At the museum, he said, I want to go everywhere.
At dinner when he told me about the marathon, his words were, I’ve always wanted to go there, spend some time wandering around when I’m done.
I should have seen this coming. He’s been clear enough. I thought he meant he’d take trips, but perhaps I only wanted to believe he would take trips, because they have a beginning and an end.
He’s never lied to me.
I’ve lied to myself.
I’ve chosen to believe the fairy-tale version of falling in love in Paris. Not the real one, where I meet a man who has too much wanderlust, a man who’s living a life he and his brother plotted. A life only one of them can live now.
“Do you want to see the list?”
“Yes,” I say with a gulp because I need to know what I’m up against. Once upon a time, I believed my own reticence over relationships would be our biggest barrier. Now I know the highest hurdle is one that I can’t, and won’t, tear down.
It’s time, it’s space, it’s distance. It’s family, it’s love, it’s honor.
It is intractable.
He takes a piece of paper from his wallet and unfolds it. I hold my breath, waiting. Once he spreads the paper open, it’s like seeing a ghost. The handwriting is his brother’s. It’s a scratchy and uneven scrawl, the penmanship of someone who could barely hold a pen anymore. It breaks my heart.
1. Live in Paris for a year. Check.
2. Sleep with all the French women. Check.
3. Visit Indonesia. Run a marathon there. Travel across the country, then everywhere.
4. Pack your bags, wander the globe, and eat macarons, or whatever you want because you can, since you’ll . . .
5. Have six-pack abs. You can do it. I was almost there. Hell, show me up and go for an eight-pack. Check.
6. Help someone you care about achieve their dream.
7. Have your caricature drawn in Place du Tertre. Preferably a highly amusing image that would have made me laugh.
8. Sleep under the stars.
9. Take a chance that terrifies you. Check.
10. Drink champagne along the Seine when you bid adieu.
P.S. Be nice to Mum and Dad. It’s hard for them.
I laugh at the same time that a sob works its way up my throat then escapes. I drop my head in my hands, and let a few tears slip down my cheeks.
Griffin rubs a hand on my back. “Are you okay?”
I nod. “It’s just sad.” I don’t mean him leaving, though that is intensely sad. I raise my face, a new tear streaking down. “I’m sorry your brother’s not here. I’m sorry this happened to him.”
Griffin dusts his lips over my cheek, kissing away the evidence of my tears. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not, but what can you do? Don’t cry, sweetheart. I hate to see you sad.”
That only makes me want to cry harder. The sweetheart. The endearment. The way my emotions matter to him.
But this isn’t about me.
This is so much bigger than him, than us.
This is about a promise to the person you love most. The person you love unconditionally. It’s a dying wish to do what someone else can’t.
Gathering myself, I draw a deep breath, swallowing past the harsh lump in my throat. It’s not my loss. It’s his, and I’m acting like I own it. I lift my chin, keeping my voice even. “Why are some underlined?”
“Those are the ongoing ones. I should always be nice to Mum and Dad, right?” he says with a smile.
“Of course, but it’s sweet Ethan pointed it out.”
“He worried about them. And it’s not hard to be nice to them, but it’s important, and that’s why I try to talk to them often. To stay in touch.”
“And the other one underlined is the one about helping someone achieve their dreams. I guess I’m still a work-in-progress,” I say, a quirk to my lips.
He wraps his arm tighter around my shoulder, leans his face to me, brushing his lips against mine. “Yes, I like that you’re ongoing. I like that you’re not there yet. It means you still need me.”
More than you know. “I have so much to learn.”
“I’ll get you there.”
And then you’ll leave. Then you’ll take off.
But I don’t say that. I’m a grown-up, and that’s the role I need to play. I fasten on a smile. “And then you’ll be on your way to Indonesia. You’ll do the marathon and travel, then you’ll wander and eat macarons. So that’s three and four.”
He nods. “Which leaves me with three left to do here, I suppose.”
“Sleep under the stars. Why haven’t you done that? That seems like something you could do any night.”
“True, but I don’t think that’s what it means.”
“What do you think it means?”
“We used to make lists of all the places we wanted to go. We had this huge map of the world with pins stuck in future destinations, and we’d say that we’d sleep under the stars if we had to.” His eyes look faraway, and he’s slipped back to the past, to memories that are bittersweet. “Or if we wanted to,” Griffin adds, a cheerier note to his voice. “We always gave ourselves an out. If we had to, or if we wanted to.”
“So, it applies to traveling,” I say heavily, and it seems many of these items do. But that’s who Griffin and his brother were, I’m learning. They were boys bitten with the bug of adventure. Then, they became men, unable to pack their bags and take off. And so, now, one of them must.
I move down the list, running my finger over the caricature one, and the champagne item. “I know someone who can help you with these final two.”
He raises an eyebrow playfully. “Oh, do you?”
I dance my fingers over my chest. “I happen to adore champagne, and I also know a great caricaturist.”
He laughs heartily. “How on earth do you know a great caricaturist?
