“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, from 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,
