Griffin

I probably shouldn’t be thinking of Joy as I run eight miles in the late afternoon, cruising through the Luxembourg Gardens for the last bit, as a hip, new band blasts in my ears.

I definitely shouldn’t be thinking of her as I shower, after crushing my previous personal best for those eight miles.

I absolutely shouldn’t be picturing how she’d look in this shower with me right now. But it’s such a fantastic image that I cut myself some slack as I take care of business.

I suppose that also means I shouldn’t be thinking of texting Joy as I jog down the metro steps and squeeze onto a crowded train heading to the heart of Le Marais tonight. But given where my filthy thoughts have taken me on my travels so far today, checking in with her hardly seems inappropriate in the spectrum of inappropriateness.

Besides, I’m only being helpful, I tell myself.

I nearly believe it, too.

Griffin: Scale of 1–10. How was your first official week as a Parisian? Obviously, your mornings were excellent since they were spent with me.

Once I’m on the train on the way to meet Christian, I open her quick reply.

Joy: My mornings were indeed a highlight, though I’m still hunting for the best chocolate tart in the city. Also, I’m hardly a Parisian. More like a transplant-Parisian.

Griffin: Ah, yes. I’ve heard of that species of foreigner in my marine biology studies. Very dangerous if you don’t know how to handle them.

Joy: And I bet you do! Anyway, it was great and awful at the same time. A bus was obnoxious enough to spew its fumes on me this evening, which caused me to knock out a contact lens, which meant I had to go to the pharmacy to buy contact lens solution.

Griffin: That sounds not ideal, but not exactly awful.

Joy: Oh, trust me, it was six ways of awful when I tried to tell the pharmacist what I needed. I butchered the language like it’s never been sliced before.

Griffin: I highly doubt you slaughtered words. You could have called me. I would have been happy to help.

Joy: That’s kind of you, but I need to be able to function as my own errand girl.

Griffin: Sure. I get that. Don’t forget we’re friends, and friends help friends buy solution pour lentilles de contact.

Joy: Show-off.

I laugh as the train rumbles underground, nearing my stop.

Griffin: Anyway, it takes years to learn the language. Don’t beat yourself up over contact lens solution. Are your eyes better?

Joy: Perfect. I’m using them now to enjoy the fabulous view from my rooftop. Thank you again for helping me snag this place. It’s truly beautiful.

Griffin: You scored it with your swift decision-making, hatred of smoke, and love of pink doors.

Joy: You helped immensely. Just as you’ve been immensely helpful at work, too.

Griffin: Well, you’re one of my favorite clients. But shhhh. Don’t tell the others.

Joy: It’ll be our secret.

Briefly, I wish we had other secrets. Or really, I wish that we could. And I kind of wish we were having this conversation in person. Before I can think better of it, I send another text.

Griffin: What are you up to tonight? A group of us are going out for drinks and general carousing in Le Marais. Have you been there yet? You should join us. We don’t bite.

Joy: Thanks for the invite! But this wine has gone to my head. I think I might call it a night. I have a busy weekend buying nail scissors and laundry-drying racks. Also, biting isn’t always a bad thing.

On the spectrum of inappropriateness, Joy appears to have joined my team. I grin as I write back.

Griffin: Biting can be a very good thing. Anyway, the night is young. If you change your mind, call me. Otherwise, good luck with the scissors and laundry.

Joy: Good night, friend.

Griffin: Good night, friend.

When the metro slides into the station, I step off the train and ring my parents. My mum answers on the third ring. “Griffin, good to hear from you. Are you okay?”

“Mum, I’m fine. I promise,” I say, wishing there was a way I could ease her worries. I don’t think she’ll ever answer a call from me without expecting the worst.

“Oh, good,” she says, relief in her voice. “How’s work?”

“It’s fantastic. I have a new client,” I say, then I tell her briefly about L’Artisan and Joy, and she enquires about my marathon training. I tell her I’m improving my times then ask how Dad is doing with his effort to learn how to cook, since he decided to take cooking classes a few months ago—I suspect to keep occupied.

“He made me bangers and mash. It was dreadful.”

“Naturally. Tell him to make you something good, like coq au vin,” I say, since she likes her French food much better than the English fare.

“No. I can’t let him ruin my favorite dishes.”

We chat for a few more minutes, then I say good-bye, finding a welcome measure of peace because I’ve managed, on a regular basis, to fulfill another one of my brother’s wishes.

It’s probably the easiest one of all.

P.S. Be nice to Mum and Dad. It’s hard for them.

* * *

My brother was a runner, a cross-country standout in primary school. With his blond hair, blue eyes, happy-go-lucky spirit, and success on the field, he was a magnet. At lunch, guys and girls alike flocked to him. After school, he always hung out in the center of a crowd.

Since he was younger than I was, I had free rein to put him in his place. Make sure his success didn’t go to his head.

“I bet you can’t catch me,” I’d told Ethan one morning while he was lacing up his trainers. He was fifteen. I was sixteen.

He laughed. “Seriously? You’re seriously thinking I can’t catch you? You twat. You’d never be able to keep up with me.”

I scoffed. “You’d be huffing and puffing and have no clue what just happened when I passed you,” I’d said as I parked my hands behind my head on the couch at our home. “Just last night I dreamed I ran a marathon. Came in first place. And it was my first time running it. No doubt that’d happen.”

“Then get on your shoes and let’s go see how that dream becomes your nightmare.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”

He was right.

He did kick my arse.

But I was right, too.

I was faster than I’d expected. I enjoyed it more than I’d thought I would. Or maybe I simply enjoyed the competition. We were only thirteen months apart, so we found ways to compete in nearly everything—sports, girls, school, video games, even ridiculous things like who could clean our room fastest when Dad told us to get on our chores, stat. Later, he beat me in the race to run a marathon—he finished one prior to the accident.

We also ran a 10K together a few months before he was paralyzed. That was the ultimate competition. We were neck and neck the whole time, but I pulled ahead at the end and bested him.

“You wanker,” he’d said, panting and out of breath at the finish line. But he had a wicked grin on his face, and for a fleeting second, I wondered if he’d let me win for some reason. I’d pushed the thought out of my head, though, preferring to believe I’d won on my own.

Later, when he was in his wheelchair, his legs unable to work, his arms nearly useless, too, he’d said, “You know I let you win the London 10,000.”

“You did not,” I told him.

“I so did. It was easy. Right there at the end? You remember?”

“You can’t accept that I beat you fair and square,” I’d told him as I heated some soup for his lunch at his flat in London.

“You can’t accept that you were beaten by a cripple.”

I spun around. My jaw was set. My shoulders were tight. “Don’t say that word. Ever.”

He rolled his eyes. He was quite good at that. “I’ve accepted it. You should, too,” he said. It had been one year since he was struck by a drunk driver while heading home from a night out with friends.

“Even if you’ve accepted it, I don’t want you using that word. Also,” I said as I turned back to the stove, “you ought to accept that you had the full use of your legs for the London 10,000, and I still beat you.” I smirked, and he promptly tried to ram his wheelchair into me.

He was unsuccessful. “We’ll race again. I’ll beat you this time just to prove it. Even in a chair.”

“You’re on.”

As I navigate an uneven patch of sidewalk on my way to meet Christian, I can’t help but think Ethan would have found a way to race again. I also can’t help but think how lucky I am to be able to easily manage the streets of Paris, even when the sidewalks turn cobbled, even when the street corners are so narrow they’d never be able to accommodate a motorized chair like his.

Some days, I’m acutely aware that everything I can do with ease, including the most basic physical accomplishment of walking, are things my brother was unable to do for the last three years.

I can’t take a second of my life for granted.

Even if that means going out with friends on a Friday night. Life is for the living, Ethan said one evening when he was too sick from an infection to make it out of his house. Don’t stay home. Get out. Enjoy it. Enjoy it extra for both of us.

“I will,” I whisper as I walk, talking to a ghost. “I will.”

Then, I do my best to shove off the thoughts, focusing on the here and now.

When I reach the bar, I find Christian already draining a glass of beer. He’s shouting at the TV—a ref just called a penalty against the Danish team, a quick glance at the screen tells me.

“Did you see that? That’s so bloody ridiculous,” he says, gesturing wildly to the TV.

“Yeah, your team deserved it.”

“No way. The refs all have it against us.”

I laugh as I grab a stool. “That’s it. No one likes the Danes except, you know, everyone.”

He flashes a smile, his teeth gleaming white. “It’s because we’re so good-looking. Tall, broad, strapping.”

“And humble, too. Don’t forget that.”

When the bartender comes by, I order a pint and drum my fingers along the bar as I wait.

The game goes to a commercial, and Christian pulls his gaze from the set. “So, you’re stuck here in this shitty city with us riffraff for another few months.”

“Yeah, Paris is awful.”

He flashes a smile. He loves Paris. He once told me his dream job was to become a kept man of some gorgeous French woman. Preferably, she’d be a few years older. Younger women don’t hold his attention. A woman a few years older? That sparks his interest. And ideally, he’d service her needs every night and stroll along the river every day, he’s said. He hasn’t found her yet, but I do admire his dedication to the dream.

“How are you handling it?” he asks, his tone a touch more serious.

“It’s not too bad. It’s only three months. Especially since the client is a fun one.”

Christian arches a brow. “Fun? As in female?” He lets the last word linger, like it has more than two syllables.

I laugh. “Did I say the client was female?”

“No, but I highly doubt you’d say a male client was fun. You want to bang her, don’t you?”

It’s like he can read my mind. “No,” I say, with denial operating at full blast in me.

“Liar.”

Thankfully, the bartender arrives with my beer, giving me a temporary reprieve. “Thanks, man,” I say, then slap a few euros on the bar. The bartender nods and drops them in the till.

After a swallow, Christian stares at me. “Waiting.”

“What are you waiting for?”

He smacks my shoulder. “Just admit it. You said she’s fun. Therefore, you fancy her,” he says, adopting a singsong teenage girl tone.

“Fancy is so snooty. You can just say ‘I have the hots for her.’”

He points his finger at me. “You admitted it. I knew it.”

“Bastard,” I mutter.

“So you fancy her. What’s she like?”

An image of Joy pops into my brain. Curvy, clever, witty Joy. Long legs, fantastic hair, lush lips. A sense of humor that goes on for days. A smile like sunshine. Not to mention a certain zest for life I haven’t quite experienced before. From the pink door, to the terrace, to her boldness in asking for contact lens solution and croissants, she’s something else.

“She’s fun and smart and brainy and a little crazy,” I say, though that hardly seems to sum her up.

He shudders. “I try to stay away from the mad-as-a-hatter ones.”

“Crazy in a good way. Crazy, like, she has this wild sort of energy.”

“Ah,” he says with a nod. “I like wild. Wild is one of my favorite traits.”

“I’ll drink to wild.”

“And you have the hots for the wild woman you translate for. How’s that working out for you?”

“It’s fine. I’m keeping it totally professional.” I take another drink.

He nods. “That’s the only way to do it.”

“Getting involved with a client is a terrible idea,” I say, since it’s something I need to keep telling myself.

“Don’t I know it.” Christian dated one of his clients a few months ago, a fresh out of business school gal. It didn’t end well, since the client basically decided she wanted to have hot Viking babies with him. Fortunately, her attempts to sink her claws into him coincided with the end of the assignment, which also coincided with her returning to Denmark. She tried hard to convince him to return with her to Scandinavia. She even claimed she might be pregnant. She wasn’t.

He’d never been so happy to see a client leave this country.

“And don’t you make the same mistake,” he says, his tone deadly serious as he raises his glass and takes a drink.

“I won’t,” I say quickly.

“You can’t mix business and pleasure. We’re lucky to have the jobs we have. We have uncommon skills. We can’t fuck them up by screwing around.”

“Absolutely.”

He sets down the glass and sweeps his arm out wide. “Besides, we live in a city of beautiful women. And you know what advantage we have over the rest of the blokes?”

“What’s that?”

“Dickhead. You know.”

“Gee, could it be that we speak their language, but we have the cool cachet of being from someplace else?”

Christian offers a wolfish grin. “Women love men who aren’t from where they’re from. They love the other. The outsider. The foreigner. The mystery. And so, we are morally obligated to enjoy the bounty of beautiful ladies here in Paris and to bring them the ultimate pleasure.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Morally? It’s a moral obligation?”

He bangs a fist on the bar. “Complete and total moral obligation. We can’t shirk it. It’d be like a soldier abandoning his regiment.”

“It’s a duty, then?”

“One I’m fully committed to honoring. And you should be, too. Hell, isn’t it an item on that bucket list of yours?”

Item number two, in fact. Sleep with all the French women.

I haven’t followed it to the letter. Or the spirit, either. But I feel Ethan would be pleased that I’ve done my part to carry through on some of his wishes—I’ve enjoyed the hell out of my nights here in Paris over the last year. “My brother clearly thought of everything.”

Christian is one of the few people I’ve shared the details of my brother’s list with. He’s an easygoing guy, and he has a brother, so he gets it. You don’t question their last wishes. You just honor them. “You know I’m happy to pick up the slack on that one. Should you need it,” he says with a casual shrug.

“How noble of you to take on such a terribly burdensome bucket list item.”

“I’m thoughtful like that. Let’s see if we can honor it tonight.”

I flash back on the list I keep close to my body, and my heart. There’s something else on it that Ethan wanted me to do. I tap my chin, as if deep in thought. “Besides, it’ll help me knock out another item for Ethan.”

“What’s that one?”

“Help someone you care about achieve their dream.”

“And who is this person you care about?”

“You, tosser.”

“I love when you both compliment me and insult me in the same sentence.”

“Piss off.”

He raises his chin. “What’s this dream you think you’re helping me with?”

“Isn’t it only your greatest wish? To be a kept man?”

He bats his crystal-blue eyes. “I can’t wait. You’re going to help me accomplish my goal to retire at thirty with a hot, rich woman who wants me to service her all day and night? I fucking love you.” He reaches across to clap me on the shoulder. “You’re a true mate, Griff.”

I laugh, and toss back the rest of the beer. “You already retired once,” I say, since Christian made gobs of money in the markets, which gave him the luxury to do what he wants now. “But you never know. Maybe she’ll walk through the door in a few minutes, and I can say I accomplished that one.”

Honestly, I’ve no idea why helping someone achieve a dream was one of Ethan’s wishes. He never elaborated on it. But he wrote it down, and therefore I must do it.

“Maybe we’ll find one for you, too,” Christian suggests.

Except when a group of pretty women wearing clingy dresses and sky-high heels saunters to the bar to chat up Christian and me, I find myself with zero interest in them.

And an immense interest in texting the woman on the rooftop on the other side of the river.