Joy

June is flamboyant.

This month is such a show-off, sashaying around with its warm breezes and lush flowers that blaze with red, cherry, and ruby petals. I snap photo upon photo of the kaleidoscope of flowers in Monet’s garden. It’s a pinwheel of colors. It’s a painting. It’s lushness come to life.

No wonder the artist drew such inspiration here.

“Once you see these gardens it’s no surprise that he painted so many variations of them,” I say as we wander past flowerbeds that do their best impression of emeralds, garnets, and sapphires.

“It makes you wonder how he painted anything else at all,” Griffin says.

He points to the forest-green bridge, curling over a shimmering pond. Water lilies float on the surface, bobbing aimlessly as they luxuriate in the afternoon rays. “Where would you take it?”

“I’m not picky. I’d take it wherever it went. I’d like to see London at some point. Amsterdam, too. Tokyo sounds like fun. Everywhere. But I might also take it right back to the Jean-Paul Hévin chocolate shop in Paris. Or, wait.” I snap my fingers. “I’d go to the market to buy walnuts and bread. I might even take it to Montmartre sometime and wander through the hilly streets.” I stop in front of an archway lined with pink roses. “Where would you take the bridge?”

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t ask a ridiculous question.”

I furrow my brow. “Why is that ridiculous?”

He dots a kiss on my forehead. “I’d take it to see you, obviously.” My skin warms, but I can’t linger in the sentiment because he tugs on my hand. “Come on, we don’t want to miss anything.”

As we wander through extravagant foliage, making sure we don’t miss a single petal, I ask him to tell me more about his parents. He talks about the new movie kick his mother is on, the efforts his dad makes to cook, and how they’ve mentioned recently they want to visit Iceland. Was the travel bug passed on to him from his parents, I ask? It’s entirely possible, he says, and as he describes the trips he and his brother planned, something snags in my brain, like a moment of déjà vu. I’m not sure what it is, or how to place it, but my mind is desperately trying to latch on to something.

He seems to sense it, tilting his head. “You went quiet. What’s on your mind?”

“Something feels eerily familiar about what you said. I can’t figure it out, though.”

“It’ll come to you at three in the morning. That’s when all the unsolved riddles are answered.”

As we stroll under a weeping willow, the conversation shifts again to another level of happy talk. “What makes you happiest?”

His answers come swiftly. “Running. Eating ice cream. Kissing you.” He drops his voice to a whisper and moves his mouth near my ear. “Fucking you.” I blush, and he raises his voice, continuing. “Hanging out with friends. Laughing. Finding something unexpected. What about you?”

“My sister. Shoes. Bright colors. Rain on cobbled streets. Kissing you in the rain on cobbled streets,” I say, and his quick smile in response thrills me. “Endless gorgeous views. Lazy conversations that seem to meander nowhere, but let you truly know someone. And pretty, luxurious, decadent scents, but you know that.”

“I do, and I know, too, that someday you’ll be accepting an award for your creations.”

I give him a look as if he’s crazy.

“You will,” he says, with cool confidence. “And you’ll even accept it in French. I can see it so clearly.”

I roll my eyes, even though, inside, my heart is springing, loving the idea.

“You’re going to be at the top of your field. I believe that. You’re going to be the best at what you do. You’ll make some amazing new concoction. It’ll be splashed all over magazines and necks and wrists, and it’ll be this new infatuation that everyone wants.”

“You’re crazy.” But I can’t stop grinning.

“Someday, it’ll happen.”

I whip my head in the direction of a delicious smell. I’d know it anywhere. A flower, slinking its way unexpectedly around the weeping willow. “This is my favorite. Honeysuckle.”

He leans in close and murmurs his appreciation. “This smells like desire.”

“It does?”

He nods and brings his mouth to my neck, kissing my throat. “Completely.”

And that’s when I know what my concoction is missing. It’s right under my nose.

My favorite.

When he pulls away, I tell him, “I came to Monet’s garden to explore, and now I’m reminded of what I love.”

“Me, too.”

* * *

The room is dark. Moonlight filters through the open window, the curtains fluttering.

There are a million things that could be said, and yet there’s nothing more to say. Nothing more to talk about. He runs his thumb over my bottom lip, then presses his mouth to mine. Every move tells me he’s memorizing me, lingering in one of our last kisses.

It takes my breath away. It makes my knees weak.

This kiss is the reason kissing was invented. This kiss is the sky breaking open. It’s why we run through the airport to stop a plane.

Why we run, run, run to stop a lover from leaving.

For this.

This kind of intimacy. This kind of need.

It’s the reason we tell stories of how memories make us feel.

We separate, and he rakes his gaze over me from head to toe, as if he’s photographing every curve, every dip and valley. Running his hands from my shoulders down my bare arms to my waist, he’s imprinting the feel of me.

I’m his, and I’m not his at the same damn time. For tonight, for a few more nights only, I belong to him.

He strips me naked, and I take off all his clothes.

But we don’t make love like two sad sacks. We make love the way we always have. Standing up, on all fours, bent over the bed.

We do it rough. We do it hard. We don’t cry in sorrow. I only cry out when he makes me come again and again.

Then, when there’s barely anything left in me? That’s when he spreads me out on the bed and enters me slowly and luxuriously, hiking up my knees, going deeper, so much deeper than before.

“Please,” I moan. I don’t even know what I’m asking for. But I keep asking. “Please, please, please.”

“Anything,” he says. “I’ll give you anything.”

“You.” It’s a feather of a word.

He moves faster, harder, and my world blurs, spiraling away from me. “Come with me,” he growls, and he says it over and over, in English this time, and I can’t miss the extra layer of meaning I want to hear.

Come with me. Come with me. Come with me.

I want to tell him I would. I want to tell him I’m already there.

But then the pleasure takes over, curling and wrapping around me, and I clutch his shoulders, pulling him close, and I let go, sliding into blissful oblivion.

* * *

I blink open my eyes, and sit up straight. It’s three in the morning. Griffin is sound asleep, peacefully snoozing. There is no more déjà vu. I know what was weighing on my mind in the garden.

The question now is how to tell him.

I search for the right moment on the train ride back to Paris. I’m still formulating the words in my head. The things I want to say. But it hardly feels like something that can wait. I test it out as the train rolls closer to the city.

“I was thinking about your bucket list in the middle of the night.”

“You were?”

“I have a theory about it.”

He arches a curious brow.

I tell him my theory.

When I’m done, he scoffs. “No. There’s no way that’s it.” He squeezes my hand and does a one-eighty. “Now, have you decided what you’re going to do when you get the job offer?”

The conversation is over just like that.

I put it out of my mind.

* * *

He’s right. The job offer is amazing.

He’s right about something else, too. Honeysuckle is the missing ingredient. I add it the next day, and work on the formulation until I can imagine it seducing me in a store when I spritz it on. I would buy this in buckets. I would buy it in droves. I would give it to everyone I know.

I bring a tester to Elise that night, and her brown eyes light up when she tries it. “And what are we going to do with this delicious sensual cocktail now?”

“I don’t know.”

She pats my shoulder. “That seems to be your answer lately. But I beg to differ.”

“You do?”

She nods. “The job offer. The perfume. You say you don’t know, but you do.”

“Oh good. Please tell me.”

She shakes her head, and smiles knowingly. “I’m not going to tell you. You know.” She taps my breastbone. “Right here, you know.”

Maybe she’s right. Perhaps I do know what I want. The trouble is, it’s too hard for me to think about what I want when Griffin’s still here. I don’t want to make the same mistakes that I did before. Looking back, it was easy to think I was stuck with Richard. In reality, I let myself be pulled under. I let his madness cocoon me. I chose to be saddled with guilt and regret. Griffin was right that night when we wandered past the Eiffel Tower. We always have a choice, he said.

I’d thought I was doing the right thing at the time. I might very well have been doing the right thing.

But now, I can choose my path in my own way. I can make the choice that suits me. That’s what I’ve needed—not to lose myself in a man.

When my man leaves, I’ll decide.