Chapter 1
February 2008, Paris, France.
Iñaki’s mood was not the best at the moment. He had spent the whole Saturday watching his sister try on wedding dresses, one after another. There were also shoes involved. Why he was there he couldn’t understand. It was supposed to be their mother on this trip, but a bad back had kept her in bed the entire weekend, and their younger sister, rebellious Maite was grounded, as usual. Josefina had cried so desperately about needing to go that their parents sent him in her place, along with one of her best friends. If the friend was already going, he didn’t see why he was needed too. He’d assumed she’d let him wander off on his own. And for that a free trip to Paris sounded wonderful. He hadn’t expected her to actually want him there for dress after dress. When he suggested that they meet later for dinner instead, her face went straight from anger to tears, and that was the end of that idea.
He lost count of how many dresses she tried on, and couldn’t remember a single one. They all looked the same to him — white, some lace, maybe a different fabric, shiny or not. He told her she looked beautiful in every one. She told him he was useless. At least he was handed free champagne.
He swore that if he ever got married, he would elope.
That evening, once the torture was finally over, or that he thought, the three of them went to dinner. The two women had a few too many glasses of wine, which left him in charge of getting them both home. When Josefina’s friend got a little too flirty, he left them to it and went back to the hotel alone.
Saturday night was also Agatha’s last night in Paris. The trip had been a gift from her mother for her eighteenth birthday. She has been wanting to go ever since she saw a romantic movie set in that city. And also a certain French stranger made her believe that a romantic story was, of course, very possible. But she kept that part all to herself. Her mother planned a week split between Paris and Disney, four days and three. She’d secretly wished she could’ve spent the whole week in Paris. It felt too short, and the city felt enormous, too big for her teenage mind to hold. So beautiful it made her want to cry.
That night she had her last dinner in the city, old enough here to order herself a beer. Just one, enough to make her pleasantly tipsy. She ordered something that sounded sophisticated — coq au vin — while her mother got a burger and her sister Sidney pasta. She barely slept that night. She didn’t want to leave. She could already feel the walls of her ordinary life closing back in. She spent a big part of the night looking out the window, imagining what adventures she could live out there by herself.
The next morning, both Agatha and Iñaki took a cab to the airport with their respective companions.
Iñaki was late.
He’d overslept after staying up too long watching bad French movies and this morning, unfortunately, the traffic into the airport had been worse than usual. His flight to Madrid boarded in forty minutes and he still had to get through security. He walked fast, sunglasses on, scarf — the good one, cashmere, plaid — wrapped loosely around his neck and already starting to slip.
"Josefina, por favor, camina más rápido," he said, not bothering to look back at her or her friend, shouting over his shoulder while he kept moving.
Agatha wasn’t late. Her flight wasn’t for another three hours, but she still had check-in, an international bag drop, and customs ahead of her, and her mother liked to be early. “Mom, the check-in line is over there!” she called out, turning to point while still walking backward.
So neither of them was looking where they were going.
The collision wasn’t hard, just enough to knock Agatha’s open backpack out of her arms. Everything inside it hit the floor: a paper-bag, a half-empty water bottle, a tangle of earbuds, her passport case, her gloves and scarf.
“Shoot!” she said.
“Joder,” he said, at almost the same moment.
They both dropped to a crouch to gather her things and shove them into the backpack, and that was when it happened. He reached for the same paper-bag she did, their hands nearly touching, and looked up — not because he meant to, just to apologize properly — and his sunglasses had slipped down his nose enough that for one unguarded second there was nothing between his eyes and hers. Brown into green. Her already too long fringe covering part of hers. She was still catching her breath from the collision, lips slightly parted, and the look on her face wasn’t annoyance, it was something closer to surprise, like she’d walked into a doorframe and found it staring back. He felt the apology die in his throat before he could say it. Neither of them moved for a beat too long.
It was Agatha’s mother who broke it. “Hurry up, Gigi!” she called from several feet ahead, already walking.
Agatha startled, the spell snapping. “Sorry — sorry,” she said again, scrambling the last of her things into her bag. She hated being called Gigi. She’d asked her mother a hundred times to just say Agatha. But there wasn’t time to think about that now. She flashed Iñaki a quick, apologetic smile and took off after her mother.
Iñaki stayed crouched there a second longer than he needed to, scarf forgotten in his hand, watching her disappear into the crowd. Then he remembered his own flight and swore under his breath, standing to find his sister.
“Qué bufanda más chula,” Josefina said, eyeing the light pink scarf he was now holding in place of the plaid one he’d had ten minutes ago.
“Coño.” It was all he could manage, staring after a dark mane of hair zigzagging behind the girl who was already too far away to chase down over a scarf. An expensive scarf. Cashmere. He did thought about it twice.
He loved that scarf. He bought it with his first paycheck.
They ran the rest of the way, barely making it through security in time, sprinting the last stretch to the gate as final boarding was called.
Agatha, with no flight to chase, took her time. Check-in, bag drop, security, customs — there was no rush, so she wandered into a shop afterward for water, snacks, maybe a book for the flight. When she opened her backpack to pay, she found a plaid scarf that wasn’t hers. Hers wasn’t there at all. The stranger must have grabbed the wrong one in the scramble. She ran the unfamiliar fabric between her fingers — soft, finer than anything she owned.
“Well,” she thought, glancing at the label, “I guess I have a new scarf now.”
Iñaki collapsed into his seat just as the doors closed, still holding the scarf, and only then noticed the name stitched into the tag. Gigi. He said the name out loud, like a whisper. He smiled before he could stop himself, and brought it closer without quite meaning to. It smelled like something sweet — flowers, maybe, he couldn’t place it — but it was good. Distractingly good.
“¿Por qué estás oliendo la bufanda de una extraña?” Josefina asked, making a face.
"Huele bien,” he said, laughing, fully aware of how strange it was to be smelling a stranger’s scarf in the middle of an airplane cabin. He held it out to her. She insisted she smelled nothing at all.
Once Agatha boarded her plane she got asked by a stranger to change her middle row seat at the back of the plane for a window seat, with extra leg space. You see, the stranger wanted to be next to his partner. So she exchange the worst seat of the plane for one of the bests.
The woman who sat next to her now offered her a big chocolate for free. Unopened, with nuts. Apparently she bought the wrong one, she was allergic to nuts. She accepted it. It tasted heavenly. Maybe this new scarf brought her some luck, she thought while she ran the soft fabric through her hands.
Agatha made it back to the States with her new scarf and wore it every winter after that, still does. She wore it also for every occasion where an extra ounce of luck could be needed; exams, dates, interviews.
Iñaki tucked Gigi’s scarf into the box with the rest of his, and mostly forgot about it — until he didn’t, some random winter morning years later, reaching for a scarf and finding hers instead.
