Page 116 of A Dead Man's B-Side
Paris clicked her tongue. “Ah. I see.”
I turned to find a knowing look on her face. “What?”
She raised a brow and shook her finger between us. “We’re not too different, you and me. I just see it differently. Where you see a glass half empty, I see it half full.”
I looked up to the sky and slid my hands into my coat pockets. “I may be a pessimist, but I can assure you, Paris, we are very different.”
“Mmm, I don’t think so. If you see love in such a light because of your parents, then that’s a point to me.” She kicked a twig before continuing, maybe to occupy herself. “I haven’t spoken to my mother in years because of how horribly my parents parted. Not that I sided with my father, but because… my mother wanted nothing to do with the Vega name. Kind of hard to stay in contact with a daughter that reminds you of everything you hold hatred for.”
I sucked in a breath, unable to find the words, but she didn’t force me to. “It’s okay. I don’t blame her. If she earned her peace and would do anything to preserve it, I won’t make a fuss.”
“Would it change anything if she didn’t earn it?” I wondered out loud.
Paris didn’t ponder. “No, at least I don’t think so. I guess it’s just a way to justify the martyr complex I’ve forced upon myself.”
We walked a few more steps before she spoke again, “She’s married now, you know? To the love of her life. So, I don’t think love is the problem. I just think some find it in the wrong people.”
My brows dipped because I had never seen the concept as anything but black and white. And yet here Paris was, solving my life-long conflict with the notion on a mere walk.
Perhaps she was right, perhaps it wasn’t love that ruined my mother. Perhaps it was that she found it in my father, and he was really to blame.
From what little I knew of the vague ghosts, she had been the one to follow him to America. Not the other way around. Oftentimes, I used to imagine what my mother’s life was like growing up. Had she grown up loved? With two parents who would lay the world at her feet if she only asked?
I wondered if I would have grown up with cousins to play with and siblings to argue with if she had chosen someone else.
“Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”
Paris let out a chattering breath and wrapped her arm around mine, as she took to doing the first time we went to The Gallery. “I always am. It’s a gift and a curse sometimes.”
I tilted my head down to her before pausing in my steps. She looked up with her brows dipping in confusion, her arm loosening before falling to her side.
I shrugged off my coat and wrapped it around her, waiting for her to slide her arms in before linking her arm with mine, as she had done before
Paris was even shorter without her heels, and it made the coat brush the ground every few steps, but I didn’t mind. Mostly because it wasn’t mine, and Wolf had enough money to buy a new one should this one tatter.
A light gust of air swept past us, and I forced the shiver up my spine away. I was a selfish person, and a small part of me wished I hadn’t given her my coat, but I couldn’t very well ask for it back.
Partly because she would refuse, and I would let her.
I wasn’t sure why I gave Paris as much leeway; I didn’t give others.
Had it begun when we both leaned away from Thaddeus at our first meeting? Or when she offered to dye my hair? Or was it when she picked the lock to my dorm?
I was so caught up in my epiphany that I hadn’t realized how far we walked, looking over my shoulder to find the Quarters as tiny dots in the distance.
Huh.
I needed to go on walks more often.
“My legs are cramping,” Paris voiced before pulling to a stop, forcing me along with her.
She loosened her arm from around mine and found a large enough tree to sit against. I walked closer but remained standing. “We can go back if you’d like.”
She looked up at the sky as if they shared a secret I was not privy to. “No, I like it out here. Come. Sit.”
She patted the ground next to her, and who was I to deny someone like Paris Vega.
She plucked pieces of grass and began forming knots. “So, what was the gutsiest thing you’ve ever done?”
