Chapter Text
The streets of Paris were cold. Colder than the grip of your pen that had been left without touch for a long time now.
You had never had a writers block that lasted this long. When your label is basically demanding new music, the block doesn't just remain a slight inconvenience in your creative juices. It instills a deep rooted fear of impermanence.
Relevancy.
Such a delicate thread you hung by. One minute the world loves you, and the next they jump onto the next high.
You needed a change in scenery. Or atleast that's what you thought you needed. You carefully requested a relocation from LA to Paris.
Sure, it isn't much. In hindsight, you didn't really have many options.
Your labels studio in Paris was the perfect outreach to escape the suffocation of LA, of the way you were living.
But upto now, Paris had the same isolation. I mean, it was repackaged in fancy sidewalks and that European fever people seem to get when they visit.
For you, it felt all the same.
Afterall, everywhere you go you take yourself.
When a feeling is so sustained in you that the world starts outright reflecting it, you know that you've a long way to go.
The concrete was still gray. You were still tired. The apartment was still lonely. The railing was still cold. The paths were still too dark at night. The rooms still felt haunted yet lonely.
Well, the apartment was an easy pick. It was spacious, and close to the studio. There was a huge gym with a ton of facilities a few blocks down.
Paris was still...Paris. you'd been there before but living and visiting are very different things. They show you different sides of places, of people.
You took walks everyday. Trying to find something that might be the catalyst to restart your writing process.
Maybe a tiny flower crumpled by some passerby.
Maybe a curtain too high.
Maybe a dress too low.
Maybe a person. Daring and threatening, rewriting your epistomologies with a single look.
The greatest writers used love as a catalyst for their writing. So maybe that could be the right journey for you.
You'd thought about it.
Your brain had went on and on about having someone who you'll always be relevant to.
Someone who changes your being in such a way that you don't feel as if you don't recognise yourself in the end, but that infact you discovered who you always were.
You knew it wasn't realistic. It wasn't practical.
But the human mind, when this lonely and perpetual, seems to stick to whatever coping it can grasp and hold tight at first.
That didn't stop you from looking at everything and everyone twice, as if looking for something that isn't there, but will be if you looked hard enough.
But for all practical purposes, your diary was completely blank as of now.
Besides, love scared you. It was just another thing where you risked losing relevancy. What if they just fell out of love, looked at you once and decided it isn't worth it? What if someone better came along?
Love is one constant test of your worth. What value do you bring to someone?
These thoughts puzzled you on your way to the gym. It was a rather monotonous activity compared the intensity of the thoughts that kept arising.
You'd been simmering in your thoughts for days.
You could predict exactly what you'll reconcile yourself with after, what response your mind will give, how that will make you feel after. How your thoughts were in constant loop. Each cycle didn't matter. Once the first thought arose, the rest fell like dominoes each time.
Maybe you should just run faster to the gym instead of going on tangents.
It was one of those pretentious fancy gyms. Too many machines, half of which noone ever used. Half the people filming tiktoks or barely working out. Someone filming their pull ups.
Why did you even come here?
You do your usual sets rather monotonously. Your mind did wander off while you were doing bicep curls, or occasionally on the treadmill. But it wasn't anything new. The same dominoes cascading down.
When you were on the leg press machine, you felt someone doing the assisted pull up machine beside you.
You looked sideways. There was a woman with dark hair braided with colour streaks doing pull ups. You couldn't make out her face. Her muscles were pulled taut and she tilted her head.
That's when you saw it.
You had looked sideways to see Gabby fucking Williams doing pull ups. Right beside you.
Because you knew gabby. Gabrielle Williams..ofcourse you did. You'd watched her and admired her onscreen for being the precise and powerful forward she is. You'd watch her defend the ball with her all.
And now..here she is, at your gym, doing pull ups.
She was wearing a black sports bra, the sweat on her skin was reflected by the overhead lighting. It made her brown skin look golden.
You didn't want to say anything.
Well, truth be told..you were starstruck. It's like the sight of her had whipped all the mesh in your head and threw it out the window.
You switched to the bench press, watching her absent mindedly. The curve of her brow as she worked her body. The practiced patience, the fire in her eyes everytime she did something wrong, or too quick. The soft glow that permanently resided on her face like she had any business being this dubrious while literally doing the extended hardcore version of whatever 20 minute tiktok workout routine you followed.
It gave you a new life.
So you added weight to your bench press machine.
Quite a bit more than you can usually lift clean.
It felt like a sound plan in your head. Some weird rush of adrenaline that you hadn't really had in a while. Might as well use it.
But as soon as you lifted to the highest you could with all your chest and arm strength, it shook.
Fear flooded you on instinct as you felt the weight approaching your body like a free falling body.
The metal was suddenly too cold on your plans. The adrenaline flew. The weight on top of you met to rush you in a sudden haze. Your hands dropped. Well, nearly.
Your eyes were nearly shut when you realise the crushing weight is gone.
It was bearable now. You slightly opened your eyes.
Gabby was standing over the machine, eyebrow curled, looking down at you with both her hands on the bar, holding the weight up.
You watched as her biceps flexed for visibility, her abs becoming more prominent. She lifted the weight with ease.
Your breath was caught in your lungs. The inside of your mouth dried. She places the bar back on the barbell rack. Her thigh subtly touched your forehead.
"That was a close one. You should be careful. A lot of injuries on this machine."
You slowly sat up, a tiny bit flustered. You say up until she was just a bit over you. You looked over at her.
"Thanks. I guess I over estimated myself."
You looked between you.
"You're gabby williams." The traitorous words left your tongue in excitement.
"Well...yeah. you're (reader). I've heard some of your stuff."
"Wait really?" You were so excited you could almost jump around.
The way her tongue coaxed your name made you nervous. You twitched your legs trying to bury the fluster away.
"Are you here for work then?" Gabby asked, as you stood up beside her.
"No, I live here now. Been here almost a week."
"Well, hows Paris treating you?"
You couldnt help but think, the way she was eyeing you down, that she should just skip the small talk and come with you to the bathroom.
You couldnt say it though. That would be disrespectful. It's too bold. Although the lines of her face and the tug of her lips as she peered into you with eyes that felt like they're reading every tiny bit of you unexplored by the world, made you second guess and genuinely consider the bold gesture.
Besides, what do you even say to that?
Should you be honest and tell her how nothing has changed?
How the silent haunt of your apartment never fails to match the emptiness of your LA penthouse.
How every day gets a little more meaningless.
How you've discovered that every day, your capacity for writing has gotten worse.
How you've realised that for words to form, just abandoning your place and getting as far away as possible isn't enough? How you're getting irrelevant in all spheres of life where you used to matter day by day?
...Or should you just lie? The way people are intended to lie in small talk.
"It's fine. Nothing major. Haven't really took the time out to explore the city" you mutter.
Gabby smiled. With her whole face. Her eyes, her teeth. "Well, I can show you the great places. The underrated restaurants noone bothers to tell tourists or newcomers about. The places that restore the sanity in this overcrowded town."
Everything about her wish was..warm. You got lost.
The idea that the warmest places of the bustling city were hidden in plain sight, loved by many but not known to all. These places didn't fight to stay relevant, not like you did. Yet everyday, people came by and showed them love.
Afterall, places that put up a fight to stay relevant, to stay interesting or appealing; they lose relevancy after awhile.
It's places that are beloved by many that never run old. The state of its walls and beauty infact, stays most relevant by staying irrelevant. By not renovating, by restoring what has been liked.
You wanted to be that.
You wanted to have that effect on people that relevancy didn't matter.
Oh, how it would feel knowing your art and the admiration held by the world for you is eternal.
"I'd love that." You replied.
You exchanged numbers. Your fingers pressed the digits into her phone, and you could feel her gaze over you. It truly was a strange feeling.
You walked out the gym together. The small bend in the path that led to the outside, her beside you. Your shoulders brushing every now and then from the cramped path.
Outside, the breeze was pleasant now despite it being quite dark.
You watched her get into her car that was parked beside the entrance. There was a cherry blossom tree right over the parking.
It was late winter, the flowers hadn't bloomed yet. But the slightest tilt of their flowers meant the season was not far.
"Hm?" Gabby said as she sat in the driver's seat and pulled the window down.
"Where did you go?" She asked. Her voice was fond and sweet.
The street lamp overhead touched her face in perfect symphony. You could practically her violins vibrating from the touch of her finger on your shoulder as she brought you back to the moment.
"Nothing. Just.. Paris."
Truth is, Paris had felt different ever since you walked out the gym with her.
The breeze wasn't as cold, almost like it was finally accomodating you with open arms.
The grey sidewalks almost lit up silver from the street lights and the nearly visible late evening moonshine.
"Should I drop you off?" Gabby asked.