July 4th 2020

Chapter 186
Their Escape to Portraits

"Is that me down there?" Lucas asked as he sat back down next to Maya. He'd left their spot on the bench where they had been for a little over now in order to check out a small shop nearby. While Maya went on painting in her sketchbook he had retrieved a small box of pastries and two coffees.

"How did you know?" she smiled, taking the cup he extended to her and finding herself in a need for an extra hand when she spotted the treats in the open box. Carefully setting her things down on top of her bag at her feet, she sent her hand fishing for a pastry.

"Looked sort of like a cowboy," he informed her, getting a look back which seemed to say 'did not.' "If there was a tiny you next to tiny me, she'd be calling him Huckleberry."

"Yes, well, that just means she likes him a lot," Maya raised her chin before hiding her giggles in her cup at the look he gave back.

It was hard to believe they were already on their fifth day in Paris, the fourth if they discounted their arrival day. Of course, it all had to end sooner or later, but something about the halfway point being just two days ahead of them felt unreal. The time they had spent in the city was just like a dream come to reality.

After their day of peaceful hotel living, they had set out on their third day with the intent of departing from the hotel bright and early and not returning until late in the evening, and that was just what they had done. Other goals for that day had included finding Nana Kat's souvenir, the echo to the gift she had given them for their wedding, and tracking down the infamous DVDs. They had accomplished both of these, too. They'd had a very loaded day, which was not without moments of sitting and enjoying their surroundings. Even so, by the time they had found their way back to their room, they were both in a state of going straight to bed, where they fell asleep in all of a minute.

Day four, they had decided, would be taken with a tiny bit of restraint, and so they'd gone to the beach for some swimming and sun. The newlyweds had both seen their personal cases of baby fever take a flare upward at the sight of tiny toddlers running around, playing in the sand… Lucas had been recruited by one such small girl to assist her in building her castle, after one of her little buckets had rolled their way. He had gladly complied, and Maya had captured their third picture of the day.

"You like your gift?" Lucas had asked his wife that night, as he'd come back from grabbing them both some drinks and found that she'd made something of a crafts station out of their bed.

She had already put the small photo printer to some use, with the products of their first few days' shots lined up at her side. Now she had taken one of the many sketchbooks given to her by their friends and repurposed it as something like a travel log and photo album. He had found the printer in a store the day before that, the day of morning to night, bought it along with a gift bag. He would have given it to her that very night, but then they'd gone right to sleep when they'd come back to their room. And then the next day, once they had gotten up, they were soon out the door and off to the beach. It wasn't until they'd come back, relaxed and a little tanner, that he'd remembered and gone to dig out the bag from where it had remained hidden.

"What's this?" Maya had asked, curious at once. He'd given her the bag and it was opened within two seconds. "Oh!" she'd gasped, pulling the box out with growing excitement.

"Had a feeling you'd be getting eager to get those pictures out by now, so when I saw it…" She'd come up and kissed him at once, turned into a kid on Christmas as she moved to quickly unpack the printer and get it working. Lucas had assisted, and before long they had gotten their first print, a selfie taken then and there of the two of them mid-kiss. "Does that count as today's seventh?" he'd asked her with a smile as she held the print for him to see. She'd nodded, grinning proudly.

"This needs drinks," she'd told him, and he was on it.

Now, here she was, hard at work. There would be bigger prints once they made it home, but this was something already.

"I love it very much… as you can see," she gestured majestically to everything she'd already done in the brief time it had taken for him to go down and get their drinks. "After I get all the pictures in, I want us both to write in here about each day."

"I like that," Lucas had nodded, and they'd spent the rest of that night putting days one through four into the log, looking back through their photos. The limitations had really made their seven every day feel stronger, capsules of time in these days they would remember forever.

Today, as they had been going along the city, stopping in certain spots for Maya to add to her watercolors, Lucas would sometimes watch her work, other times look around at where they were, look at the people walking along…

"Hey, look," Lucas turned back to Maya, a few minutes after pastry and coffee had been traded back for sketchbook and paint set. She lifted her head and looked where he pointed.

Further along, on another bench, sat a young man bent over a sketchbook of his own. After a few days at the hotel, it got to feel like a village, faces growing familiar. That included the couple Lucas had seen leave the hotel on their night out, the artist who had been sketching the sculpture and the woman he had been waiting on. They hadn't spoken, but they had gotten to the point where they would wave or nod to each other whenever they'd see one another.

"I don't know where…" Lucas looked around.

"There," Maya nodded over to where a small crowd watched a street performer. Their other nameless friend stood among them, swaying about to the music. They looked back to one another. Maya nodded down to the pastry box.

Once they'd gathered everything, Maya packing away her painting supplies but keeping her sketchbook in hand to protect the page in progress, they'd walked two benches over. The scuff of their feet made the young man lift his head.

"Oh, hi," he blinked. He spotted the sketchbook and sat up, like it suddenly made Maya more familiar to him. Lucas held out the pastry box.

"I'm Lucas, this is my wife, Maya. We thought it was time we said hello," he explained.

"Wow, thanks," the artist started to reach, then stopped as he thought to first introduce himself back. "Oh, my name's Caleb," he pointed his pencil back at himself. His accent suggested perhaps American, or Canadian. "And, uh," he looked over to the performer's crowd. "Well, that's Talia out there… my wife," his pencil now pointed to her. The smile on his face was familiar enough to them; it was built on the same emotion as their own.

"We got married… a week ago today," Maya told Caleb, turning a smile to Lucas as she realized it for the first time. "What about you?"

"Six days," Caleb nodded. Lucas tipped his head to the box again, and he finally served himself. "Thanks," he told Lucas, looking over to his wife. "Can you watch my stuff for a second?" He jogged over and soon returned with the young woman. The introductions were made all over again, and soon the four of them relocated to where they could sit together, after having gotten something to drink to go with the pastries.

Their fellow newlyweds, twenty-two years old the pair of them, were from Atlanta. They had just graduated college, and instead of any gifts their parents might have intended to give them to celebrate this, they had asked them to contribute this trip, as they had asked again, from their families and friends both, when they had gone and gotten married. It had been a dream of theirs to come out here, each for their own reasons, and so now here they were, for their own honeymoon.

Maya and Caleb had swapped sketchbooks, taking in one another's work, while Lucas and Talia watched their respective spouses with looks of amused recognition.

"Do you ever get the impression like they might run into a wall one day from staring at something else?" Talia asked.

"She's got a thing for ceilings, so yeah, all the time," Lucas told her, nodding to Maya. He told Talia about the restaurant they had been to a few nights back, and she made a note of it.

They spent most of the day hanging out, the four of them together. New spots were found for the artists to go and explore their talents, while the other two either sat with them or wandered around. Eventually, after dinner, they made their way back to the hotel, where they parted ways at the elevators.

"Hey," Maya turned to Lucas as the doors closed at Caleb and Talia's floor and continued up toward theirs. When he turned to look at her, she came up to kiss him.

"What was that for?" Lucas asked, smiling to show he was more than happy to have it happen again.

"For today," she shrugged, "Giving me a day to go all quiet and paint-y."

"Is that what I did?" he wondered. He had his arms around her now, like they had all the time in the world.

"It's just this is supposed to be our trip, and today was kind of mostly about me…" The elevator doors opened and they stepped out, walking hand in hand down the hall to their room.

"We are in Paris, of all places. What kind of husband of yours would I be if I said you couldn't do any of what you did today?" he asked.

"I'm sure you'd have your redeeming qualities," Maya laughed, looking up at him.

"I have a feeling I know what they would be," he smirked back at her. "Anyway, I'll have you know I like watching you work. Plus, I do have a strong appreciation for the arts."

"I know you do," she told him, in a way that sounded like 'I love you.'

"And we had fun today, you and me, and Caleb and Talia."

"Do you think we'll see them again after we go back home?" Maya wondered. "Or are they just going to be part of our memories of being here?"

"I don't know," Lucas replied, wondering this himself. The other couple had arrived the day after them, the day Lucas had seen Caleb sketching the statue, but they were leaving a few days before the two of them were headed back to Austin. As of yet, they hadn't exchanged contact information, though they had made plans to meet the next morning at breakfast.

"I'm slightly concerned at myself that I kept expecting one or the other of them to recognize me from the band. I don't think they actually know about us."

"They do tend to pop up in the most unexpected places," Lucas pointed out in her defense.

"It's kind of nice," Maya smiled. "Like I'm undercover."

"Come on, Super Spy," he led her into their room like the concept of her being unnoticeable amused him.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners