Page 10 of 10 Days to Surrender

“Sorry,” she says. “Lesson ran late. Isabelle is getting better, though.”

“Well, she can’t get much worse.”

“Hey!”

“No offense to her wildly talented instructor, of course,” I hurry to say. When Jasmine continues to pout, I add, “… who is also wise, beautiful, and has an ass you could bounce a quarter off of.”

She nods primly. “That’s more like it.” She plucks a pair of tissues from the box on the counter and helps wipe the gel off my belly. “Any motion in the ocean?”

“They’re right where they’re supposed to be. Still kicking me like Pelé.”

Jas frowns. “Like who?”

“Isn’t he a soccer player? I thought he was. Could be wrong.”

“It’sfootballhere,” she reminds me with a grin.

I roll my eyes. Six months in Europe has mostly gotten me acclimated to life across the pond. Some things are more adjusted than others, though. You can take the girl out of New York, but you can’t take the New York out of the girl. And the distinct lack of good egg-and-cheese bagels is giving me conniptions.

“Any names come to mind yet?” Jasmine asks as she goes to stand in the corner. Like every other one of the visits she’s accompanied me on, she leaves the husband chair empty. We haven’t talked about that gesture, what she intends it to mean, what it might mean to me. I have no plans to ask.

“Thing One and Thing Two.”

“Ah, yes, such a rich etymological history to those. Full of culture, tradition, and yet also forward-thinking and contemporary.”

I stick my tongue out at her. “No, smartass, I have not yet decided on names.”

“Hm. How aboutLeonif there’s a boy andLeonafor a girl?”

“‘Leon’?”

“Greek theater muse and French lion. It’s balanced.”

“It’stragic.”

“Says the woman who named herself after a fairy.”

Jasmine—excuse me,Morgane—lobs a peppermint at my head. “Rude. Also, moving the goalposts. Again.”

I catch it, unwrap it, pop it in my mouth. The sharp coolness cuts through the hospital’s antiseptic gauze taste. “That’s a bad name and you know it. Sounds too much like…”

Leander.

The mint cracks between my molars.

Jasmine cringes at the sound. “Too soon?”

“Only by a century.”

As often as possible over the last six months, we’ve talked about the future, not the past. Leaving Marseille was easy for Jas; she’d been ready to run for a long, long time. We packed up her apartment, got in her car, and drove west. When we hit the Atlantic coast of France, I said, “Good enough,” and we found a little bungalow in a tiny beach town called Moliets-et-Maa.

It was simple enough to focus my attention on the little things. Get food to eat, a job to make a bit of money, stuff like that. Most words having to do with recent history are verboten: Leander, Dragan, and most of all, Sasha.

That hasn’t stopped him from coming to me at night. More than once, Jas has shaken me awake with concern in her eyes.You were moaning his name.I could even feel the sticky residue it left behind on my lips.

Sasha. Sasha. Sasha.

And whenever I do dream of him, my ears catch odd little noises the whole next day. I’ll hear a seagull squawk and I could swear it’s saying,Ptichka, ptichka!

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