Did you mess up his name on purpose? I always figured you had, but I didn’t say anything about it.
I’m glad we only saw each other for coffee that day. I don’t think I could have taken much more than that. The jealousy I felt scared me—it made me question my relationship with Darren, and I didn’t want to do that. I loved him. And you loved someone else.
xliv
There are certain questions that change the world. Not the big-picture world, but the small, personal world. Will you marry me, I think, tops that list.
The last week in May, not long after I saw you, Darren told me to pack a bag, that he was planning an early anniversary trip for us Memorial Day weekend. A surprise four-day weekend away to celebrate the fact that we moved in together, that we’d soon be dating for two years. He still hadn’t caught on that big surprises like that weren’t my favorite, but I was still trying to be a good sport about it. He clearly liked planning things and surprising me, so I decided to try to let my own feelings about it go and just appreciate how much it meant to him. Even so, I couldn’t stop trying to figure out where we were headed. I’d been assuming Cape Cod or someplace on the coast of Maine, since it was just four days, we both liked the beach, and we’d never been to either place as a couple. But when Darren gave me a list of what to put in my bag, I noticed there was no bathing suit on the list.
“Did you forget anything?” I asked as I was packing.
Darren had been getting ready for bed, and came over in a T-shirt and boxer briefs, smelling like face soap and toothpaste. He looked at his list in my hand, reading each item. “Nope,” he said. “Not one thing. It’s all there.”
“No bathing suit?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said again. “Everything you need is right there.”
I revamped my thoughts for the weekend. Maybe we were going to the Berkshires. Or that spa his oldest sister always talked about in Connecticut. Either of those would be fun.
“You can get out of work tomorrow night right at five?” he said.
I nodded. “I told Phil, he said fine.”
Darren had moved over to his own suitcase and was packing too. “I’ll pick you up outside the office,” he said, “and we’ll head off.”
“I can meet you at the rental car place,” I told him.
“Nah.” He folded a pair of pants so the creases stayed creased and placed them in his suitcase. “I think it makes more sense for me to come get you.”
I paused in my packing to watch him ball his socks and then tuck them into his shoes—he fit three pairs in each sneaker, his neck curving forward to make sure they were pushed all the way inside.
Sometimes I looked at him, and all I could think was: Mine. That’s my boyfriend, my body to cuddle, my hand to hold. I never felt you were mine in the same sense that Darren was—is. It always seemed like you belonged to you and lent yourself out to me when you felt like it; I never had complete ownership. With Darren, I did. And the fact that he was so wholly mine made me ignore things that perhaps I shouldn’t have.
I snuck up behind him that night, wrapped my arms around his chest, and kissed the back of his neck. “Okay, I get it, it’s your surprise trip. I’ll stop trying to change your plans.”
He turned around and kissed me back and I felt him hard against me.
“Hey,” I said, raising my eyebrows.
“Hey,” he said back, softly.
I lifted up his shirt and kissed my way down his torso to the elastic of his underwear, and then slipped it off, knelt down and kissed lower.
“Oh, Lucy.” He pulled me up off my knees and onto the bed with him.
We didn’t go to sleep until far too late that night.
I was groggy the whole next day at work, and was ten minutes late heading out to meet Darren for our trip.
“Where have you been?” he asked, when I finally made it outside.
He was pacing on the sidewalk in front of a limo.
“That’s not a rental car,” I said.
He laughed and snapped out of whatever funk he’d been in. “It’s not. We’re going to the airport.”
“The airport?” I repeated.
“I’m taking you to Paris!” he said. “Like on your bucket list: Go to Paris for a long weekend just because.”
I felt my eyes go wide. “Are you serious?” I asked, completely dumbfounded. A surprise vacation to Paris! This was the sort of thing that happened in movies, not in the real world. But it was happening in the real world. And it was happening to me!
It was an incredibly grand and romantic gesture. The kind of thing tons of women dream about. But after the initial shock wore off, it felt odd to me, like when Darren bought us Annie. I wanted to have had a say. What if I wanted to stay in a particular arrondissement? Or visit Biarritz while we were there? Or Giverny?
“Serious as global warming,” he said. “Come on, we have to get to the airport!” He opened the car door for me.
“But my passport!” I said, as I got in the car.
“Right here,” he answered, sliding in next to me and patting his laptop case.
? ? ?
WHEN WE GOT TO JFK, I found out that he’d booked us seats in business class.
“Are you crazy?” I asked him, as we waited in the American Airlines lounge.
“Miles,” he said. “Credit card points. Didn’t cost a thing.”
I squinted at him suspiciously and he laughed.
“Even if I did pay for it,” he said, “it’s absolutely worth it for your first trip to Paris.”
? ? ?
WE HAD THE MOST DELICIOUS MEAL I’d ever eaten on an airplane, and each had our own tiny bottle of wine. Darren poured mine, narrating in a terrible French accent that made me laugh so hard I had to wipe the tears from my eyes. Along with them, I wiped away the last vestiges of my annoyance that he’d planned this trip without me. We fell asleep holding hands and woke up to the flight attendant bringing us breakfast.
Once we’d gotten out of the airport, Darren led me to the train, which we took into the city, and then we switched to another train underground.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Still a surprise,” he said.