Each day, Alex goes through the following routine: wake up at 7:45 am and eat petit déjeuner with her host mom, a single-divorcée with a daughter the same age as Alex– twenty- before dragging her feet down rue des eaux-claires to take the C tram towards Bibliothèque-Université, where she and Mack sit next to each other during the four hours of class time. From 9 am until 1:30 pm, she’s tortured– but on this day, this day, she feels both a sense of dread and excitement. An unswallowable pit lingers at the base of her throat, plummeting to her stomach when she perceives the reality of her life too deeply– to an existentially challenged twenty-year-old teenager, there’s nothing more dangerous than thinking about one’s own life. Alex considers herself a victim of contemplation, a casualty of introspection, feeling a particular kinship to the likes of Sylvia Plath. Instead of going to therapy, she turns it off by taking up walking around the time of the pandemic. Since she was sixteen, she’s felt this way. 

On this particular Monday in the French Alps, she walks rather than going back to Quartier des Eaux-Claires. “Please, can someone just tell me that everything is going to be okay?” Alex asks Eli, Mack, and Heming while on the train back to la centre ville, where the group plans to take advantage of the atypically luminescent afternoon sunshine. 

Mack looks at her, four eyes gazing at each other with the edge of a glare; two with furrowed brows atop, pleading incessantly, two drift away towards the ground. 

Eli gives her a sad smile, full of sympathy but no empathy. 

Heming sees her pain, dismisses it, and says, “Ce n’est pas çava.” No undertone of understanding nor an acknowledgment of the exclusivity of her situation, only an implication that none of them want to be there, and her heartbreak isn’t valid if she’s the one bringing down the swift, unwavering hand of destruction. Alex is the one hurting another person, not the other way around. She will cause Jones pain, and therefore, she has no right to feel the way she does: drowning, hopeless, and terrified. 

Exiting the tram a stop early, unable to stand a second longer looking at Mack or Heming, the city around her buzzes with self-importance, reminding her she doesn’t have a place here; Alex doesn’t belong, and she doesn’t think she ever will. Surrounding her are conversations in a language she hardly understands– a language she doesn’t yet comprehend enough to fully express the depths and complexities of falling out of love, craving to be in a place familiar to her, and anticipating how horribly it’s going to hurt to become somebody Jones will regret every heartbeat, every moment with. 

The route she takes for her daily Grenoble walk is about 3 and a half miles long, taking upwards of fifty minutes to complete, depending on how lively she feels and how quickly she walks. Today, though, it takes her the entire hour and then some. Alex floats above her body while watching herself walk north toward the river walk, and across the bridge beneath Télépherique Grenoble-Bastille, a cable car that takes people to the top of the city at La Bastille. She looked up at the cherry red bubbles, crammed with people praying they made it to the top safely, and wished she were any one of them. Their view is spectacular, and if they’re tourists, she bets they can’t believe how beautiful the greenery of the mountains is in the late spring. The date is May 22, 2023– she’ll remember it. Below the cable cars are the Isère River and a collection of tangerine, canary, and sorrel brown buildings reminiscent of the Italian Riviera they just departed from. One of the most interesting things Alex has found about being in the French Alps is the convergence of different architectural styles inspired by Western Switzerland, Northern Italy, and Paris; at the end of the day, no matter how many tears cried or wishes of departure blown on eyelashes, all she can do is appreciate the extraordinary visuals of the city. So, that’s what she does. A haphazard combination of Stevie Nicks, Taylor Swift, and Joni Michell plays over her headphones, drowning out thoughts of impending pain. 

Pascale is in the garden when Alex returns to the house. She bustles about, hurrying from the clothesline to the guest house to the other guest house and then back to the clothesline. She turns the chairs upside down and puts them atop the table—the petite outdoor furniture set going into a semi-state of daytime hibernation. Miniature drops of rain sprinkle the sidewalk outside as Alex get back just before the daily storm hits Grenoble. She need to hurry inside, Pascale tells her. But am she okay? Sure, Alex tell her, but unable to swallow the lump in her throat because Jones just texted me good morning, replying to my message, detailing how “we need to call” when he wakes up. 

The storm starts, hailing down in golfball rocks at the same beat of her ringing phone. It’s the worst storm Grenoble has seen since the students arrived for their program, so much so that the garden outside Alex’s window is nothing but white, the grass lost somewhere during the first few minutes of the storm. It’s the worst storm she’s felt when I tell him that I think we should break up, and it only gets worse when he realizes I’m being serious. 

“Our relationship– it's run its course.” 

“Are you being fucking serious right now? You’re breaking up with me right now?”

“I’m so sorry. I love you.” 

“Don’t say that again. Please.” 

And so I don’t. 

On the screen, I see him cry. I see him look at me like he doesn’t recognize me. I see him look at me with something like hate in his eyes. “If you loved me you wouldn’t be leaving,” Jones said. 

“I just don’t love you enough.” The words catch themselves in my throat. Nothing can be undone and unsaid. “You’ll find someone who can love you better than I can. That’s what you deserve.” Those are the words that came out of my mouth, but what I really meant was, “Goodbye.” We continued going back and forth, slowly fading from mania into depression, feeling like I was watching him die before my very eyes. I’d never wanted it to end, I told him, but one day I just woke up and it had. He didn’t seem to buy it, despite how genuine both the package and delivery were. He asked me to hang up, and so I did. We never spoke again. 

In one conversation, two years became nothing but something both Jones and Alex wishes they could forget. She tried to explain to him that she never wanted their relationship to end, but one day, she woke up, and it had. Despite somewhat vague, yet sufficient defense of her case, he couldn’t never understand that they wouldn’t make each other happy– If the cosmic hand of fate plays any role in happenstance, then he’d someday see what she’s talking about. Someday, he’d walk down the aisle, smiling at another woman, and understand Alex was right. 

The first day of the fourth week of their program drags on, all underscored by the notion presented to them by their professors at orientation: at around week four, they begin to see students crack. Homesickness, culture shock, exhaustion, the overwhelming nature of the class– they’ve seen it all. Week four is when Alex cracks; the weight of everything becomes just too much. Someone braver might’ve been able to handle it, but not her.