Wanderlust

by Lauren Blakely

  “Very good. More wine for you?”

  I nod. “Another glass, please.”

  Joy nods.

  He fills our glasses and leaves.

  I practically rub my palms together because we can return to the main attraction.

  But when I meet her gaze, her jaw is set, her focus dead-on professional. “Griffin, I need to learn to speak French. Will you teach me?”

  I freeze. What the hell did she just say? My hand tightens around the stem of the wineglass. “Excuse me?”

  Her eyes widen, an apologetic look crossing them. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. That’s why I asked you to dinner,” she says quickly. And holy balls, she did proposition me. But it’s not for sex. It’s for words. I’d like to say my heart sinks, but it’s another part that deflates. Along with my ego, which has been massively punctured, too.

  “That’s why?” I ask cautiously, making sure I don’t completely cock this up, too.

  “My proposition is that I’d like to pay you myself for you to spend more time with me, actually teaching me the language.”

  So yeah. I basically felt her up under the table, and she wants me to teach her how to say table, fingers, and hands, instead.

  “Foolishly, I thought I would learn the language simply by being here,” she explains. “I figured I’d pick it up the way young people do, through TV or whatnot. Except, I hate television. I suppose I could find some French language school, but I thought maybe if you wanted to pick up any extra work or hours . . . I can pay you well.”

  Her voice rises at the end of her explanation, almost as if she’s embarrassed to be asking. Or maybe she’s embarrassed that I came on so strong.

  But, in my defense, she sure as hell did seem responsive under the table.

  I blow out a long stream of air, trying to reroute my errant, filthy thoughts. I reach for the glass of wine and take a hearty drink. I give myself another moment to adjust to the shift in plans, and in my pants for that matter, as well as the fact that I hit on her like a total wanker sidling up to a woman at a bar.

  She keeps going, hastily adding, “It’s been a dream of mine to know another language. I took some French in school, but I didn’t learn enough to do much more than order food. I can’t get by in this country simply knowing how to say how much does that cost and I’d like a salad, hold the ham.” She stage whispers, “I hate ham.”

  “That’s understandable,” I say absently before it hits me like a whack upside the head. I’ve embarrassed her by coming on to her. Now she’s chattering on and on because I’ve made her feel stupid. Time to fix this problem. “Ham is awful. Simply dreadful. You need to be able to converse about ham.” I bang a fist on the table to emphasize this critical point and try to defuse the discomfort.

  She smiles and laughs lightly. “Yes, exactly. I need to have conversations every day—about ham or synthetic vanilla or when the next train is coming or what I’m doing this weekend or whatever else comes up,” she says, sounding natural again, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Perhaps I haven’t totally scared her off with my hand-under-the-table routine. The routine she loved, the devil in me says.

  “Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more.”

  “Right? You get it. I know it’ll take time, but I thought if you could help me, and I can truly immerse myself in the language, then I can start to feel like I belong here. I can make the progress I want to make in my career, and I can potentially achieve one of my dreams. To speak another language.”

  My spine straightens. All the noise in my head disappears as I key in on that word. Dream.

  An image of the sheet of paper I keep in my wallet snaps into crisp focus.

  * * *

  6. Help someone you care about achieve their dream.

  * * *

  That item from Ethan’s list has always been a tough one for me. I haven’t been quite sure how to tackle it, so I’ve put it off. Now I know. Now I get it. This is how I fulfill that wish. This isn’t Christian’s satirical commitment to find a rich vixen. This is real. This matters to Joy. And this mattered to my brother.

  “Yes,” I say, clear and confident.

  She beams, her eyes sparkling, her smile stretching wide. “You will?”

  “Under one condition,” I add.

  “Okay,” she says, curiously.

  “You can’t pay me.”

  “What?”

  I swallow thickly and look her in the eyes. “It’s an item on my bucket list.”

  “Are you sick?” Her tone is laced with concern.

  I shake my head and steel myself to tell her. “No. It’s my brother’s list.”

  “Is he ill?”

  “He was. When you asked me about him the other day, and I said he’s very funny, that wasn’t entirely true.” I take a breath, remembering Ethan toasting me when I landed the job at the aquarium several years ago, saying the job sounded great but a little fishy. I’d rolled my eyes, telling him to try again with a better pun. He never stopped the fish jokes, and I’d do nearly anything to hear another one. “He was funny. He died more than a year ago.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she says, her hand stretching across the table. She threads her fingers through mine, and I can tell I’m forgiven for my wayward action before. This isn’t a prelude to seduction. It’s the gesture of a friend. Perhaps I need that more at the moment. Maybe we both do.

  “Yeah, me, too. Sorry I didn’t say anything the other day. I guess I should have but . . .”

  She shakes her head, dismissing the notion. “We only say things when we’re ready. You weren’t ready then.”

  Her response warms some cold, brittle part of me. The part that’s been on ice for the last year. “I think I just wanted to enjoy that day with you. I didn’t want to bring anything sad into our Île de la Cité adventure.” I take a breath then dive into the deep end. “He was in a car accident four years ago. Hit by a drunk driver, and wound up in a wheelchair. Couldn’t walk. Could barely use his hands. I helped take care of him. Which is a really weird thing to say—that I took care of my adult brother.”

  “Why is that weird?” Her voice is soft, and her hand squeezes mine.

  “You just don’t expect to be in that position. Maybe I was Blaze Dalton, in a way.”

  A faint smile tugs at her pretty lips. “Were you?”

  I shake my head. “Not really. He had carers, or aides as you call them. But, you know, they’re not family. And we don’t live in a castle or on an estate. We all helped. Mum. Dad.” I shrug. “What else can you do?”

  “You can’t do anything else.” She swallows roughly. “I’d do the same for my sister, Allison. You just have to help.”

  “I was getting ready to move to Paris shortly before the accident. We’d even talked about going together maybe, Ethan and I. He was keen on the idea . . .” My voice trails off momentarily, as the memory of our plans sharpens, images of those days, jogging in London, plotting our next steps, snap before my eyes. “But that didn’t happen. I stayed in London, writing marketing materials for the exhibits at the aquarium and doing translations of them for French visitors. That old marine biology degree came in handy after all, since it enabled me to have a job near home, which meant I could help out, along with my parents. Ethan was so tough, though. Sturdy in his own way. Not saying he was happy about it, but he didn’t let it get him down. At least, not like you’d think it could get you down.”

  “That’s incredible. It takes a lot of internal strength, I imagine.”

  “He had that.” I sigh. “And the rub is, he was actually managing well enough with his lot in life before he came down with an infection. That’s what did him in.” I shake my head. “The damn irony of it. He died because he couldn’t fight off a basic infection. But before that, he’d even managed to still work.”

  “He did?”

  “He was an online DJ, so he was fortunate to be able to keep doing a job. Set up a home studio and all that. He drew some contentment, I suspect, fro
m having a modicum of independence. His voice still worked, after all. But he was always very physical. An athlete. And he wanted to do so many things—travel, explore, run more marathons.”

  “That’s why you’re training for a marathon,” Joy says, like something has clicked into place for her.

  I nod. “Exactly. It’s on the list. Third item. He desperately wanted to do another, so there’s a race in Indonesia I’m planning to do in a couple months. I’ve always wanted to go there, spend some time wandering around when I’m done.”

  “I hear Indonesia is beautiful.”

  “And warm.”

  “Always a plus.”

  “He wanted to do other things, too. He wanted to zip-line. Skydive.” I shudder at the last one. “I told him that I loved him to the depths of the ocean and back, but there was no sodding way I was skydiving for him, so he’d better keep that off his list.”

  “Did he?” she asks with avid interest.

  “Thank the Lord, he did. You couldn’t get me to skydive if you paid me. But ‘live in Paris’ is on the list, so I’m doing that. And so is ‘help someone achieve their dream.’ And that”—my voice softens—“that I can do, too.”

  “You really don’t have to do this for free,” she says, her voice thin, like it pains her to accept that there’s no fee.

  I lean closer, locking my eyes on hers. “But I want to, Joy. Don’t you see?”

  “You’d be doing something massive for me. This isn’t just a let’s be friends and eat ice cream and sniff flowers and perfume request.”

  That reminds me how very much I like sniffing her neck. “But I’ll gladly do that for free, too.” I wink.

  She laughs but then erases the humor a second later. “I really want to be fair and compensate you for your time.”

  “This is fair to me. This is immensely helpful. You’d be doing something vital,” I say, my tone intensely serious, brooking no argument. “I need to do this.”

  “Griffin,” she says, but I can tell she knows she’s not winning this debate.

  I shake my head and squeeze her hand tighter. “Let me.”

  She shrugs, her lips curving in a soft grin. “Okay.”

  “Let’s start now,” I say, switching to the language she wants to learn. I do what I’ve been doing for her all along. Translating. But this time, I make her say the words back to me. Then I do something that’ll drive her crazy. I don’t speak English first anymore. During our meal, I talk to her in French about simple things, making her answer in her best stitched-together attempts, correcting her every time she needs it.

  By the end of the dinner, she looks exhausted.

  She lays her head on the side of the tablecloth. “May I take a nap now?”

  I pat her hair. “Poor Joy. Dreams aren’t always easy.”

  When the bill comes, she reaches for it.

  I do the same.

  But she has the check in her fast little fingers already. “No,” she says, quickly standing. “If you’re teaching me French for free, I’m paying for dinner.”

  “You can’t pay for dinner.”

  She scoffs. “Try and stop me.”

  She bolts from the table, bag in hand, and strides to the waiter, who’s clearing another table now. “Voilà. Merci.” She hands him her credit card.

  She returns to me, a smug smile on her face. “Oh, by the way, one of the things we American women are quite good at is getting what we want. And sometimes that means blowing through a restaurant like a bull in a china shop.” She shimmies her hips in some kind of victory dance that’s no doubt supposed to be in-your-face, but it makes me want to kick back and watch her move that lush body.

  I laugh and hold up my hands in surrender. I should be more devastated that I’m not taking her home to screw her tonight, and an hour ago, I was. But oddly enough, I’m not feeling that way any longer. Maybe because I’m one step closer to something even more important—finishing the list. Getting out of town. Wandering across the world, as I’ve always wanted. I’ve stayed still in London and Paris for the last few years. My innate wanderlust is calling to me. Ethan knew it was a strong force in both of us and perhaps fulfilling the travel wish would be the easiest one for me.

  Since we were lads, we wanted to see the world. We’d stay up late, poring over maps and atlases, looking up photos of the craziest, wildest places, then we’d plot how we’d eventually make our way around the globe. We wrote endless lists of our eventual conquests. We pushed pins into maps of the world, intrepid explorers plotting our trips. The Northern Lights in Iceland, the crystal-blue waters lapping beaches in Thailand, the neon streets of Tokyo. We’d sleep under the stars when we had to and when we chose to, as we traversed South America, checking out the tip of Argentina after we traveled through Buenos Aires. We’d hit every continent. We’d avoid the Amazon on account of anacondas, and we vetoed Mount Everest, too, after reading Into Thin Air, one of the many adventure stories we tossed back and forth, its pages dog-eared many times over.

  “I’m not going to die on a snow-capped mountain with icy air blasting me,” he’d said when we were in school. “When I go, it better be on some tropical island, surrounded by women in bikinis, serving me drinks.”

  “When I go, they won’t be serving me drinks,” I’d said, always upping the ante. “They’ll be serving me.”

  “In your dreams.”

  In the end, that’s all they were to him.

  But not forever, since I’m still here to live them. Some have already come true, and more will. Including another one now, thanks to the woman smiling at me by the door, waiting.

  We leave the restaurant, strolling down the avenue as the soft golden lamplight bathes the streets.

  “The lights in Paris are different than anyplace else,” Joy says, pointing to the lanterns. “There’s almost a magical sort of glow to them.”

  “That’s true,” I answer in French.

  She shoots me a smirk. “You’re a very strict teacher.”

  I laugh, shifting to English so nothing is lost in translation. “Be a good student or I’ll bend you over the desk and spank you.”

  Her eyes light up. “Maybe I want to be bad now.”

  I nearly groan, wanting that, too. Wanting all of that. Maybe I do still wish she’d made the other proposition, but for now I’ll have to be content with being her friend, her translator, and her teacher.

  “When should our lessons begin?” she asks.

  “What are you doing tomorrow after work?”

  She points at me. “Learning French with you?”

  I nod and smile. “You’re correct. And that does sound like an excellent recipe for a perfect Friday evening activity. The only thing that might make it better is where it takes place.”

  I slow my pace, and whisper my idea. Joy’s green eyes turn bright and glittery.

  “Elise did say I should partake in all the pleasures in life. She says I need more fun.”

  As I wander home later, I find myself wondering why she needs it.

  15

  Joy

  * * *

  If someone were to cross-examine me under oath, before God and country, I could say without fear of perjury that I’ve indeed found heaven on earth.

  My always-working-overtime nose has never been happier.

  I lean over the display case in the cool, air-conditioned, chocolate-scented bliss known as Jean-Paul Hévin near the Eiffel Tower, and my mouth waters. I will literally drool on the counter if I don’t keep my jaw shut. And I don’t care. Because . . . chocolate.

  We’re talking chocolate the likes of which my taste buds have never encountered before.

  Forget fancy candy bars from upscale grocery stores back home. This is the Gucci of chocolate shops. This is my Louboutin-loving heart coming home to roost among my favorite things.

  Treats.

  Luxuries.

  Exquisite tastes.

  I point at a chocolate square beneath the glass. “What is that?” I ask
the perky blonde clerk, like an eager seven-year-old pawing at a delectable goodie.

  Griffin admonishes me. “En français.”

  I narrow my eyes at him, then direct my question again to the woman in the black linen dress behind the counter. She answers and her words are gibberish to me.

  But I find a response. With a satisfied grin, I declare, “Saperlipopette!”

  Gadzooks.

  Griffin’s hand flies to his belly, and he nearly doubles over in laughter. “Now you’re really loufoquering.”

  Honestly, last night I thought we were going to slide right into loufoquering. When he held my hand under the table, I was entranced, utterly swept off my feet by the unexpected physical contact and the intensity of it, too. More so by what that little bit of contact did to me. It sent me soaring. For a few moments at the restaurant, I truly thought he was going to seduce me, take me back to his flat and pin me to the door, cage me in with those lean, ropy arms, and kiss the breath out of me.

  I’d have let him.

  Despite what a horrid idea it would have been, I’d have given in, I’m sure of that. I’d been on the cusp of falling into him, and then everything shifted when I uttered my proposal. But that’s how humans are. We are designed to be malleable, to change gears quickly when need be. Now, my gear is in feed me chocolate mode.

  The woman behind the counter grasps a pair of chocolate tweezers and reaches into the case.

  “She has chocolate tweezers,” I say in a stage whisper.

  Griffin repeats that in French.

  I straighten my shoulders and aim to impress him when I change the sentence the teeniest bit and say to the clerk, “You have chocolate tweezers.”

  She smiles. “Very good. Your French is very good.”

  She’s lying. She’s telling a bald-faced lie. But she’s so sweet, and she has her paws on the chocolate I want in my belly, so I simply say, “I have a good teacher.”

  When the blonde places the dark chocolate ganache in my hand, I step away from the counter, ready to pop it into my waiting mouth and let the chocolate melt on my tongue.