This Is the Wonder

by Tracey Ward

  Jax is my new favorite feeling.

  “I’m going to point something out to you,” he says suddenly.

  I nod, my eyes trained forward on the stark white Greek statue standing proudly in front of us. “Okay, but most people would just point the thing out and not tell the person they’re going to do it.”

  “I’m a pioneer.”

  “I’m just saying it would save time to simply do it instead of talk about it.”

  He looks at me sideways. “And this thing that you’re doing right now? This is a time-saver?”

  “I’m educating you. You should always make time for learning, Jax.”

  “Can I make my point now, teacher?”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t already. That’s my point.”

  “Great. What I would like to point out is that we have seen a lot of penises today.”

  I pause to mull that over, rolling it around in my head and remembering the statues and paintings we’ve seen. Suddenly my mind is swimming with dicks. “That we have. Yes.”

  “And most of them displayed at eye level.”

  “I hadn’t realized that, but yes, also true. Are you on overload? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “What I’m saying is that I’m really learning something about you on this date.”

  I shake his arm excitedly. “Education! I told you, it’s so important. What have you learned about me today?”

  “That you have an extremely high tolerance for wang,” he tells me plainly.

  I blink, surprised. “Wow. Okay, I guess I see your point. But it’s art, so…”

  “A penis by any other name is still a penis.”

  “Sometimes a wang.”

  “Depends on what region you hail from.”

  “Then I guess by the same token, I’m learning that you, too, have a high penis threshold.”

  He frowns, flustered for a moment. “No—well, I have one so it’s not exactly shocking. I saw more dick in the bathrooms at the World Cup than I’ve seen here today.”

  “That seems weird. Why were you looking?”

  “I wasn’t looking, they were just there.”

  “At eye level? Did you watch any soccer at the World Cup or were you on permanent penis patrol?”

  “We’ve deviated from my point.”

  “And I think we’ve touched upon a newer and more important one: you’re a wang hound.”

  He sighs, turning from the statue and the dick hovering on the horizon. “This is not the conversation I envisioned us having in the Louvre.”

  I shrug, smiling as I happily thread my arm through his and follow him out of the room. “You started it.”

  We have to leave after that. Our day in Paris is quickly coming to an end and while it may not have hit my heart as hard as London did, I liked it. I liked seeing it with Jax, and maybe that makes me like it more than I actually do, but it doesn’t matter. I’m happy, and when I glance at him as we roll out of the now night drenched city on our bus, I know he’s happy too. He smiles at me, tugging me closer, and I honestly can’t imagine a better day than this.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Fuck.”

  We’re standing in front of the parking garage, the one attached to the grocery store that we so cleverly used to avoid driving into the madness of the city, and it’s closed. Locked up tight. All of it.

  Jax utters the curse as he scans the street, but there’s nothing. No signs in English that we can read or understand. No call button to get in touch with someone on the inside to let us in. Nothing.

  “Wait right here,” he tells me before taking off at a jog around the side of the building. He’s gone for only a couple minutes, but when he comes back his face is defeated and tight. “Nothing. No other entrance to the garage and there’s no fire ladder to climb.”

  “Uh oh.”

  He stands next to me, staring up at the building. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well, what do we do? Let’s check the sign, see when they open tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is Sunday. In Europe almost everything is closed on Sundays.”

  “So it might be locked in there for the next day?” I ask incredulously.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Shit,” I mutter.

  He pulls out his phone and dials a number, then growls when he doesn’t get an answer.

  “Should we get a hotel room?” I suggest, looking up and down the street for something nearby.

  “I can’t, I have to be to work in the morning.”

  “We can’t get there without the car.”

  “I know.”

  “What about the train?” I ask hopefully.

  He nods, lighting up his phone again and making another call. “Hey, Haskins. It’s Jax…Yeah, I need a favor. I’m trapped in Paris, man… Yep. My car is locked up in a garage and they aren’t open until Monday morning… I know. Fucked, yeah. I need to be to work in the morning… That’s what we were thinking. Can you look online for the train times for me?... Thanks…” He looks down at the ground as he waits, examining his shoes and trying to keep his cool. His shoulders are high and tense, though, and when Haskins gives him the news, I know it’s not good. “Dammit, really? Okay… Yeah, that’d be good. Thanks, man.”

  He hands up and shakes his head. “No more trains out tonight. Next one won’t get us back until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “When you’re already screwed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What time is it?”

  He glances at his watch. “After nine. Even getting on the road now was going to leave me with barely any sleep. This is—” he cuts himself off, shaking his head.

  “Let’s sit down over there in that park,” I suggest. “We can still see the building and we can wait. We’ll figure it out.”

  “I should get us a hotel room. If we can’t get out of here tonight we may as well get some sleep and stay warm.”

  “I don’t know that there are any nearby.”

  “There’s a bar down the street. Will you be okay staying here alone for a minute while I run inside and ask for a phonebook? I’ll call around and see what there is.”

  “Sure.”

  He hesitates, his face drawn and unsure. “I feel like a dick leaving you sitting alone on a park bench in the middle of the night.” He glances back at the garage. “I just don’t want to walk away from it for some reason.”

  I laugh, brushing off his concerns. “It’s not the middle of the night, it’s well lit, and we’re not exactly in the slums here. I’ll be fine. Go.”

  He’s gone for half an hour. It’s cold on this bench and I start to wander to stretch my legs and get some warmth built in my body. When he comes back I can see him but he must not see me because his face is panicked.

  “Wren!” he shouts, his eyes scanning the area.

  I wave, hurrying forward. “I’m right here, Jax. I’m fine.”

  He breathes a sigh of relief, heading for me. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No hotels.”

  “What? Are you serious?”

  “None that have vacancies anywhere near here. It’s Paris on the weekend. Everything is packed. There was one that had a room but it was over five hundred euro.”

  “Oh, hell no!”

  “That’s what I said. Maybe I should have taken it, though.”

  “No, no way. That’s insane. We’ll be fine. We’ll figure something out.”

  We check the sign on the building but we get nothing from it. It’s in French, it has times for Sunday, but there’s a notation next to it. One we can’t read. We decide to hope for the best that it means it will be open in the morning and we get comfortable in the park across the street. We’re going to spend the night out here and it’s going to suck, but it’s our best option at the moment. I try to convince Jax to sleep since he’ll have to drive once we get the car back, and eventually he relents but he doesn’t look happy about it. He lies down on the park bench next to me and rests his
head in my lap while I keep watch. The park is surprisingly busy, mostly with homeless. There are a few drunks who wander through as the night wears on. The cops cruise by and I’m worried we’re going to get in trouble for loitering but they don’t even slow down. I doubt they saw us.

  “If we die out here at the hands of a gang of mimes,” Jax mumbles tiredly, “I want you to know I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” I chuckle.

  “Sorry for getting you killed.”

  I smile, running my fingers lightly along his hairline surrounding his face. “I’m not dead yet, Jax. And I had a great day. Even if mimes attack tonight, it was still a great day.”

  “I was going to kiss you at the top of the Eiffel Tower.”

  “Why?”

  He rolls over onto his back to look up at me. “Because I like kissing you.”

  “No, I mean why on the top of the Eiffel Tower?” I scrunch up my nose. “Because it’s romantic?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hmm. Can I tell you a secret?”

  “You can tell me all of your secrets. You probably should, since we’re going to die here tonight.”

  “I’ll start with one. I don’t like romantic gestures.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrug, moving my hands through his hair again. “I don’t know. I guess I don’t know how to deal with them. They make me uncomfortable. I feel like there’s a right reaction I’m supposed to have to them and I don’t know what that is. So I get uncomfortable instead.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t kiss you then.”

  I smile. “I wouldn’t have minded. But I’d just rather you kissed me because you want to, not because it makes for a pretty picture.”

  He surprises me when he sits up on his elbows, his face coming close to mine. “I always want to kiss you.”

  And then he does. And it’s sweet and breathless and in a park in Paris in the middle of the night under the stars, and I wonder if that isn’t a prettier picture than anything else could ever be.

  Jax falls asleep eventually and it’s around midnight when my ass starts to hurt and my head is drooping with sleep. It’s then that I see a car pull up in front of the garage. It stops at the entrance as though expecting to go in, but the gate doesn’t move. I relax, figuring it’s a drunk idiot making a wrong turn, but then they reach out and swipe a key card across the ticket dispenser. Suddenly the large rolling door begins to rise.

  I shove Jax off of me, his head snapping down on the bench with a thud that I feel bad about, but I don’t turn around to apologize. I rush to the car, slowing down when I approach the window so I don’t get shot and so the driver doesn’t bolt. It’s an older woman with dark hair and she looks up at me in alarm when I come close to her open window.

  I put my hands up to show I’m not carrying anything. “I’m sorry,” I say calmly. “I’m sorry, but I need to get inside?”

  She frowns, not understanding. She says something about cleaning, that’s all I understand and I think she’s telling me she’s part of the cleaning crew.

  “My car,” I say, pointing to the garage. “My automobile is inside. Please.”

  “Voiture?” she asks hesitantly. “Car?”

  “Yes. My car. Noir voiture. Locked inside.”

  I can feel Jax coming to stand behind me and I hear his keys jingle as he holds them up to her. He presses his lock button twice and his car horn honks loudly from up above us where it’s parked on the roof.

  The woman eyes us for a second, then nods. She says something in French that we don’t understand, but her hand gestures tell us to follow her. She drives inside and we stay close to her car to avoid the door immediately closing behind us. We head up the ramps to the top, her headlights following us and lighting the way, and finally we reach the roof where we find Jax’s car waiting for us.

  I laugh with relief as we run to it. Jax cranks the engine, roaring it to life, and I throw the heat on high as he backs us out. The woman follows us to the exit and waits to make sure we leave, the door closing automatically behind us.

  And then we’re free. We’re rushing through the streets, onto the freeway, and leaving Paris far behind, but part of it will stay with me. It’s not the architecture or the famous monuments, it’s not the pasta that blew my mind or the stunning art in the galleries.

  It’s the kiss.

  Our French kiss.

  Chapter Twelve

  I’ll finish my semester abroad in one month.

  This sucks.

  I’ve known Jax for a little over a month, but it feels longer. And having one month left feels way too short. Every night we talk on the phone or leave each other messages online. After Paris we took another road trip, this time to Prague. It was beautiful and Gothic, and thank God the US dollar is king there because all of this traveling is making me go broke. Jax tries to pay for pretty much everything but I contribute what I can. I don’t know where he’s getting the money for all of this. He paid for most of London, he paid for most of the gas and entrance fees in Paris, and he pays for all of the gas and the hotel in Prague. He says he makes decent money and he doesn’t go off base drinking it away like most guys do, that he’s been saving up, but I wonder if that’s it entirely.

  One evening when we’re talking on the phone way too late—or too early, depending on how you look at it—I get my answer.

  “What do your parents do?” I ask him, snuggling into my bed and whispering so I don’t wake my roommate, Kim.

  “My mom is a homemaker. My dad is a general.”

  “General what? Like a general contractor?”

  Jax clears his throat. “No. Like major general. In the army.”

  “Oh. That’s pretty high, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. He’s a two-star.”

  “A two-star general?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy shit,” I whisper, stunned. I had no idea. “What about your brothers? And your sister?”

  “My sister Amber is in the army. So are my brothers Cade and Joseph. My oldest brother, Mason, is in the navy.”

  “So everyone in your family is military?”

  “My uncle on my dad’s side is a Marine,” he continues, effectively ignoring my question. He sounds almost bored. Maybe even annoyed? His tone is even but his words are clipped. “My cousins are all Army, all three of them. There were four, but Zack died two years ago in Afghanistan. Mortar attack.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say quietly.

  “It’s okay. We’re lucky with as many of us enlisted that we’ve only lost one so far. A lot of families lose more. Especially ones like ours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Almost everyone is in a dangerous career field. My dad is behind a desk now, has been for years, but he used to be an Army Ranger. My brothers, my sister, my cousins—they’re all Special Forces, pilots, medics, Rangers.”

  “You love being a mechanic, though, right?”

  “Yeah,” he says flippantly.

  “Do you wish you were doing a more dangerous job?”

  He doesn’t answer right away. I can hear him breathing softly, evenly, but he’s tense. I can feel it from here. This is a conversation he’s had before, and judging by his reaction to it, it’s never gone very well.

  “No,” he answers finally, his voice faint but decisive. “I like my job. I’m happy with my choice.”

  I sigh, catching on. “But your family isn’t?”

  “My family has a long history in the United States Military. We’ve always been in careers where we’re first into the fight. I’m one of the only ones in three generations not to carry on that tradition.”

  “Who else didn’t do it?”

  “My great-uncle. He’s a genius. He was recruited to be a code hacker. He’s also a linguist. Speaks six languages fluently.”

  “Whoa. I can barely speak English some days.”

  I hear him chuckle softly and I’m relieved. He obviously doesn’t like talking about this. I can tell
his family means a lot to him. He wants them to be proud of him and it breaks my heart that they’re not.

  “I’m supposed to be a lifer,” he tells me suddenly.

  “I thought you were doing twenty until retirement and going civilian?”

  “That’s my plan. It’s not my family’s.”

  “Your family is all lifers?”

  “Every last one of them.”

  “Why do you want to retire?”

  He pauses and I worry it’s a heavier question than I realized. But then he speaks, and there’s so much longing in his voice that I feel my throat constrict violently. “Because someday I want something in my life to be mine. When you’re military… when you’re the family of military, the enlisted person doesn’t belong to you. Service before self, that’s the motto, and that means family too. Service before everything. You don’t choose where you live or how long you’re there. An enlisted can be deployed at random, missing Christmas and birthdays. My dad wasn’t there when my sister was born. My mom was alone somewhere in Florida with three boys to take care of and a new baby on top of everything. I don’t want to do that to somebody. It’s okay now because I’m single, but someday I want to get married and I don’t want her or my kids to come second.”

  His last words are spit out bitterly and I wonder what his childhood was like. What his mom is like. Did he watch her be put second his whole life, he himself falling third to his dad behind her? I want to ask, but I’ve already asked too much tonight. I don’t want to push him into a worse mood than he’s in.

  “Sorry,” he says, sighing. “I’m tired. I got wound up.”

  “It’s okay. I asked. I wanted to know. I’m glad you told me all of that.”

  “Ha,” he laughs, disbelieving. “Yeah, I’m sure my family issues are really charming.”

  “Your honesty is.”

  “What about you?” he asks tiredly, his voice muffled momentarily, and I imagine he’s rubbing his hand over it the way I’ve seen him do when he’s exhausted. The way he did a million times on the way back from Paris as I begged him to let me drive. “What’s up with your family? What does your sister do?”