Page 8 of Wished

When I say beautiful, I mean he was beautiful like the chateau.

Looking at him was like looking at the desolate sweep of an arctic winter the moment before the sun rises for the first time in months. I was struck, pierced, and flayed by the promise of that sunrise.

I forgot the vacuum roaring in my hands, I forgot the music blasting in my ears, and I stared at Max while I waited for the sun.

He had thick, night-dark hair that was short on the sides and long enough to run your fingers through on the top. His eyes were dark brown and framed with thick lashes. They had a spark of intelligence, drive, but also the closed-off, distant expression you’d expect from the man who called this fortress his home. His features were sharp. Hard cheekbones, a square jaw, deep-set eyes that saw everything and trusted no one. He was thirty, maybe. There was a hint of hardness in the set of his shoulders that spoke of years of hard work or hard living. But there was also a softness lingering at the edges of his lips that promised he smiled sometimes, and when he did, it was glorious.

I’d never been in love before.

I didn’t know what it felt like.

But I thought, probably, this was it. This tingle sweeping through me like a shooting star casting across the night sky—this had to be love. My heart thudded wildly in my chest and I felt every beat, like it was pumping out the word,love, love, love.

Then Max spoke again.

He spoke to me.

I realized I couldn’t hear him. The vacuum was loud; my music was louder. A flush ran over my cheeks and down my neck and chest.

I flipped off the vacuum, yanked my headphones free.

The office was electric in the silence.

“Sorry? What did you say?” I asked, and I was surprised my voice came out sounding normal, as if I was asking my sister to pass the salt.

I didn’t realize I’d spoken in English until the words were already out of my mouth.

Max didn’t even blink.

By that point in time, I realized that whatever he’d said, it wasn’t words of undying love and devotion. It wasn’t, “You’re an angel fallen from heaven!” or, “This is love at first sight!” or even, “What are you doing tonight?”

No.

Because while Max was the sunrise at the end of my arctic winter, I was ...

Me.

My messy hair was knotted in a bun and hidden beneath a wrinkled, bleach-stained red bandana. I was wearing very large, very round green tortoiseshell glasses (this was in my era of fashion-forward glasses, which, in hindsight, were very, very ugly). I had on my gray, bleach-stained Detroit Tigers sweatshirt, baggy bleach-stained jeans, and years-old tennis shoes with shoelaces that had disintegrated into stringy, ugly wads of fabric. My hot-pink rubber gloves hung from my pocket, and I had a dirty rag hanging from my other pocket. Beyond that, I was sweaty, breathing hard, and an uncomfortable shade of bright red.

The music from my headphones blasted between us, the Supremes telling us that love can’t be hurried.

So there I stood, dumbstruck by love, and Max glanced at me without seeing me and said with careful politeness, “Could you please wait until I’ve left to clean in here?”

His English had a British accent with only a hint of French. He must’ve learned British English as a kid or studied in Britain for school. Lots of people do. It’s like my French. Since my mom and I didn’t move here until I was eleven, my French is forever tinged with the American Midwest.

But his accent wasn’t why I didn’t answer right away. It was his voice. Before, I’d thought it was love. Once he spoke, I knew it was. And this man, he barely looked at me. In fact, he’d already looked away. His gaze was on his computer screen, scrolling through whatever business I’d interrupted.

I was glued to the floor, disbelieving that I’d finally experienced what my dad always said I’d find—the kind of love that lasts lifetimes—and the man was as indifferent to me as the ocean is to the sky.

I stood for a moment longer, too stunned to move, the Supremes still singing tinnily through my headphones. Max looked up one last time, his eyes moving to the vacuum in my hand, not to me.

“Are you all right?” He finally looked at me. But that was even worse than him not looking at me, because there was nothing in his expression—nothing except a cold, stark, gray stone wall.

He was Maximillian Barone. And I was Anna Benoit. And it was clear from his expression that the two of us weren’t destined to be.

Love at first sight had soared like a swan on summer winds for a joyous, wondrous moment, and then it took a tumbling nosedive out of the sky and smacked the stones of the chateau to die a painful, squawking, feathery death.

My insta-love was insta-gone.

---