Isla and the Happily Ever After

The door shuts behind us.

The sound of the party instantly dims. We’re in a very large, very dark, and very empty room. It’s a vast indoor sculpture garden. We’re in the American wing, but it feels as if we’re back in Paris thanks to a gorgeous pair of flickering turn-of-the-century electric street lamps. I wonder if the guard left them on for us.

“What,” I whisper, “was that?”

“We,” Josh says at normal volume, “are taking a break from the soirée.”

My heartbeat accelerates. “We are?”

He takes my hand – the way he did at school, comfortable and relaxed and himself – and strolls me past the street lamps.

My heels click and echo. “Who was that guard? How do you know him?”

“Chuck Nadelhorn. We’ve taken a lot of art classes together over the years.” He sees my furrowed brow and grins. “Don’t be ageist.”

I laugh, caught.

“I was the odd one out. I was the youngest in each class, by far. Chuck was one of the few people who treated me with respect.”

“Then I like him even more than I already did.”

Josh plants a singular kiss on my lips. “This way.”

He moves forward, and I follow. “I assume you set this up – whatever it is – with Chuck in advance?”

“There were a few people involved. I’ve had some time to prepare,” he says slyly. “But we’d better hurry, we only have twenty minutes. Nineteen now.”

“As long as I’m not about to be arrested for trespassing. Or for stealing a nondescript, though no doubt priceless, artefact.”

“Only if we’re caught.”

I stop.

He tugs me forward by our clasped hands. “Come on, come on!”

We race through the room into a corridor gift shop, and we’re no longer in Paris, we’re in Barcelona – two crazy kids running away to discover our own private world. Exploring. Taking risks. A sharp right, and we enter an even darker and even more vast room, but this one couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Anyone who has visited this museum would know it.

“The Temple of Dendur.” Josh says it with a finality that tells me we’ve reached our destination – the ancient Egyptian sandstone temple.

I’m intrigued. But baffled. “Any particular reason?”

Josh shrugs in a way that’s almost bashful. “I like the temple’s reflecting pool. I kind of just wanted to sit beside it and make out with you.”

It’s actually the best answer he could have given me.

This time he leads me quietly, delicately, to the ledge beside the pool. The reflecting pool is beautiful in its dignified silence. An entire wall of this room is a window, and the lights of the city twinkle inside the still water. We sit down. The air is cold, the granite ledge even colder. He takes off his tuxedo jacket and swings it up and around my shoulders. And then he uses his own lapels to pull me into him. His mouth is warm. We slip into each other as if no time had passed between now and Spain. If there wasn’t a thousand museum cameras on us, we’d lie down and make love. But touching him is enough. Smelling him is enough. Tasting him is enough.

Being here with him is enough.

And then…we’re lying down anyway. His body is on top of mine. We press against each other, our hands and mouths travelling everywhere. We do everything except the one thing we can’t do right now. After what feels simultaneously like no time at all and eternity, Josh unwraps his limbs from mine, and we readjust our clothing.

“Before we go.” He picks up his jacket from the floor and reaches into an inside pocket. He removes a small tube. I can’t believe I didn’t feel it earlier. “Joyeux Noël.”

My heart is in my throat. It has to be a drawing. I pop open the cap, and sure enough, there’s a thick scroll inside. I slide out the paper. I unroll it slowly, because I know that, whatever it is, it’s more valuable than anything inside this museum.

It’s a tiny island. But instead of the stereotypical single palm, he’s drawn a prickly Joshua tree in its centre. Underneath it are two entwined figures. It’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. They’ve become a single na**d body. The entire illustration is done in rich black ink…with the exception of the girl’s bold red hair.

He’s nervous. “Do you like it?”

“Let’s move to this island tonight. Right this second.” I can’t hide the genuine longing from my voice. Nor the fear and dread of our upcoming re-separation.

Josh tucks a loose strand of my hair back into place. “We’ll move there next autumn, maybe even this summer. And then we’ll never be apart ever again.”

Chapter twenty-six

Back at Chuck’s door, Josh returns the tube to his jacket pocket. My fancy jewelled clutch is too fancy to be of any actual use. Josh knocks – a normal knock, not his special knock – and the door opens. Chuck nods his approval. “With thirty seconds to spare.”

“Anything you need, you let me know,” Josh says as we steal back inside.

Chuck’s smile widens into a grin. “Oh, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you so much,” I say.

Chuck gestures towards the right strap of my dress, which has loosened and keeps falling off my shoulder. I shove it back up. My boyfriend’s ensuing blush matches my own. Chuck laughs. “You kids have a good night now, you hear?”

As soon as we’re out of earshot, Josh says, “Nothing like an adult to remind you that you aren’t one.”

I laugh, but as we place our drink order at the bar, our matching ginger ales make the sort-of joke feel all too real. It’s always uncomfortable to come home from school only to be faced with even fewer freedoms. The last time we were at a party, we drank champagne. We stayed out as late as we wanted. And zero family members were involved. “Should we find your parents again?” Please say no.

He sighs. “Yeah.”

“Ohmygod. Is that the mayor?”

A snappily dressed, elderly photographer is taking pictures of an equally elderly man with tipsy-red cheeks and a sober-looking, much younger partner.

“Yep,” Josh says, unenthused.

As we pass them, I follow Josh’s blasé lead, and I don’t turn my head to stare. Even though I want to. This evening will never stop being weird.

We wander, searching for his parents, but it’s a slow-moving process. Everybody seems to know Josh, and they all want to congratulate him on the re-election. Political lifers. Josh remembers the names of children and locations of vacation homes, and he introduces me to everyone. I munch on bland canapés. This is the type of conversation that he despises, but his distaste never shows. It strikes me that if he had the desire…he could be one of them, too. He’s a good actor.