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Chapter Twenty-Three
“Did you say something to her?” Laurel asked, bounding toward him in the hotel hallway. Her words were fierce, but her face was split into a wide, bright grin.
“Huh?” Remy asked, leaning in his hotel room doorway.
“I complain to you that she never puts us in a hotel alongside her, suddenly we’re in a five-star Paris hotel? You said something, didn’t you?”
“I might have said something,” Remy admitted, and now he was grinning too. Vivi hadn’t told him about the hotel, and so it felt like a surprise gift—one that meant something more than a room. It meant she wanted him nearby, she wanted him to be able to visit her more easily, she wanted him more than she feared what might happen if she did the band this favor.
Laurel flung her arms around Remy’s shoulders. “You are seriously my hero right now. My actual hero. My room has a television in the bathtub mirror. Like, hidden in the mirror. It’s crazy.”
Remy laughed a little, letting his arms loop lightly around Laurel. She peeled away from him and bounced on her leopard-print heels. “We’re going out for crepes after the show. Want to come?”
“Who is we?”
“Me, Ro, and Parish.”
“I’ll see—I might not be able to tonight,” Remy said. He could tell from the falter in Laurel’s eyes that she knew this was a no. He’d essentially only seen the rest of Bus Three in the dressing rooms and onstage since they left the States. It wasn’t that he didn’twantto spend time with them, just that he knew he’d regret not spending that time with Vivi. They’d given up on him, Remy suspected—they weren’t angry or bitter or the like, but the camaraderie he’d had with the rest of them for the first few weeks of the tour was wilted at best.
“Boo,” Laurel said. “Well, text me if you’re able to come.”
Remy wasn’t sure he had Laurel’s number but didn’t say anything.
After the show, just before midnight, Vivi texted Remy to meet her in the back of the lobby. She was waiting for him there, a jacket pulled over her shoulders and her hair in a ponytail. It was almost casual, but when she turned to face him, he saw she was wearing her trademark red lipstick.
“For a minute, I thought you were dressed down,” he said, smiling, fighting the urge to reach for her. Itseemedlike they were alone back here, but given how she kept a few feet between them, he suspected there were security cameras he just hadn’t seen.
“Plausible deniability,” Vivi said and grinned. “I don’t look done- up enough that everyone will easily spot me, but if they do, I won’t be embarrassed by the pictures. Paris is harder to sneak around in than London, so I have to play it safe if I want to act like a normal girl.” Remy nodded, remembering how Celeste had once told him there were no bad pictures of Vivi. This was why.
“And where are we going?” Remy asked as they walked outside, keeping the space between them formal. There was a car at the curb, but other than that, no one in sight—which made sense, given that they were more or less in an alley lined with trash bins.
“It’s a surprise. A lame surprise, maybe, but a surprise,” Vivi said, grinning as she climbed into the car without acknowledging the driver holding the door open. Remy nodded at him as he got in behind her; the driver looked appreciative enough but didn’t speak.
The driver shut the door, and in the few moments between him doing so and his reappearance at the driver’s side door, she grabbed Remy’s hand and squeezed it. There was something to it, something stronger than just a handhold, like a plea that things would go back to the gentle, sweet way they were before yesterday, when there was no discussion of the paparazzi or worry over how the band viewed her. Remy wanted to return there just as badly, and he squeezed her hand back.
They rolled through Paris, the road tiny and apparently lane-less. The streets looked far more desolate than Remy would have expected—somehow, he thought it would be more like New York, always buzzing and bright and tireless. Shops were covered with rolling security doors, many of which had been graffitied, a sharp contrast to the well-designed, elegant signs above the shop doors.
They wound up alongside a river, its water black in the night, save for the brightly lit tourist boats that shepherded drunk foreigners back and forth apparently at all hours. Vivi stared out the window like she was mesmerized.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” she said, pointing. The river was a level below their car, a canyon hemmed in by a wide footpath at its concrete banks. People were walking along the banks—sothiswas where the city was bright and buzzing and tireless. Couples holding hands, the orange glow of cigarette tips, the carousing of young people shoving one another playfully. It was easy for Remy to picture himself among them—their faces were silhouettes in the dark, so it could easily be him or Val or Vivi jumping up on the river’s wall edge and balancing there.
“Is that what we’re doing tonight?” Remy asked, trying to keep his voice low so the driver couldn’t hear.
“No,” Vivi said, sighing. She looked at him and smiled. “Too risky. Maybe one day?” The wordmaybewas loaded with hope, but the sort of hope that already felt defeated.
“One day,” Remy said with a careful smile. “Because tonight, we’re already busy going to…”
Vivi sighed happily then nodded ahead. Directly in front of them was the Eiffel Tower—orange and glowing and somehow both bigger and smaller than Remy had pictured.
“A lame surprise, but a surprise,” Vivi said.
“What’s lame about the Eiffel Tower?” Remy snorted in disbelief.
“Nothing! I mean, just—it’s super touristy. But I never get to do super touristy things, and I’ve always wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, so…here we are,” she said, sounding sweetly embarrassed.
“Isn’t this just as risky as the river?” Remy asked. Surely the Eiffel Tower was crowded at night.
“It closed at midnight. They’re opening it after hours for me.”
