Wished

Chapter 31

31

I’m back in the library where all this began. A week ago I stood in front of the sapphire rivière necklace and made a wild, daring wish. It’s hard to imagine the me of a week ago. Red-cheeked, tired, dressed in soapsud-damp jeans and a bleach-stained sweatshirt, hiding behind the belief that Max didn’t see me, when in reality, I’d never let him see me. I was lonely—I see that now. I was scared to ask for love. And like my mom said, I was also scared I didn’t deserve it.

When Max found me in the library and demanded I never set foot in this house again, that I never see him again, I didn’t think we’d end up here.

Dusk has fled and the deep, inky indigo of night has saturated Geneva. The tall windows of the library show smudges of dark woods, black water, and the lights of the city reflected in the lake.

During the day the library is always bathed in sunlight, with golden specks drifting on streams of sun falling through the tall windows. Daylight makes the library feel open and expansive, with its walls of books, tall ladders, and stone columns. The tall plaster ceilings, the cheerful fireplace, and the groups of leather chairs clustered together always gave the room an elegant, bookish feel. Even the subtle paper and binding smell was hidden under the airy, open nature of the room.

But now, at night, all of that open, expansive elegance has disappeared. The dark windows shutter the room, and the quiet blankets the library in a muted hush. The room is sleepy, dreamlike. All the shelves of books feel like a warm hug wrapping around me, and the room is no longer expansive, but cozy. The padded chair by the window—the one where Max sat and read at night while having a cup of coffee—now there are two chairs, with a blanket on one and a stack of books by the other.

That’s what’s different about the library. It feels like a pot of tea and a tray of biscuits, a warm blanket, and a book next to the person you love. Before, it was a place to be alone. Now it’s a place to be together.

Max unlatches the oil painting of Mont Blanc and swings it wide. Behind the painting there’s a safe, and in seconds Max has pulled out the gold filigree jewelry case. I catch my breath as the light shines on the delicate violets and vines etched into the gold.

Max brought the necklace to Paris, but after our wish on the parure, when he forgot everything, it returned here.

“Why did you want to see it?” Max asks, snapping open the case.

“I wanted to make a wish,” I say, not looking at the glittering string of sapphires, but instead looking at Max.

I’m trying to memorize him in this moment. The softness of his mouth, the relaxed set of his shoulders, the mess of his hair from running his fingers through it while we made our way home. I take in the warm, familiar intimacy in his gaze and the way he watches me as if he’s constantly delighted I’m here and that he’s here with me. I memorize the rough stubble on his face that scrapes over my cheeks when he kisses me. I take in the way he tilts his head and leans slightly toward me as if he can’t help but move closer to me, even unconsciously. I take in the fresh air and leather smell of him, the steadiness of him, the goodness.

I’ve changed over the past week. But so has Max. Before he was as austere and stark as his home, with only quick flashes of the passion hidden underneath. Now, while he still looks the same—as beautiful as a glacier sliding into the cold depths of the arctic—there’s more. The solitude of the arctic is gone, and instead it’s the rugged, raw beauty of the C?te d'Azur. He’s the turquoise sea, the rocky shores, the golden sands, and the turbulent waves. He’s the sea-thick air and the hot sun rolling over the grass-swept dunes, and he’s the stark, barren chateau alone on the edge of Lake Geneva. He’s both and he’s more. He’s 222 kisses climbing to the Sacred Heart. He’s a weeping willow over the Seine. A flowering Eden in the center of a city. A friend. A confidant. A hand held in the dark when you’re certain you’re alone.

He’s my wish.

I didn’t know that loving Max would feel like breaking apart. It feels so much like breaking that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to put myself back together again. The rivière necklace is twenty-six sapphires, broken and cut gemstones wound together in a river of light. I wonder, is that what people are like? Are the breaks what make us beautiful? Has all of this been worth it even though it’s going to break me?

“A wish,” Max says, his voice a soft rumble. The corner of his mouth lifts as he watches me taking him in. “I didn’t think you believed my family’s myth. I don’t.”

He runs a finger over the black velvet embracing the necklace. “I always thought it was a nice story explaining why my lucky ancestor didn’t lose her head. Nothing more.” He looks back at me and smiles. “What sort of wish did you have in mind?”

I shake my head. My throat is tight, my face cold, and the air is so thick that I’m struggling to pull in a breath. “What would you wish for?”

“You,” he says without having to think. Then he grins and says, “Since I have you, I’d wish you’d always stay?—”

“I’m leaving,” I say.

He blinks.

I don’t think he can make sense of what I said, because his brow wrinkles, his lips turn down, and he shakes his head. “Where? Did Christine call about the center? You could ...”

I have no idea who Christine is. This isn’t about the community center. I shake my head and Max trails off, a question in his gaze.

My eyes burn and there’s a pressure in the back of my throat. The library is as quiet as a tomb, closed-in and hushed. There isn’t the magical, golden thrum that infused the room a week ago. Instead there’s a heavy weight pressing down on my chest. My heart struggles against the pressure, thudding painfully under the weight.

I’ve felt this once before, when my heart stuttered under the weight of a moment. It was the night my dad died. I stood at the edge of his hospital bed, eleven years old, too scared to hold his hand and too scared to say goodbye. The nurse outside the room said, “It’s time to say your goodbyes.” But I thought—no, I believed—that if I didn’t say goodbye then he couldn’t die. Because my dad wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. He wouldn’t .

So I didn’t say goodbye. Instead I said, “I have to go to the bathroom. I’ll be back.”

I made sure my dad heard me. “I’ll be back.”

Because he wouldn’t leave if I told him I’d be back. He wouldn’t.

Then I ran down the hall to the bathroom, locked the stall door behind me, and got on my knees and prayed. And I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. And just to be sure, I made a wish.

An hour later, with aching knees and a tear-ragged throat, I crept back into my dad’s hospital room. My heart stuttered and sort of caved in inside my chest. Because I’d been wrong. My mom was sobbing. And my dad had left even though I didn’t say goodbye. He’d left even when I’d told him I’d be back. And most importantly, he’d left even though I’d prayed and wished that he wouldn’t.

So, this time around, I want to say goodbye.

It’s going to end—it has to end—one way or another. But when it does, I at least want to say goodbye.

“I don’t know if you’ll remember this,” I begin, and when Max starts to speak I shake my head. “Don’t ...” I clear my throat. “Don’t ...”

Max steps forward, crosses the rug I cleaned just last week, and takes my hand. “Anna. What?”

I clutch his hand, feeling the warmth and the strength of his grip.

He doesn’t understand. He has seven years of love behind him and he imagines a lifetime of love ahead. I don’t know if we’ll ever leave this reality, and I don’t know, if we do, whether or not he’ll remember this.

“I’m leaving. I’m saying goodbye,” I say, my voice hushed in the stillness.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says, shaking his head and gripping my hand. But he does, because his eyes are tight and his face is pale.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. Maybe you’ll forget me?—”

“Anna, what are you talking about?”

“Maybe you’ll hate me?—”

“Stop,” he says, pulling me closer, tugging me against him. “Anna, stop.”

But I don’t. I can’t. “Maybe you’ll wish you never met me. Or maybe we’ll still be here, and you’ll still want me.”

“I’ll always want you.” He grips my arms, and I can feel the shaking in his hands, the tightness in his chest, and the thundering in his heart.

“But if you wake up tomorrow, still here, still wanting me? Don’t come after me. Don’t come looking for me. Don’t. This love isn’t real.” He starts to argue, so I shake my head. “It isn’t. It isn’t real. You didn’t have a choice in it. I took your choice.”

“Leaving is taking my choice,” he says. “I don’t understand. You aren’t ... you’re not making any sense. We’re happy. I love you. You love me.” He pauses as if he’s wondering if the love he took for granted actually wasn’t true. “You love me?” he asks slowly. “Anna?”

I see in him the boy who wasn’t given love, the man who turned from love, and the man who in Paris asked me to find him and tell him that love wasn’t anything to be afraid of. He trusted me to find him and love him and give him a choice in loving me.

His expression has clouded, doubt twisting through him, tinging the memories of the past seven years. Before the doubt can work its way into his heart, I say, “I love you. I loved you from the minute I laid eyes on you. And it’s been growing exponentially ever since—so fast that you’ll never catch up.”

“Then why?” he asks, holding me tighter.

The weight of the library has deepened, the heaviness drawn into a slumberous breath, the last rattling struggle of a shuddered inhale. On the desk the rivière necklace gleams dully in the light, winking sleepy blue eyes.

“I can’t keep this wish,” I say, speaking to the gradients in the necklace. The soul-deep blue; the achingly vivid indigo; the yearning of a dark winter sky; the colors of wishes and love. “Tomorrow, if you wake up and we aren’t married but you still remember, please know I’m leaving because I love you. I love you desperately, and if you ... if you still feel even a glimmer of what you feel now ... I’ll be happy just to see you, to know. If you don’t remember, I’ll come. I’ll risk your hate. I promised I’d show you your letter, so I will.”

I look up at Max, and his brown eyes have taken on a frosted edge, icy like winter-blue. “Why,” he asks in a hard voice, “wouldn’t we be married?”

I swallow, my arms shaking as I wrap them around his shoulders. My vision is dark at the edges, the sparkle of the necklace a flash at the corner of the feathering blackness.

I reach out to the necklace, with my heart, with my mind, and I wish?—

Let him go.

Let him love who he wants to love.

Let him go.

When I look into Max’s eyes, the goodbye there for him to see, he makes a ragged sound and shakes his head.

“No,” he says, spanning his hands over my jaw, cupping my cheeks. “No. Whatever it is, we can figure it out. Together.”

He stares at me just like he did the first time we argued in this same spot. His gaze sears my mouth, and my lips tingle and ache under the need in his expression. He wants to kiss me—an angry, punishing, teeth and tongue and need-filled kiss.

Unlike last time, I let him.

No.

I kiss him .

I stand on my tiptoes and press my mouth to his.

He makes a desperate noise, his mouth ravaging mine, the heat of him imprinting on me. His hands spread over my face, tilting my mouth so he can plunge inside. He bites, swears, fights, and claims. And all the while I claim him back. I drag my hands over him, touching every inch of his face, his chest, his shoulders, his heart. With each ragged breath, each heated kiss, each desperate draw of my hands over him, and every whispered plea, I tell him, I love you, I love you, I’m sorry, I’m leaving, don’t forget, I love you.

When he pulls away, shaking, wild-eyed, ragged-breathed, I back away slowly across the thick, luxurious rugs, through the elegant columned library, through the weight of air that feels as thick and as sharp as glass.

I stop at the library door and cast a last plea to the necklace. Let him go .

“Don’t,” Max says, standing in the shadows, expecting me to come back to him. “Anna. Don’t.”

I love you, I want to shout. I love you.

Instead I whisper, “Goodbye.”