The summer I spent with Trinity in Muskoka turned out to be life-changing. We had both been abandoned by our adults and together, with lit firecrackers under the starry sky, we decided to give up Paris.

Paris, we decided, was an idea. By that point in the summer, I had called Christian a hundred times, left him a hundred messages, texted him a hundred times, emailed him a hundred emails, and made myself annoying in every way I could imagine. At the hundredth one on each medium, I stopped. He knew where to find me just as easily as Trinity’s parents knew where to find her. We were being hung out to dry by people who worshiped Paris.

The idea of Paris is the pursuit of glamor over substance. Trinity chose Paris as her symbol because her trip had been canceled before Christian called her aunt. She just hadn’t had the nerve to tell me what had happened over the phone. Her step-sister (a woman who was the child of a union that had nothing to do with either of Trinity’s parents) had seen a picture of Trinity on Instagram with her pierced tongue. She vowed she couldn’t take a girl like that into her peaceful Parisian apartment and outright refused to take her. It was the first time Trinity had been refused entrance because of her antics and appearance.

Trinity was on the verge of an epiphany. That summer she decided that she needed to start looking out for herself and when she graduated from high school she was going to make herself an apartment. Not a Parisian apartment, but a place where anyone could come, no matter what they looked like. No more glamor.

That was Trinity’s warcry and though I knew I had been dumped by Christian for other reasons, it didn’t stop the pain. Since I had no banner to parade that explained my hurt, I allowed her to think that my problems were the same as hers. It was easy to fall in line. One thing that was clear to me was that Christian had been worried about what someone thought about us together. If public opinion meant that I couldn’t couple with an incredibly handsome, charming man who happened to take responsibility for me when my parents passed away, then I didn’t want anything to do with worldly wisdom.

What Trinity was saying aligned perfectly with what I wanted. I didn’t want to be in the spotlight. I wanted to avoid my family in Toronto and Ottawa. I wanted to go somewhere quiet where no one had any expectations for me.

When the summer ended, we returned to boarding school and Trinity cracked the books like she was possessed. Her green hair grew out and when it finally had long enough roots, she went to the salon and had all the green cut out. She looked normal in her graduation pictures and normal again on convocation day. Her parents might have been pleasantly surprised if they had bothered to come.

Christian didn’t come either. I kept my eye out for him, but that important day, like many others, passed without his presence.

The summer after high school was spent without parental consent. We moved to Edmonton. Trinity had wanted Calgary, but I wanted Edmonton. I won because the university in Edmonton was rumored to be better. It was the city where I had first known Christian. The university campus was spitting distance from the hospital where I had been treated. Trinity was taking a degree in biology in the fall, which basically amounted to premed. I was taking business because I had no ambition and I hoped I could do nothing but fall on my feet if I took a degree in business.

Trinity and I had both received our trust funds. Mine was the money my parents had left me when they passed. It was enough to pay for my degree if I was careful.

Trinity and I rented a beautiful studio apartment at the top of a building close to the university. We lived there for two months before school started. We went shopping and decorated. My contribution was the beds. I had two beds custom ordered for us to be like two private rooms. They were like cabinets with ceilings and cupboard doors that enclosed our mattresses. We made paper turn dials to show whether or not we were inside. At the end of August, when they were delivered, they ended up being the last things I paid for with Christian’s credit card. I would have gone on using his money, as often as I could for as long as I could, but the next time I swiped his card, the waitress told me it had been canceled. It was a blow, not because I couldn’t spend his money anymore, but because it suggested he wasn’t doing well if there wasn’t money for me to use.

Of course, the life Trinity and I lived in Edmonton had nothing in common with the life I had lived in Edmonton before. I went to the florist Christian had brought me flowers from, like he was going to be there, choosing roses. I went to the hospital and wandered the halls, but none of the doctors or nurses who had treated me all those years ago were around. I didn't bump into anyone I knew.

Trinity was a completely different person. She no longer did anything to impress or shock those around her. She did exactly what she thought was comfortable, so she took out her earrings and eventually her tongue ring. She wore sweaters and padded around the apartment in slippers with a cup of tea nestled in her cold hands. Suddenly, she had a lot of ideas on interior decorating and made our space one of the ‘cool places to hang out’. That had been her ambition, to make her home a place that would take anybody. Except, it wasn’t just anybody. Trinity ended up having a bunch of relatives that started taking note of her as soon as we arrived. She didn’t even know she had snooty academic family members on her mother’s side. That meant that the people who hung out at our apartment were not homeless people but fellow university students who had enough spare time to ‘hang out’.

Since I was no longer being waited on hand and foot, I lost weight. I had to do my own laundry, pay for my own groceries and carry them. I got a job at the copy place on campus. I worked there because it gave me money and saved me from Trinity’s constant flux of inane guests. It was a shame my university education didn't interest me much.

I didn’t realize I was living like a zombie, merely going through the motions of life without really living. I let Trinity have whoever she wanted at the apartment for as long as she wanted. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to her talking quietly with a small knot of idealistic students discussing the dreams they’d had the night before. I didn’t know what I had been thinking when I bought the beds that looked like cupboards, but it was a good thing I did. When inside, it muffled the ruckus. I wish I could have joined them, but I felt burned out.

I felt that way until I heard Rogan Cormack laugh. That probably wasn’t Christian’s real name either, but I had finally been brought back to life. My heart hammered at the sound of his voice. At the sight of him, the blood pounded into my ears and spread heat everywhere. 

Finally, he had returned.

Except, I was failing myself. I didn’t know how to approach him. I didn’t know how to plan a strategy to get him into my life. The first time our eyes met, he stepped in the print center to get a copy of his driver’s license.

Gibson, my boss, had been about to serve him when I interrupted. “The copier in the back is doing that thing again,” I lied with a smack of my gum.

“Oh,” Gibson said, looking at Rogan who was waiting. 

“I’ll take it from here,” I said, finishing the copy. “You know,” I said with a saucy wrinkle of my nose. “There’s a copier on the second floor that’s really good for quick jobs like this.” No matter what, I couldn’t let him know I recognized him.

Rogan leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “Someone’s using it. I think they missed the memo about it being for quick jobs.”

Gibson came back and said noisily, “Beth, there’s nothing wrong with that copier.” He saw me leaning forward on the counter and said, “Oh!” He turned around and on his way back said, “I’d better check again.”

Rogan looked at me like he had seen that trick before, and was only vaguely amused by it. “How much do I owe you?”

“It’s on the house,” I said. “It’s the least I can do since you had to walk all the way down here.”

He cocked his head and gave a mock salute. “I’ll be sure to come back.”

He left and Gibson joined me at the counter. “What was that about?” he asked grouchily. “I’ve never seen you flirt with a customer before.”

“I have a crush on him,” I explained, enjoying the act of finally telling someone the truth about my feelings.

Gibson looked at me like I’d grown horns. “You don’t have to ask me for permission.”