Chapter Six
492 Words
Graham McGrath hadn’t come to Paris to be inspired. He came because he needed to get the hell out of Dublin.
It felt more like fleeing than arriving. He hadn’t told anyone—not the gallery that sold his work, not the landlord who would soon find his studio abandoned. Still, it leaked. Somehow, it always did. And now the messages wouldn’t stop—curators, collectors, journalists, vultures with polite names. They all wanted to know what he was doing, where he was going, when he’d next reveal something of himself.
The streets here were different, sharper somehow. In Dublin, people hid their brilliance behind modesty, buried genius beneath pub smoke and soft brogues. But Paris? Everyone wanted to be seen. Everyone was performing. A city built for masks.
He lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, letting the smoke curl through the back of his throat. It did nothing to soothe the ache. His mouth felt dry. His hands felt worse. Tense, tight in the knuckles like something was about to snap. He needed a drink. Something dark and fast to take the edge off. Maybe two.
The cold wind dragged at his coat as he stepped through the narrow passage off Rue Mouffetard. His boots echoed. His thoughts didn’t.
He rolled the cool metal bar along his tongue, the small weight of it grounding him. Jaw clenched, teeth on edge. A tic. An anchor. Something his therapist once called a "sensory cue," but Graham never thought of it that way. It was instinct. Compulsion. Familiar punishment.
He pulled a folded scrap of newspaper from his coat pocket. Smoothed it out. It was old, creased and yellowing at the corners. He shouldn’t still have it.
But he did.
It was an article about some culinary award, a spread on rising talent in the Parisian scene. Most of it was praise—hyperbole, interviews, spotlights. But that wasn’t what he held onto.
In the background of one photo, nearly swallowed by the shine of others, was her.
A girl with wild dark curls. Not posing. Not smiling. Just… frowning. Lips tight. Eyes watching something out of frame. She wasn’t meant to be in the shot, just a shadow in the backdrop.
But to Graham, she was the only thing real in the entire page.
He’d stared at her face for nights when sleep wouldn't come. When the noise in his head was too loud. When the pills made him numb and the whiskey didn’t work. That photo was a reminder—of pain, of survival, of something unnamable that gripped his chest and kept him tethered.
He didn’t know her name. Not then. Just that something about her had kept him alive.
He folded the paper again, slid it back into the safety of his coat pocket.
And then he kept walking.
Paris wasn’t home. But maybe it was where the ghosts lived. And Graham? He’d always been better with ghosts than people.
- Writer
