July 7th 2020

Chapter 189
Their Escape to Travels

One last breakfast together, the quartet had gathered on day eleven, early off to what had fast become their favorite spot whenever they didn't eat at the hotel. After returning there, they'd all gone and had one last go at the pool before it came time for Caleb and Talia to pack up their belongings and clear out of their room before checking out. Maya and Lucas might have gone off to enjoy one thing or another on their own ongoing honeymoon, but they chose instead to pitch in and help the others finish up, the better to increase what little time they had left.

Taking it one step further, Lucas had rented a car for the day, the better for them to drive their friends to the airport and see them off, after which he and Maya could go and expand the scope of their sightseeing, as they saw the days of their trip flying away.

To see them parting at the gate, you would have thought they had known one another their whole lives and were now saying goodbye forever. There were hugs, and many tears, and promises to write, and call, and someday visit one another. They had the means to contact one another now, so the ball was in the air, waiting for any of them to strike.

When it was just the two of them again, both Maya and Lucas could say that to drive along, windows down, music up, was the single best way they could have been given in order to just breathe, and resettle into where they were and why they were there, now that they had parted with Caleb and Talia. Lucas could see Maya, leaning to the open window at his side, long hair caught in the wind as though it had a life of its own, and she looked so far away that he thought she might have been taking harder than expected. But when he'd managed to get her attention and he'd asked what she was thinking about, she'd turned a smile back to him.

"It's so beautiful out there, isn't it?" she'd asked, her voice halfway hooked to a dream. He'd smiled, reassured now.

"Yeah, it really is," he'd told her, maybe noticing it for the first time. It wasn't as though they hadn't had their fill of picturesque sights in the time they'd spent out here, but then it could only strike them some more whenever they discovered new things along the way.

He had to hand it to her that, after a while, she'd started painting in her sketchbook, even as they drove on. They would stop from time to time, and he would go to grab them something to eat or drink, and he would come back to find her door open, her feet on the ground though she remained at work. She had not filled a dozen sketchbooks out here, but this was her third and it would be full by the end of the day, leading her to start a fourth and final one, not counting the one which had become her travel log. Other times they'd left the car together, just to take in their surroundings with as much staying power in their memories that a camera may have had.

It wasn't until they were driving back into the city that Lucas discovered a plan had been percolating in his wife's head all day long. She was back at her sketchbook, this time with a pencil, inside the back cover. And when they got to the hotel, she went up to the concierge, who was right up there with the people they'd interacted with the most out here. She'd asked him something and almost at once he'd scribbled something down for her on a pamphlet and handed it to her, sending her dashing back.

She had been talking for some time about getting a new tattoo, to join the owl and nightingale they had both gotten, and the clock they and their former roommates had gotten, one that would be only hers. And now she had decided it would be doubly exciting to have it be done out here, in Paris. Now she knew where to go, and she had her design at the ready.

"Tell me what you think, Big Spoon, because it will be the first thing you see every morning," she'd explained, presenting him with her sketchbook even as she pointed over her shoulder.

The next morning, her prediction had been correct, as he had awakened and opened his eyes to look upon the still covered stretch of skin. It went from the back of her left shoulder and trailed on that line, up to the back of her neck, disappearing just into her hairline. The long, delicately flowered branch was garnished at the top, the part coming down her neck with little more than the potential of buds, barely detailed. But the further up the branch the eye travelled, the flowers developed, and they grew, up to the most detailed and largest of those, at the other end, even as the branch was left with an open end. As Maya told it, the whole thing was to represent growth, evolution. Her growth, her evolution, in her life up to now… and the open branch to represent all that was yet to come.

"How does it look?" she asked, when she woke as well and knew he was awake from the way his thumb lightly stroked at her hand in his.

"Healing nicely," he let her know. "Eager to be uncovered."

After he'd helped her do so, carefully washing and drying the whole piece, he'd used their very first picture of the day to chronicle the moment as much as to show her how it looked. By the smile on her face, he knew it was just as she'd wanted it.

"You're going to end up with a full sleeve if you keep this up," Lucas had told her. She'd turned her head up to look at him, asking with a look if that was something he'd be into. "It's all coming together great so far," he smiled.

"I love how you can tell a different person inked this one," she looked back to the phone, holding it next to her arm.

They had this day and the next, and then the one after that… home. So, the plan was for them to get at anything they might still have wanted to do or to see today. Some of it was new, things they hadn't had the chance to get to yet, or things they'd only found out about in later days. And some of it was not new, and they just wanted to see it all again while they had the chance.

"So, about tomorrow," Maya came up peer over the back of the couch, where Lucas had dropped after they'd returned. He looked about to point out that it was their last full day, and just the way he stopped himself saying it told her he'd understood where this was going. "Yeah," she nodded. She could easily foresee herself hitting a bit of a downer.

"Okay, but," he sat up as she came and sat with him, "We're not going leaving here to head somewhere bad. We're going to our home, our house, with the dogs, and your brother. We're going to Austin, where our families are, and our friends, where we have so many good things coming up."

"I know," Maya promised him. "I'm not saying I will be in a bad mood tomorrow, just that…"

"The forecast is uncertain?" he guessed.

"Yeah," she nodded. "So, I've been trying to think of what we'll do." They hadn't set so many things in stone in the whole of their two weeks, except for the play, and that was just how they'd wanted it. With the trip near to its end, they were happy to say it had all worked in their favor. Now though, they had just this one full day left ahead of them, and it felt like they needed to do it justice, but at the same time it felt like pressure they shouldn't put on themselves either.

"Come on with anything?" Lucas asked, leaning back into the couch cushions and lightly pulling for her to follow until her head would be at his shoulder and his arms would be around her.

"Nope," she sighed. "I'm this close to just saying let's stay here, like we did on the first day after we got here. I don't want to end up back home feeling exhausted, and right now my feet are just not having it…"

"Huh…" Lucas spoke after a beat of silence. "Well, here's an idea…"

Their penultimate day in Paris had been spent in great part at the hotel spa, after having gone for a swim at the pool. When they'd returned to their room, a couple of walking cotton balls, the next course of action was an easy reach. They had dressed again as they had done on their first night out, for one more dinner out, another Date.

"Have I mentioned how much I'm kind of liking this a lot?" Lucas asked, trailing his hand along the flowered branch peeking through the straps of Maya's dress.

"You didn't, but I guessed you might," she smiled, turning back to look at him. "Why do you think I wore my hair up like this?"

Leaving the hotel on foot as they did, their last night in Paris, it got to feel as though these streets they'd been walking for near on two weeks now had gone and put their shine on. Neither Maya nor Lucas could decide if this made them sadder to leave than they were happy to be here and to have been here.

"Sometimes it just bowls me over that we've been married for two weeks already," Maya declared as they sat in the restaurant, waiting for their plates.

"Oh, me too," Lucas smiled. "My mother's been giving me the whole 'time flies when you're having fun' line since I was a kid, but I don't think I've ever felt it as much as I did here. It flew so, so fast."

"We had more than 'fun,' that would explain it," Maya agreed. Lucas reached his hand across the table, his fingers winding with hers and making her smile.

After a wonderful last dinner, the newlyweds took an eased stroll back to the hotel, a slow walk to allow them equal parts digestion and a peaceful time together while it was still just him and her.

"It's the same moon…" Maya hummed, looking to the night sky. "The same stars, same as the ones back home. But they feel different, don't they?"

"They do," he smiled, looking to her, kissing the side of her head.

"We need to get back to the hotel," she told him now, and there was no mistaking the tone in her voice. It spoke of inspiration in need of manifestation.

They returned, they changed, and soon they were settled on their balcony, one last bit of Parisian stargazing. Maya had taken the travel log, a pencil, and she'd sat in her chair, legs folded beneath herself. From where he sat, Lucas saw she wasn't drawing, not exactly. Words… words, and short partitions holding notes. Lyrics… It was a song that brought her here now. From the looks of it, this was one of those that came so fast as though they had been fully conceived in the space of a breath. Soon, he could hear her humming under her breath, and the air felt… like them, like walking, like looking to the stars as they sat in a night sky over Paris.

He took a picture of her as she sat there, small in her chair, book in her lap, in deep concentration.

"Can I hear it?" he asked, when she finally sat back, feet untangling themselves until one was lowered to the ground again. She was done.

She looked around for a moment, to the balconies attached to nearby rooms. A few of them were occupied, but she took a breath, smiling back at him before granting his request. If she was ever going to share this song on a stage, with the band, if she was ever going to pass it on to some recording artist or another, she might translate it, though he couldn't see it ever having the charm it had here, couldn't see it having that same meaning not without her voice as she sung the French words.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners