Micha watched Maria sleep. She was completely still. No movement at all. Her head was on his outstretched arm and he didn’t care that he was getting pins and needles. He wouldn’t move her for the world. She was so peaceful like this. None of the energy that forced her so determinedly through the day. It was fascinating.
‘Why are you staring at me?’ she whispered, with her eyes still closed, and he jerked back a tiny bit in shock.
With a smile on her face she turned in to him, nuzzling closer, and his heart nearly careened right out of his chest.
‘Don’t stop,’ she whispered, making herself comfortable. ‘I like it.’ And with that she went straight back to sleep and he held her like that all the way until the morning.
Over the next couple of days, Micha wondered whether he was living in a dream. Every morning, they would have breakfast out on the beautiful sun-drenched patio. The sounds of birds and the sight of the sea were an accompaniment to freshly squeezed orange juice, mint tea, his espresso—of course—halwa dyal kouk, a type of coconut cake that Maria couldn’t get enough of, bread, olive oil, honey and other pastries filled with the flavours of orange and almond. The heat from the sunrise—Maria was an unconscionably early riser—was delicious. It crept slowly and seduced, relaxing muscles and sinking into weary bones. He tried to remember the last time he’d had a break like this. A holiday.
Never.
He’d been working so long and so hard, trying to outrun the poverty he’d grown up with and the insecurity he’d lived with daily.
After breakfast, Maria would speak to one of the house staff and they would be whisked away on a magical mystery tour. On the first day, they’d visited Medersa Ben Yousef, the fourteenth-century religious school that was full of thezellijtiling that he was beginning to really like, ancient cedar wood ceilings and breathtaking stucco work. On the second day they visited Souk Semmarine, where Maria deftly handled negotiations with several store owners to acquire intricately detailed carpets and cut-brass lanterns. The leather work was impeccable and she bought a wallet for Antonio, and Enzo—her newly acquainted cousin—and bracelets for Ivy and Erin, their wives. And when she smiled at him and asked if there was something he wanted to buy, he just shook his head and smiled. Because there, in the middle of a market in Marrakesh, with the scents wafting over him from theahba kedima, the spice market, and the smell of coals, and hot leather from thehaddadine, the blacksmith’s alley, it hit Micha hard.
He had everything he needed. Everything he’deverwanted.
And if there was a thought in the back of his head, an alarm bell, that warned him it was too good to be true, then he ignored it.
On the third day, Maria took him to the Yves Saint Laurent Museum and the Jardin Majorelle, where he lived, where even Micha was awed by the incredible collection of art within such a beautiful setting. The design of the building was heavily formed by contrasting straight and curved lines, and radically different to where Saint Laurent had lived, where powerful colours sat perfectly with Moroccan architecture, and it made Micha realise that he’d not really thought of his home in such a way. But seeing Maria draw in all the colour, the inspiration, the architecture, seeing her come alive, he realised he wanted her to feel the same way about where they would live. He wanted to create that for her.
And at night? Well, never in his wildest dreams had he imagined anything so incredible. They spent hours rediscovering themselves and each other. He placed kisses on her belly, where their child was growing each day, and each night he slept with his hand possessively and comfortingly placed over them.
Maria beckoned him over from where she was bent at the waist, looking at a tray of jewellery that could cost less than their breakfast. He’d realised that for Maria, it wasn’t the cost that mattered, but how beautiful she found it. She’d just as easily wear a dress from the market as one of YSL’s haute couture pieces. As long as something about it caught her eye.
‘What do you think of this?’
‘I think you like it and that’s all I need to know,’ he replied, but cast a gaze over the handmade silver necklace. Rows and rows of tiny little beads, that rich blue of lapis lazuli. Itwasbeautiful.
‘Wise man,’ the store owner said with a smile.
Micha inclined his head in recognition of the high praise. Maria slapped him playfully on the arm.
‘Do youlikeit?’ she pressed.
‘Am I the one who will be wearing it?’ he toyed.
‘Yes. That and nothing else. In bed. All night long,’ she replied, deadpan, and the store owner coughed in shock and Micha threw his head back and laughed.
By the time he stopped, he realised that she was looking at him in a strange way, and after buying the necklace he most definitely wouldnotbe wearing, they found a shaded table at an out-of-the-way cafe for Maria to rest the ankles that were, as predicted, getting a little swollen.
After ordering their drinks, a mint tea for her and an espresso for him, he asked her about it.
‘It’s just…been a while since I heard you laugh like that. Even when we were younger, you were always so serious.’
‘And you were always trying to make me laugh,’ he replied, the smile on his lips evident in his tone.
And then you weren’t there to make me laugh.
‘It’s nice. I like it.’
‘What?’
‘Your laugh. It’s nice. You should laugh more.’
‘I will do whatever brings you joy,’ he said, the words out of his mouth before he realised how vulnerable that could make him. But when he saw the look in her eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to regret them. She looked as if he’d given her a gift far more precious than any stone, diamond or jewel in the whole of Marrakesh.
Is this what we could have? Is this what it could be like?
