Wanderlust

“When would they want you back?” he asks, and the question comes out rough, as if there’s gravel in his throat.

“Probably in a month, Marisol said.” I furrow my brow. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Absolutely. Just, wow. This is wow,” he says, tapping his fingers against his skull then spreading them wide open, as if this is blowing his mind. Maybe it is. “You’d move back home.”

Home.

That word echoes between us. For a while it felt like home was here with him. But we’re a vacation. We’re an escape. He’s not my home because he’s leaving, and I may as well take off now, too. How fitting that we came together in Paris like a chemical reaction. We combusted, and now we’re repelling. We’re shooting away from our epicenter, both of us, drifting farther apart. Maybe it was meant to be this way.

Home isn’t him and me.

It’s elsewhere.

I squeeze his hand, asking again, “What would you do?”

“If it’s your dream come true, you should go for it,” he says, his voice thick, almost as if it’s clogged with emotion. “I don’t want to hold you back.”

I tilt my head to the side, curiosity gripping me. “How would you hold me back? You won’t even be here.”

He winces and looks away.

“You won’t be here, right?” I ask, pressing. For a split second, my heart leaps. Has he changed his mind? Is he staying? I wait patiently for an answer.

His eyes shine with sadness, and I try to read their meaning. But they’re a language that won’t translate for me.

So, I go first. Taking a tentative step. “If you were here, it would be different.”

He closes his eyes and gathers me close.

28

Griffin

“I know,” I say as I wrap her in my arms and press a kiss to her lips.

I can’t risk speaking more. I can’t say what I want to say. Because I can’t let her make this choice for me. That goes against everything she needs in life. Everything I said I’d do. I told her I wouldn’t hold her back. She doesn’t want me to hold her back.

She wants to be free to make her own choices.

There’s no asking her to stay.

There’s no asking her to go with me for a few weeks.

There’s no putting off the trip so we can steal a few more months.

There’s only a “down the road.”

When we pull apart, I offer that. “Maybe we can see each other in Texas someday.”

“Yeah, maybe we can.” She smiles faintly.

Sometimes, I suppose life insists we stick to Plan A.

Perhaps we were always inevitable—inevitably drawn together and inevitably thrust apart.

I can’t ask her to stay in case I come back sooner. I can’t ask her to have a go of things when I’m done. That’s like asking her to live an unscented life.

Later, after another bittersweet coming together, I finish what I started.

With a few minutes to spare, I confirm the ticket once and for all. There is no Plan B.

We play a game on the train to Giverny on Saturday morning. I pretend I don’t speak French at all. Joy has to do all the talking for us. She buys the tickets at the Saint-Lazare station. She gives them to the conductor and asks where the seats are. She inquires when we will arrive.

On the train, she buys two bottles of water, and she asks the woman across the aisle if she knows the time.

It’s simple stuff, but she does it all.

“You might not even need this language anymore,” I say with a smile, even though I find it immeasurably sad that she’s learning French only to go home to a place where she won’t need it.

“I’ll find an enclave of French speakers in Austin,” she says, and if that doesn’t make it clear she’s leaning toward returning to America, I don’t know what does.

“So you’re going back to the United States?” I ask as the train rattles into the station, nearly an hour from Paris.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine a chance like this coming along again.”

“That’s the thing about chances. When they come your way, you need to take them.”

She raises her bottle of water in a toast. My plastic bottle smacks against hers, making a dull echo.

Yes, it seems she’s going back to the States.

We were always a moment in time.

And if I’ve learned anything from carrying this list with me for the last year—if I’ve learned anything about why I carry it—it’s to make the most of every single moment. “Hey, Joy. What do you say we focus only on good things this weekend?”

“Only happy talk.”

“Deal?”

“I’d say you’ve got a deal.”

29

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?”