A YEAR IN PARIS

A YEAR IN PARIS

By: Johanna Montilla

    Mornings are my favorites. The quietness of a town just waking up, the sun slowly showing through my window, and a full day ahead filled with possibilities.

As I breathe deeply taking in the sweet aroma of my coffee, I remember it wasn’t always like that. I didn’t know was peaceful means, how could I when my life was immersed in chaos. Days used to go by in a blink, no time to stop, no time to think, I was a robot that at some point was running out of battery.  

I needed to escape, and I did it.

I found refuge in the city of lights, as cliché, as it might sound, Paris became the perfect remedy to introduce me to the world. Actually, it wasn’t just the city it was something else, and someone else.

During my endless walks, trying to record in my mind every moment, every street filled with colors and stories, I discovered hidden in the middle of a crowded city, was Coffee-bar. A small room filled with couches, cushions, little tables, a permanent vanilla scent, and constant soft music, sometimes jazz, sometimes blue, piano or a violin. The perfect place.

    For a year, I used to go almost every day. I dared myself to try every drink on the menu, even the ones the owner called, “explosion masterpieces” and listening to a total of two hundred fifty-five songs in the antique, colourful jukebox settled in the far corner of the coffee bar. But time had its own speed. I travelled my fingers through the calendar, I had six more days to complete my own challenge before returning home. I couldn’t keep running, I needed to face my reality.

That night, the night I met him, I was tapping the scratchy glass with a quarter, trying to decide between two songs. I pressed the number seventy-six. As soon as the music switched, a smirked gorgeous face found my eyes. Without a word, he extended his hand inviting me to dance. Damn that handsome man with the dizziest smile I’ve ever seen.

    While on the dance floor, I felt like Cinderella with her Prince Charming except of course for the fluffy ballroom gown and uncomfortable shoes.

     In what I called my ‘weak up year’, I learned I few things, like how to talk to people waiting in line to order a coffee instead of looking at my phone, but it was the first time, ever that I dance we somebody without even saying Hi first.

We danced, we laughed, and we talked about everything. He seemed to have jumped out of an encyclopedia, or an adventure book.

“There are mountains so high that when you are on the top of it, you can reach the stars.” He said. “In somewhere in the south, there is a lagoon that in the horizon you can see how it mixed with the sky. And flowers, there are so many beautiful as the innocence of a child.”

I didn’t know if he was saying the truth or not, and honestly, I didn’t care, that night I decided to believe.

He was talking about magic, in exchange, I told him about my absorbent job and my ordinary life. “I don’t know my secretary’s first name,” I said. “She brings my coffee every morning and my lunch still, I don’t know her name.”

“Next time you see her, you ask.” He said, kissing my hand.

For sure I was dreaming, a desperate attempt by my brain to kick me out of my comfort zone and finally push me to do something boldly irrational. He couldn’t be real, but I wasn’t drunk, well not that much. Except he was real; a perfect stranger that I felt as I’d known him always.

“What do you do for fun?” He asked me.

“Buy shoes, I guess.”

My prince had a bewitched laugh, I should laugh with him, instead, I sighed, and I let myself talk about my fears. “One day I noticed a gray hair and I realized I haven’t celebrated my birthday in years. The only thing I knew was the white wall inside the building I work.”

Without an inch of pity, which I was expecting he asked me “When is your birthday?”

I shook my head. It was enough about me. “Tell me more about your travel,” I said.

“Later” he winked. “First, let's go dance again.”

And I let myself get lost in the melody of a song.

After that night, I never saw him again. I never went back to the Coffee Bar or Paris as I promised. I didn’t want to have hope, I knew my life was waiting for me around the corner. Instead, I changed my ticket and I returned home the next day with my heart filled with memories of the guy who gave me the world in just one night.

At first, I felt regret about everything, for not staying, for coming back, for wasting the best part of me mourning for my coward choices, complaining about something that never was. But then I decided to live the way he taught me, enjoying every single moment, feeling the freedom of being me and finding the adventure in every day, smiling at the bad moments and looking for the sun even in the worst of weather.

Before that night, I was a walking lost soul, somebody who never felt capable of being extraordinary. Now, I am a reformed workaholic, a hopeless dreamer.

People would think I met a prince and I let him go, but who I really found, was myself through his eyes, and liked what I saw.

I believe that my prince is out there spreading his magic, helping others to find themselves. Someday I'll go back to Paris, I never completed my own challenge. There are still some drinks to have and music to play. Perhaps a rainy night and the melody of our song could bring him back to me once again.