‘…begging you to listen.’

‘I heard it all. I need you to back off.’ Stepping onto the street, away from her, I get caught in blinding white light that projects all the images like on a movie screen; Her lips breathing the thrill into someone else’s mouth…A strangers hand roaming what I thought was my sacred territory… She claiming someone else…

‘Watch out!’ She yells and pulls me back just in time. My heart hammers in my throat. The driver honks and the screeching tires cover her sweater with a mix of rain and dirt.

‘Let me go.’

‘Never.’

‘Never? Really?’ I scoff jerking my hand out of hers and decide to go to the right instead of left as we usually do these days during our evening walks, when we loosely intertwine our fingers, holding hands, while we lazily stroll and I adjust my pace to hers, when she listens to me as if my words are golden. ‘Never just invited you for a drink.’

‘Yes and I said my wife is waiting for me… I let us go but I desperately want to fix it.’

‘There’s your chance, she’s soliciting around in Paris as we speak, waiting for your explanation and a re-do probably.’ My heels dig into the wooden planks of  Pont des Arts as I speed up the pace, the view over the Seine lost on me and my own words dig further into my heart like razor blades. ‘Your wife is walking away again so why don’t you go for it?’

‘I probably deserve this. No for sure I do.’ Her voice comes closer, too close for my liking. ‘But I’m not going anywhere. I’m exactly where I want to be… with you… I want to be with you.’

‘Whatever.’

‘You don’t care?’

‘No.’ When she visited me in Paris for the first time, I took her to this bridge one day. Back then the railing was covered with a million locks. As she was admiring the view I took a padlock out of my pocket, with our names that I had engraved in it and told her to find a spot for it. After attaching our lock to the railing, I whispered the romantic tradition of throwing the key in the river as a symbol of eternal devotion in her ear. And so she did. Unfortunately the charming idea, practiced by lovers from all over the world, led to an overload of weight on the construction of the bridge and the locks got removed. But the memory stayed, together with our key somewhere on the bottom of the Seine.