About a month later, Martin and I were sitting in first class at SFO waiting to board a flight to Paris.
Martin still looked vaguely convinced someone was going to stop us.
"I don't understand," he whispered as we walked through the private terminal lounge. "We didn't even go through the normal airport."
I laughed.
"We did. Rich people just do it differently."
"That feels dystopian."
"You get used to it."
A woman in an immaculate black suit appeared beside us, holding a tablet.
"Mr. Stern?" she asked politely. "We're ready to board whenever you are."
Martin stared at her like she was a government hallucination.
The second she walked away, he turned to me dramatically.
"She came to get us."
"Yes."
"Like royalty."
"You are being deeply French Canadian right now."
"I have flown economy beside screaming infants my entire adult life," he informed me. "Allow me to experience luxury emotionally."
I smiled despite myself.
Because honestly?
Watching Martin experience things was becoming strangely addictive.
Nothing bored him.
Nothing felt routine.
Everything still mattered to him.
Once we boarded, Martin spent the first ten minutes inside the suite just staring around in disbelief.
"This," he announced, pressing random buttons experimentally, "is possibly the most luxurious experience I've ever had."
I settled into my seat across from him.
"Well," I replied, "that was sort of the intention."
The words slipped out before I fully thought about them.
Because this trip had never been meant for Martin.
Every reservation.
Every detail.
Every carefully planned moment.
It had all been for Elliott.
But Elliott wasn't there.
And Martin was.
For a brief second, something uncomfortable moved through me.
Guilt, maybe.
Or disappointment.
But before I could sit with it too long, Martin looked over at me holding the menu like someone discovering advanced civilization.
"Oh my God," he whispered. "There's actual silverware."
"It's first class, not medieval Europe."
"They gave me pajamas."
"That's usually how clothing works."
"You're ruining the magic."
Eleven hours later, we landed at Charles de Gaulle just after noon.
The moment we stepped outside the airport into the cool Paris air, Martin physically stopped walking for a second.
"Oh," he said quietly.
I looked over at him.
His expression had changed completely.
Not joking now.
Not sarcastic.
Just overwhelmed.
The car service I'd arranged was already waiting, and once we got inside, Martin immediately glued himself to the window like an excited child.
And as we drove toward the city, I found myself watching him more than the streets.
Because the excitement radiating off him felt oddly familiar.
It looked like me at twenty.
The first time I'd arrived in Paris for university.
Back then the city had felt impossibly glamorous and romantic and enormous, like life itself was beginning there.
Martin watched everything with open wonder.
The buildings.
The traffic.
The cafés spilling out onto sidewalks.
Every few minutes he'd point dramatically at something.
"Oh my God."
"Martin, that's literally just a pharmacy."
"Yes, but it's a French pharmacy."
I laughed quietly and leaned back into the seat.
As we crossed farther into the city, his excitement only got worse.
By the time we approached the Louvre, he rolled the window halfway down despite the driver visibly disapproving.
Then suddenly he shouted into the Paris traffic:
"Paris! Je suis en toi!"
The driver startled.
I burst out laughing.
Martin laughed too — and then unexpectedly, visibly, his eyes filled with tears.
Real tears.
"This is my dream," he said softly, looking out at the city again. "You don't understand. I've wanted this since I was little."
Something about the sincerity in his voice hit me harder than I expected.
Because while Elliott had treated this trip like an inconvenience...
Martin was experiencing it like the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.
And I couldn't stop noticing that difference.
The day disappeared beautifully after that.
I showed him Place de la Concorde.
We wandered through the gardens near the Louvre for nearly an hour because Martin kept stopping to take photos of doors.
Doors.
"This city understands drama architecturally," he explained.
We went to the Eiffel Tower, obviously.
Walked along the Seine until our feet hurt.
At one point on the Metro, an accordion player cornered half the train car performing aggressively emotional French music before revealing he also accepted contactless credit card payments.
Martin looked horrified.
"Paris has evolved."
"Capitalism always finds a way."
By evening, the city had turned gold beneath the streetlights.
I took him to a restaurant in the 8th arrondissement that Elliott and I used to love years ago when we were students pretending we could afford places like that.
Martin attempted to order in French.
The waitress listened politely for almost thirty seconds before finally sighing.
"Sir," she said in heavily accented English, "you are Canadian. Please just speak English."
I nearly choked on my wine laughing.
Martin looked deeply betrayed.
"She humiliated me in my ancestral language."
"She liberated her evening."
Dinner stretched for hours the way it always did in Paris.
Wine.
Conversation.
Laughter.
Easy.
Effortless.
And somewhere during dessert, I realized I hadn't thought about work once all day.
I hadn't even thought much about Elliott.
That realization unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
Later that night, as we walked back along the Seine beneath the glow of the city lights, Martin suddenly stopped.
"I heard the Eiffel Tower sparkles at night."
"It does."
"I think I saw it in a movie once."
I smiled.
"You probably saw it in several."
"Can we go see it again anyway?"
So we went.
By the time we reached Trocadéro, crowds had already gathered near the overlook.
And then suddenly the tower exploded into light.
Gold shimmered across the night sky while thousands of tiny white lights flickered like stars around it.
Martin went completely silent beside me.
We stood there shoulder to shoulder, not quite touching.
Close enough to feel each other's presence.
Far enough to pretend it meant nothing.
And for the first time in years, I felt something I couldn't fully name.
Not exactly lust.
Not exactly love.
Maybe longing.
Maybe possibility.
Or maybe Paris simply had a way of making people believe their lives could still become something different.