Page 86 of Wished

Max and I lie in the soft sand holding hands, the cool water tickling our bare feet, held at the edge of the tide.

“I love you,” he says, staring into my eyes, his head turned to me, his cheek pressed into the sand.

Will he regret this?

Will he remember this?

Will he wish I’d never come along and wished this into being?

Like he said earlier, even for all the mistakes you’re bound to make, you can still say, “I love you too.”

That night, exhausted from a day in the sun hiking over the rugged, untamed coast, I fall into bed. I barely notice Max’s arms come around me as I pray that somehow everything will be set right. This time I scour out that secret place in my heart, and I wish ...

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It turnsout the reason my mom looked at me strangely when I said I’d always wanted to come to the French Riviera was because we’ve been coming here for years. Max’s great-aunt and her fisherman husband lived in Saint-Tropez, and when his great-uncle passed, Max bought his aunt the taffy-pink villa so she’d have a house on the sea that she loved for the rest of her life.

She died before Max and I met, but Max kept the house because it reminded him of his funny, hilariously vulgar great-aunt, her quiet husband, and the long summer days when as a boy he’d sneak away from his family’s vacation spot at an ostentatious resort and visit his dad’s funny black sheep of an aunt.

Apparently, every summer we stay for a week or two while Barone Jewelry has a pop-up store in an old bougainvillea-covered mansion with a beautiful blooming garden in the center of old town. My mom mentioned every year, Max has created a special piece of jewelry for me and incorporated it into one of the collections.

The first year we were married, there was the Effiel Tower—for Paris—the design hidden in numerous bracelets and necklaces. Another year, one of the necklaces had a pendant in the shape of a tarte tropézienne, my favorite pastry in Saint-Tropez, a fluffy brioche cake filled with decadent vanilla and lemon custard and dusted with pearl sugar. The pendant brioche was 24-karat gold, and the sugar was diamonds. When my mom mentioned the tarte tropézienne, Max laughed at the memory of me eating so much in one sitting that I didn’t have room for lunch or dinner. Then he went out and brought home a pastry box, just for me.

Another year, Max created a bracelet with opals for our time in Australia. There was the year with the sapphires for our sailing lessons on Lake Geneva. There was the necklace with a ruby heart for the year I started the Open Heart Kitchen, part of the community center that fed anyone who was hungry and in need. Now, it seems, there are a dozen Open Heart Kitchens around Switzerland. Another year, Max created a book charm for our shared love of reading Dickens.

Each year he hid a love note for me out in the open, where I was sure to find it. Maybe no one else knew the sapphires in the necklaces five years ago were a message from Max, but I did.

Well, at least, the me of this reality did.

So while every night I wish for this dream to end, during the days I love like Max asks, without reservations.

We stay the whole five days, meandering the cobblestone streets, exploring the churches, the seventeenth-century citadel, and the winding, narrow village lanes. One morning we wander to the Place des Lices, where white tents are bunched together, shading an open-air market. We find aromatic rosemary and marjoram, fresh, creamy goat’s cheeses, mounds of finger-staining berries, baskets of sun-warmed nectarines, sweet clover honey, and sprays of fresh-cut, bee-tempting flowers.

When Max catches me looking at a bouquet of freesias, he asks, “Would you like?—?”

“No.” I shake my head quickly and turn away, walking toward a table of cured sausage and olives.

The freesias remind me of Paris; of the wilting clock of our time together.

At night we binge-watch crime dramas, trying to out-spoiler each other, writing down our guesses for whodunnit on scraps of paper at the beginning of the show. At the end we unfold our guesses. Whenever Max wins I toss a pillow at him; when I win he tackles me under him and tickles me until I promise between breathless laughs to stop bragging.

By the end of the week my mom is more mobile and agile on the crutches, her leg healing. My sister has filled the house with watercolors, beach stones, and driftwood. Max is relaxed, quick to smile, and quick to kiss. I’m humming from the little touches, Max brushing his hand over me as he passes, a whispered kiss when we meet in the kitchen, a hand held in the market. If this were my life, I’d be blissed out on sun, tarte tropézienne, and the way Max’s arms wrap around me at night.

But this isn’t my life. And the happier, more blissful each day is, the more a shadow seems to creep over me, until I feel a cold grip inside.

At night, and sometimes during the day, Max will kiss me just like he makes love—a luxurious, erotic teasing of my mouth until I’m practically vibrating with need. But always, I say, “Not now, no, not now.” Then he’ll press a final kiss on my mouth and wrap me in his arms.

The excuses are creative. No “I have a headache” for me. One night, it’s “Too many tartes—I’ll puke if I’m jostled during sex.” Another, “I’m too sunburned to copulate—the sting is extreme.” Then “The gory, gruesome crime drama left me too freaked to fornicate.”

Finally, the last night, Max doesn’t kiss me; he just pulls me onto his bare chest and we fall asleep to the sound of the waves and the cool kiss of the breeze.

And so, five days later, a week into this wish, I’m so deep down in love with Max that I know, of the two sides of the beach, I’ve headlong tumbled into the riotous waves, and I’m currently being bashed against the jagged rocks.

We fly from the private terminal at La Môle airport and land in Geneva, leaving my mom and Emme with a kiss, a hug, and a promise to see them soon at their stone cottage outside Geneva, when my sister is back at school after break and my mom is back to work. Now we’re curling around the lake, nearly back to Max’s—our—home.

I stare out the window, watching the sky paint the hills purple and the water a rippling gold. Geneva is a collection of fireflies glowing above the lake, lighting up in the deepening sigh of dusk. It’s strange to be here, riding in Max’s Aston Martin back to his austere, starkly beautiful estate, instead of taking the bus back to my square-roomed, windowless post-war apartment.

“Home,” he says, a smile tugging at his mouth when he pulls down the drive.

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