Everything in my vision is earth and soil but so colorful my eyes never stop moving. Even as I stare at a thick bed of violet and lavender pansies, my attention is pulled farther down the path to a blinding patch of marigolds and zinnias.
“You should see the . . .” Ansel stops walking and hums, pressing two fingers to his lips as he thinks of the word in English. Although he rarely struggles to translate something, I can’t help lovingly obsessing over it when he does. It could be the little cluck of his tongue, or the way he usually gives up and says the word in soft, purring French anyway. “Coquelicots?” he says. “A delicate flower in the spring. Red, but also sometimes orange or yellow?”
I shake my head, uncertain.
“Before it blooms, the buds look like testicles.”
Laughing, I guess, “Poppy?”
He nods, snapping his finger and looking so pleased with me I may as well have planted all of these flowers here myself. “Poppy. You should see the poppies here in the spring.”
But the idea dissolves in the air between us and without our acknowledging it; he takes my hand again to keep walking.
He points out everything in front of us: flowers, trees, sidewalk, water, building, stone—and gives me the words in French, making me repeat them in a way that seems to grow more urgent, as if by weighing me down with knowledge I won’t be able to simply climb on a plane and lift off in a few weeks.
Inside the canvas bag, Ansel has packed bread and cheese, apples, and tiny chocolate cookies and we find a bench in the shade—we can’t picnic on the grass here—and devour the food as if we haven’t eaten in days. Being near him makes me hungry in so many aching, delicious ways, and when I watch him lift the bread from the bag, tear a bit off, and the muscles in his arm tense and pull with the movement, I wonder how he’ll touch me first when we get back to his apartment.
Will he use his hands? Or his lips and teeth in that teasing, nibbling way he has? Or will he be as impatient as I feel, pushing fabric aside just fast enough for him to be over me, inside me, moving urgently?
I close my eyes, savoring the sunshine and the feel of his fingers sliding across my back, curling around my shoulder. He talks for a while about what he loves about the park—the architecture, the history—and finally he lets words fall away as the birds take over for us, flapping and chattering in the trees overhead. For a perfect minute, I can imagine this endless life: sunny Sundays in the park with Ansel and the promise of his body all over mine when the sun goes down.
IT’S THE FIRST time we’ve been together for an entire day and we’re unable to undress, touch, have sex—which really is all we’ve known. After nearly eleven hours of walking and seeing everything we can fit into daylight, I’ve watched his lips pout his perfect words and his broad, skilled hands point to important buildings and his mischievous green eyes fixate on my lips and my body enough times that all I want now is to feel the weight of him moving on top of me.
I cling to the thought and the easy familiarity we’ve cultivated today as just us—Mia and Ansel—but as soon as we’re back in the apartment, he kisses the top of my head and pours me a glass of wine before powering up his laptop to check his work email, promising to be quick. While he sits at the small desk with his back to me, I tuck my legs beneath me on the couch, sipping my wine as I watch the tension gradually return to his shoulders. He fires off an email that must be heated because his fingers hammer on the keyboard and he clicks send, before leaning back in his chair and running a frustrated hand through his hair.
“Putain,” he curses on a tight exhale.
“Ansel?”
“Mmm?” He leans forward to rub his hands over his face.
“Come here, okay?”
He takes another deep breath before he stands, then walks over to me, but as soon as I look up at his face—his eyes are flat, his mouth pulled in a straight, exhausted line—I know the spell is broken and I’ll be going to bed alone. We’re back to real life, where his life is his mysterious, grueling job and I’m only temporary.
We’re back to playing house.
“It made more work for you, didn’t it,” I ask, “by taking today off?”
He shrugs, and reaches down to carefully pull my bottom lip between his thumb and index finger. “I don’t care.” He bends down, kisses my mouth, sucking on my lip before he pulls away. “But yes. I’ll need to go into the office quite early tomorrow.”
Tomorrow is Monday, and he’s behind on his week already.