at Christmas.”
“That’s not fair.” Holly’s cheeks go pink like he’s just slapped them.
“It’s not fair for you to bail out like this in the middle of a trip just because you don’t know who booked a weekend trip to Christmas Key. It’s not fair of you to throw in the towel on an adventure where we’ve seen The Cure in Amsterdam and gotten an offer to be extras on a movie set in Dublin. It’s not fair of you to lose it after two weird dudes trigger a military response in Paris. It’s not fair to just give up on the rest of the trip.”
“Oh, we’re doing the not fair game?” Holly lowers her chin and raises her eyebrows at him. “How about this: it’s not fair that you get to infringe on me running my business and that you pass judgment on where I want to spend my life.” River opens his mouth to protest, but Holly plows on. “It’s not fair that I lost my phone, but you still had yours handy to put Sarah’s number into. It’s not fair that you’ve called all the shots on this trip, from us going on that swing over Amsterdam, to telling me I was eating too many desserts.”
River closes his eyes with exaggerated patience. “I knew you were going to throw that back at me. I was kidding, Holly. That was supposed to be a joke. And I only took Sarah’s number so that we could follow up about going to Dublin.”
“Whatever. The point is that you want me to be things that I’m not, and in the end, that’s totally unsustainable.”
River has no comeback for this. It’s like he knows he’s lost both the battle and the war, and so he just stands there, letting Holly continue to lob grenades at him.
“So is this what I think it is?” he finally asks.
Holly shrugs. “I’m not sure. I think we should take this trip for what it is and assess the damage when we get home.”
River’s face is awash with regret and disappointment. “Wow,” he says. “And here I was thinking that this trip was pretty fantastic. I had no idea you felt imprisoned.”
It’s a decent description of how Holly’s been feeling, even though she hasn’t thought of it in those exact terms. “I’m sorry, River.”
“No, I’m the one who should be sorry,” he says, holding both palms out to her. “Clearly my idea of a fun adventure is your idea of unwilling captivity. I can’t…” He runs his hands through his hair, shaking his head. “I’m kind of at a loss for words here, Hol. This conversation totally veered off course.”
They’re both silent as they stand there. Sirens fill the air in the distance and police and military vehicles move in on the Eiffel Tower, its patrons still streaming away from the monument and disappearing into the city streets beyond.
“Let’s go back to the apartment,” Holly says softly, moving into River’s personal space. Without being invited, she puts her hands on his hips and looks up at him. “This isn’t what you think it is,” she assures him. “The whole thing just took a sharp left for me when we had to hit the deck up there and try not to get trampled. All the things that haven’t been working for me kind of snowballed and I realized that I’m at that point.” Holly tugs at the sides of his t-shirt with both hands as she gazes at the firm set of his jaw. “It’s just time for me to go home.”
After what feels like an hour, River looks down at her face. There’s a distance in his eyes that makes Holly feel cold. River takes a step away from her, forcing her to let go of the grip she’s got on his shirt. “Then I guess you need to go. Let’s head back and change your ticket.”