One hour to sit.
To think.
To hope.
It’s insane in many ways.
Not to mention completely pathetic.
But I can’t seem to stop.
I don’t want to stop.
I want to see her. And walk up to her and say,Let’s do that over.
But when sixty minutes pass and there is no Marley, of course I resign myself to the cold realization that what happened in Paris was meant to be one perfect afternoon.
Nothing more.
And over the next two years as I travel back and forth to New York and make contacts and network with American designers on shared projects, including a fella named Lucas, I force myself to move on from Marley.
I even date.
It’s horrid, but so it goes.
12
MARLEY
New York
Two years later
I survive.
I survive two years of business school.
I make it through the toughest classes of my life.
And I survive missing the man I spent the most magical afternoon with.
For a while, I didn’t think I would.
I was certain I’d break down, fly to London, and knock on all the doors of all the design firms.
But I didn’t.
We made an agreement.
That we’d rely on fate.
That serendipity would have to bring us back together.
So I didn’t look for him, and while I wasn’t searching, I found something else in two years of classwork.
Myself.
My goals.