Joy

One of the things I love most about being a modern woman is we know we can have it all. The job, the family, the kids, the love affair, the great sex.

I don’t have kids, obviously. But I’d like to think I’m winning on a few of those other points right now. After finishing up in the lab, I grab my phone and tap out a message to my sister.

Joy: True/False. It’s possible to have your cake and eat it, too.

Allison: I’ve never understood that saying. Isn’t having it and eating it the same dang thing?

Joy: You know what I’m saying. Do you believe we can truly have it all?

Allison: Absolutely. But having it all isn’t free, sister. :)

Joy: What’s the cost?

Allison: Usually money. Usually you can only have it all if you’re rich. But sometimes you can if you’re really lucky.

I wonder if I could be one of those lucky women. When I leave the office on Friday evening, it feels that way. The job is going well. L’Artisan is thrilled with the work I’ve been doing, and I feel as if I’m entering a whole new level of success on the job front. Finally, I’m able to move up and use all my skills. I’m at a place where I can thrive and uncover new opportunities.

Then there’s this city.

I walk down the boulevard, threading my way past buildings that have witnessed centuries of lives and battles and loves, past shops that peddle mouthwatering treats, past people who experience the world in a different way than I did mere months ago. The most romantic city on earth is starting to feel like my home.

Plus, I’m learning a new language. My tongue forms words and sentences that I’d never have crafted before.

Then, there’s the man I’m meeting tonight.

The man I’m head over Jimmy Choos for.

I didn’t come to Paris to fall in love, but Paris had other plans for me.

* * *

After I shower, dry my hair, and slip into a sapphire-blue dress that hugs my curves, I toss a wide scarf over my shoulders. I consider the options on my mirrored tray, then go for the caramel and white musk notes in Candy by Prada, spritzing on a tiny amount.

I head to Montmartre.

Griffin waits for me outside Moulin Rouge, the windmill behind him, the bright red lights somehow making those blue eyes of his even bluer. He says nothing as I walk to him, only stares at me predatorily. How odd that I saw him hours ago when I wore a pencil skirt and white blouse at the office. Now I’m in a clingy dress that he’ll strip off later tonight. That’s how he looks at me. As if he’s already undressed me. I feel naked before his gaze, and it thrills me.

When I reach him, he wraps an arm around my waist, dips me, and kisses me.

I swoon.

There’s no other way to describe it. He has me in his arms, and he’s taking my breath away on the street outside the world’s most famous cabaret, and my head is a fantastically static haze. He kisses me like we’re in the movies, like this is one of those kisses a photographer will capture, and it’ll become a classic black-and-white photo. Women will post it online with captions like I’ll have what she’s having.

And I’m having it. The kind of kiss that makes my head spin. That makes my heart thump. That turns me on from ankles to eyebrows.

When at last our lips separate and he pulls me up, I blink at him, sighing contentedly. “You’re too much.”

He laughs. “I’ll assume ‘too much’ is a good thing.”

“You’re cake. I’m having you and eating you,” I say dopily, because I think I might be high on him.

“So much talk of eating things,” he says, running a hand through my hair as his soft lips travel to my neck. “And yet I still need to eat you again and again.”

That spark flares through me, and I’m already dangerously wet.

We head inside, taking a seat for the show, where we spend the next hour entertained by dozens upon dozens of women in sequins and feathers dancing and kicking to bright, bold, and sometimes seductive music. Their sumptuous costumes shimmer on the stage, the cherry reds, glittery golds, and shiny silvers adding to the decadence of the evening. This place is, and has always been, a portal to the hedonistic, an invitation to dance till dawn, to sleep in past noon, to drink and live and be so very merry.

Griffin’s hand is on me the whole time, moving from my leg, to my hand, over my shoulders. As I watch, I exist in a state of heightened awareness. I’m a hummingbird, wings buzzing, waiting to dip my beak into the honey water.

When we leave, we wander through the hilly streets of Montmartre, past cafés where the clink of wineglasses and bits of conversation float past my ears. I pick up phrases here and there, crystal clear in my brain for once, and I grab Griffin’s arm, my eyes widening.

“I’m starting to understand what they’re saying,” I tell him in French.

He smiles and kisses me. “Your dream is coming true.”

My heart flutters. I want to tell him I have new dreams. I want to tell him he’s part of them.

Something holds me back, though. Maybe it’s my own ancient fears. My worries over what happens when you let someone in. How you start to give up the parts of you that matter most. If I’m going to keep giving the most precious real estate in my heart to him, I want to know him more, and understand what drives him.

We stop in a small park and grab a bench in a quiet corner, away from the Friday night revelry. But before I can ask him what I most want to know, he squeezes my fingers and says, “I want you to see what’s on the list.”

I straighten my shoulders, surprised at this sudden declaration, even though it’s as if he’s read my mind. “You do?”

He nods. “You’re important to me. I want you to understand my life, and my choices.”

His words are heavy, anchored by a weight I don’t fully understand. He sighs, rubs a hand over his jaw, and I tense more. Something is on his list that I won’t like, and I don’t think it’s about other women. It’s about him. It’s about us.

I brace myself for hurt. “I want to say you don’t have to tell me, but I think I might need to know,” I say softly.

He swallows and brushes a strand of hair away from my cheek. “I’m leaving.”

My ears ring. My head hurts. A cold, hard echo reverberates in my body, like a crash of cymbals. I must have heard him wrong. “What?”

“I’m leaving Paris. When the assignment at your company is over.”

I blink, and if I were standing, I’d stumble. Instead, my hands curl around the wooden slat of the bench, holding on tight. “You’re leaving?”

He nods. “When I go to Indonesia. . .”

“You’re not coming back?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, heavily.

I nod a few times, my brain slowly processing this new input. It’s like someone dropped a molecule of bleach into a vanilla-scented perfume. “Wow.”

He rubs his palms along his slacks. “I’m sorry.”

Those words hit me hard. They make me feel like Richard did. Responsible for his fate. I paste on a smile. “Don’t be sorry. I was just surprised. That’s all.”

“I should have said something sooner.” Running a hand up my arm, his fingers tiptoe over my shoulder. My body has the audacity to form goose bumps. “But I had no idea where we were going, or if we were ever going to happen, or really what to say other than that I was going there for the race.”

I take a calming breath. “You don’t need to clear things with me. This is your life. You need to live it the way that makes sense to you.”

“Joy . . .” His voice is tinged with sadness.

“Are you planning to live in Indonesia?” I ask, drawing all my strength.

He nods. “For a little while. I’ve been saving the money to do this. But I’ll also travel all around. I’ve always wanted to.”

Like that, understanding lights up my brain, like neon signs flicking on at night.

At the museum, he said, I want to go everywhere.

At dinner when he told me about the marathon, his words were, I’ve always wanted to go there, spend some time wandering around when I’m done.

I should have seen this coming. He’s been clear enough. I thought he meant he’d take trips, but perhaps I only wanted to believe he would take trips, because they have a beginning and an end.

He’s never lied to me.

I’ve lied to myself.

I’ve chosen to believe the fairy-tale version of falling in love in Paris. Not the real one, where I meet a man who has too much wanderlust, a man who’s living a life he and his brother plotted. A life only one of them can live now.

“Do you want to see the list?”

“Yes,” I say with a gulp because I need to know what I’m up against. Once upon a time, I believed my own reticence over relationships would be our biggest barrier. Now I know the highest hurdle is one that I can’t, and won’t, tear down.

It’s time, it’s space, it’s distance. It’s family, it’s love, it’s honor.

It is intractable.

He takes a piece of paper from his wallet and unfolds it. I hold my breath, waiting. Once he spreads the paper open, it’s like seeing a ghost. The handwriting is his brother’s. It’s a scratchy and uneven scrawl, the penmanship of someone who could barely hold a pen anymore. It breaks my heart.

1. Live in Paris for a year. Check.

2. Sleep with all the French women. Check.

3. Visit Indonesia. Run a marathon there. Travel across the country, then everywhere.

4. Pack your bags, wander the globe, and eat macarons, or whatever you want because you can, since you’ll . . .

5. Have six-pack abs. You can do it. I was almost there. Hell, show me up and go for an eight-pack. Check.

6. Help someone you care about achieve their dream.

7. Have your caricature drawn in Place du Tertre. Preferably a highly amusing image that would have made me laugh.

8. Sleep under the stars.

9. Take a chance that terrifies you. Check.

10. Drink champagne along the Seine when you bid adieu.

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

I laugh at the same time that a sob works its way up my throat then escapes. I drop my head in my hands, and let a few tears slip down my cheeks.

Griffin rubs a hand on my back. “Are you okay?”

I nod. “It’s just sad.” I don’t mean him leaving, though that is intensely sad. I raise my face, a new tear streaking down. “I’m sorry your brother’s not here. I’m sorry this happened to him.”

Griffin dusts his lips over my cheek, kissing away the evidence of my tears. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not, but what can you do? Don’t cry, sweetheart. I hate to see you sad.”

That only makes me want to cry harder. The sweetheart. The endearment. The way my emotions matter to him.

But this isn’t about me.

This is so much bigger than him, than us.

This is about a promise to the person you love most. The person you love unconditionally. It’s a dying wish to do what someone else can’t.

Gathering myself, I draw a deep breath, swallowing past the harsh lump in my throat. It’s not my loss. It’s his, and I’m acting like I own it. I lift my chin, keeping my voice even. “Why are some underlined?”

“Those are the ongoing ones. I should always be nice to Mum and Dad, right?” he says with a smile.

“Of course, but it’s sweet Ethan pointed it out.”

“He worried about them. And it’s not hard to be nice to them, but it’s important, and that’s why I try to talk to them often. To stay in touch.”

“And the other one underlined is the one about helping someone achieve their dreams. I guess I’m still a work-in-progress,” I say, a quirk to my lips.

He wraps his arm tighter around my shoulder, leans his face to me, brushing his lips against mine. “Yes, I like that you’re ongoing. I like that you’re not there yet. It means you still need me.”

More than you know. “I have so much to learn.”

“I’ll get you there.”

And then you’ll leave. Then you’ll take off.

But I don’t say that. I’m a grown-up, and that’s the role I need to play. I fasten on a smile. “And then you’ll be on your way to Indonesia. You’ll do the marathon and travel, then you’ll wander and eat macarons. So that’s three and four.”

He nods. “Which leaves me with three left to do here, I suppose.”

“Sleep under the stars. Why haven’t you done that? That seems like something you could do any night.”

“True, but I don’t think that’s what it means.”

“What do you think it means?”

“We used to make lists of all the places we wanted to go. We had this huge map of the world with pins stuck in future destinations, and we’d say that we’d sleep under the stars if we had to.” His eyes look faraway, and he’s slipped back to the past, to memories that are bittersweet. “Or if we wanted to,” Griffin adds, a cheerier note to his voice. “We always gave ourselves an out. If we had to, or if we wanted to.”

“So, it applies to traveling,” I say heavily, and it seems many of these items do. But that’s who Griffin and his brother were, I’m learning. They were boys bitten with the bug of adventure. Then, they became men, unable to pack their bags and take off. And so, now, one of them must.

I move down the list, running my finger over the caricature one, and the champagne item. “I know someone who can help you with these final two.”

He raises an eyebrow playfully. “Oh, do you?”

I dance my fingers over my chest. “I happen to adore champagne, and I also know a great caricaturist.”

He laughs heartily. “How on earth do you know a great caricaturist? That’s so random.”

I wave broadly at the streets in front of us. “Hello? Montmartre? Place du Tertre. Elise lives near here, and when I was on my way to her home, I had a drawing done a couple months ago. I’ll take you to see the guy. It’ll be fun.”

“There you go. Done.” He mimes making a check mark.

I squint. “But I don’t understand why you didn’t do that one yet. It seems easier.”

He shrugs. “Maybe because it’s easy. I figured I’d tackle the others first. Besides, this was one I knew I could do anytime, I suppose.”

Part of me desperately wants to believe he hasn’t had his caricature done so that he’ll have a tether to Paris. I want to believe he loves Paris as wildly as I do, and when the time comes to say good-bye, he won’t be able to. The tie to this place will be too strong.

But that’s a fool’s hope.

I’ve been a fool before.

I can’t do it again.

I’ll be a rock. That’s what I know how to be. This man is teaching me a whole new language. The least I can do is be by his side as he finishes his brother’s bucket list. He needs to see this through. It’s not my place to hold him back with a heart too full for him. It’s my place to help guide him there, a gentle hand on his back, an encouraging word, and a fantastic time before he waves good-bye. Send him off in style, even if it makes my heart ache more than I would like.

So much more than I would like.

I lace my fingers through his and walk to the nearby square, where charcoal artists draw elongated faces. But it’s late, and most have gone for the night.

“We’ll come back another time,” Griffin says, and a faint kernel of hope dares to take shape inside me. The hope that there will be another time, another chance for us.

A ragtag group of musicians plucking away on violins and cellos play a French tune, the words melancholy but the melody upbeat enough. Griffin takes my hand and spins me, and we dance under the moonlight, the stars winking above us, the old-time music becoming our soundtrack.

“Now all this dancing makes me want to do one thing only,” he says as the song ends.

“What’s that?”

“Make love to you.”

Uber has never made it to my place so quickly.

In my bed, we speak less than last night. We tease less, too. But here in the dark, as he climbs over me, runs his hands down my naked body and enters me, I don’t need words to know what he’s feeling. I see it in his eyes. In the intensity of his gaze. I hear it in his sounds, his noises. He hikes up my leg, opening me more, moving in me. He doesn’t look away, and it’s almost too much.

But too much of him is what I want.

Even if it hurts.

Even if I know it’s ending.

When we’re like this, tangled together, our bodies slick and hot, our breath wild and erratic, our lips parted, it doesn’t feel as if we’re counting down.

But once we come down from our high, I’m keenly aware that I’m crossing off days on the calendar until the man I’m in love with leaves.