Wanderlust

As the finish line looms into view, I expect to be clobbered with memories.

With images of my brother.

But those don’t come.

Maybe this makes me selfish, but I’m grinning and muttering, “Holy crap. I’m doing it.” I’m fulfilling the dream I had when I was younger. But life got in the way, and I never got around to running a race.

Now, I’m finishing a marathon.

One foot in front of the other.

Every footfall aches, and every footfall sings.

And when at last, more than a decade after I decided to do this, I cross the finish line, I punch the air. I let out a whoop. I feel like the most selfish prick in the world, but not for long, because it’s too awesome a feeling to accomplish something I’ve always wanted to do.

As I slow my pace, grab some water that a volunteer hands to me, and walk instead of run, my whole life comes into focus.

Everything is bright and clear.

The past, and the future.

Bali is but a whisper.

Joy was right. Everything she told me on the train ride home from Giverny is true. Goose bumps rise on my skin with the staggering realization that the list was never about my brother.

33

Joy

Christian slaps his hands together like a coach, rubbing one palm against the other. “C’mon. You can do this, kid,” he says, adopting an American accent and smacking me on the arm.

Elise rolls her eyes from her perch on her living room couch. It’s seven thirty in the morning on a Monday, but they’re prepping me one last time. “Oh, come on now. You’re not her football coach.”

He narrows his eyes. “You mean proper football, I trust? The world’s greatest sport, right?”

Elise laughs. “Joy is from Texas. I mean the one you despise.” She turns to me. “From the top.”

I take a deep, calming breath. I square my shoulders. I practice once more what I want to say to Marisol when I meet with her in two more hours.

My words aren’t what I’d say if I had Griffin translating for me. I don’t have him to rely on. I have to go it alone. I keep it simple so I can say it myself.

When I’m done, they both slow clap.

“You’re ready,” Elise declares. “Now go convince her to let you have it all.”

I show Marisol the tester bottle. “This is the perfume I made over the past three months. I want to introduce it here in France. I want to keep finding ways to bring innovation to L’Artisan. I want to introduce new products here, and to help oversee them. If you’ll have me, I want to stay. If you like this mix, I’ll do everything I can to make it a success for you.”

Marisol blinks. “You want to stay?” She points to her desk. “Here, in Paris?”

Nerves fly up my throat. I want to stay so desperately. I came to Paris for a new experience, and that experience has changed me. I didn’t just fall in love with Griffin. I fell in love with the city. I fell in love with a whole new language. Paris feels like home.

“I’m not done with Paris. And I hope Paris isn’t done with me.”

Marisol squeals. It’s the strangest sound from such a proper woman. But she actually squeaks, then rises from her chair in a flurry. She strides over to me and wraps me in an unexpected hug. “I accept the continuation of your employment.”

When it comes to chances that don’t come around often, this is the one I’d most regret if I let it pass by —the chance to stay here.

I don’t doubt that it would be wonderful to run a perfume lab in Austin. But here in front of me, I can keep learning a whole new language. A whole new way of living. I might not be overseeing a fleet of scents, but if I can guide one to market, it’ll be more than a dream come true.

She dangles the glass bottle between two fingers. “By the way, do you have a name for your composition?”

I have a name, and I have a story. It is all my bittersweet days when I wander across the cobblestone streets, damp with rain. It is the sweet floral mists from the flower market that enchant my senses. It is the chocolate notes that waft through the air at a shop that’s close to heaven. It’s the smell of the first kiss and a last kiss. It is the promise that somehow, someday we will meet again. “For now, I’m calling it Come What May.”

She nods and smiles. “I like that. It’s both sad and happy at the same time, but it ends on a dash of hope.”

Yes, that sounds like exactly what it is.

When I leave the office that night, return to my street, open the pink door, and climb the uneven eighty-four steps, I know what the woman in the pink-checkered suit on the plane told me has come true.

Paris is where you go to reinvent yourself.

34

Griffin

Sometimes something is so obvious, you’re not sure how you missed it.

But that’s because it was hidden in plain sight.

Like all those damn angels that followed me around the city while I never noticed them.

That evening, I dig my toes into the coolest sand, the ocean lapping at my feet. As I watch the stars winking in the sky, I read between the lines on the list I memorized long ago.

Ten items and a postscript.

A bucket list.

A dying wish.

But it’s not that at all, it turns out.

Joy unlocked the code before I did. She discovered the real meaning, but I wasn’t ready to hear it. I dismissed her theory, stuffing it away. It took running twenty-six miles halfway around the world to see that it was never a bucket list I carried with me.

It was instructions for living.

For how to live without him.

Ethan didn’t ask me to complete those ten items. He only gave me this list when I told him I’d do anything for him, when I begged him for it. He’d looked at me, studied my eyes, and knew what I needed. Something to live for. Reasons to be happy without him.

“Okay. Let’s do it. One last list.”

It was a list for me, a list of all my hopes and dreams. It was guidelines on how to live a rich and beautiful life. He wrote me a treasure map for how to make it through his death. He was so clever, even up until the end. He knew I’d need a nudge, so my dreams were veiled in the guise of his dying wishes.

I’m the one who wanted to run a marathon. He’d already completed one.

I’m the one who longed to live in Paris, and he made sure I did it.

He told me to travel the world because I’d led the charge in planning our adventures when we were kids.

He knew I’d want to laugh with friends, so he put the caricature item on the list. He knew I’d want to help others, so he put that on the rules to live by, too.

I have lived most of these ten wishes.

But I don’t want to live all of them anymore. I’m not consumed with the same clawing need to visit all the corners of the world anymore. I no longer suffer from an incurable case of wanderlust.

I’ve been cured. I uncovered a new dream right before my eyes.

I have a new wish—to be with the woman I love, wherever she is.

I wanted her to ask me to stay, but that’s not enough. I need to put my heart on the line for her. She never held me back from going, and I won’t hold myself back any longer. If she’s going to be in Texas, that’s where I’ll go.

But there’s one more thing on the list I need to fulfill.

I need to take a chance that terrifies me.

I thought I’d done that. I thought that pursuing Joy counted. But even when I crossed it off, it never fit because wanting to be with Joy never terrified me.