The airplane wheels touched down with a jolt, and Talia felt her breath catch in her chest.
This was real.
Marseille stretched beyond the horizon — a city bathed in terracotta roofs, Mediterranean light, and the salty scent of something older than memory. It didn't feel like a postcard anymore. It felt like the first blank page in a new chapter neither of them had written yet.
Ezra was half-asleep next to her, earbuds still in, his head tilted toward her shoulder. She smiled softly, brushing a stray curl from his forehead.
He stirred.
"Are we here?"
"We're here."
He blinked. "You nervous?"
"A little," she said. "You?"
"Terrified." But he grinned as he said it.
They made it through customs, collected their bags, and stepped out into the golden light of the Marseille afternoon. Their contact from the fellowship program waved at them from a distance — a woman in her fifties with sharp sunglasses and a name tag that read Dr. Margret Leclerc.
"Bienvenue," she said with a firm handshake. "You must be the couple."
Talia glanced at Ezra and chuckled. "That's us."
The student apartment they were assigned was modest — white walls, a view of the harbor, and a tiny kitchen with mismatched chairs. But it was theirs. For six months.
The first night, Talia unpacked slowly, placing photos and sticky notes on the fridge. Ezra, meanwhile, arranged his textbooks by color on the shelf, in typical type-A fashion.
"Who organizes by color?" she teased.
He shrugged. "It's soothing."
She laughed. "You're such a nerd."
"Yeah, well, you're stuck with me now, remember?"
Talia froze for half a second, then softened. "I'm not stuck," she said. "I chose this."
Ezra's eyes held hers, something unspoken passing between them.
"Do you regret it?" he asked.
"The program or… us?"
"Either. Both."
She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around his waist. "Not even a little."
Their first week in Marseille was a whirlwind.
They split their time between seminars and clinic observations — Ezra diving into patient diagnostics while Talia focused on narrative interviews. She shadowed a local writer who crafted stories from patient histories, blending fact and emotion with such grace that it made Talia ache to write again.
One afternoon, as they walked home along the Port, with boats bobbing in the sunset, Ezra said, "You're glowing lately."
"It's the salt air," she replied, nudging him. "Or maybe the espresso."
He looked at her, serious now. "No, it's this. You being here. Doing something you love."
She reached for his hand. "You too, you know. You look lighter."
"Because for once I'm not chasing perfection," he said. "Just trying to be present."
But not everything was effortless.
They had their first fight two weeks in — about something stupid. Ezra had made dinner plans with another fellowship couple without asking. Talia had wanted a night in, just the two of them.
"You assume I'm always up for socializing," she said, frustrated, arms crossed.
"You assume I don't need people outside of you," he snapped back.
It wasn't about dinner. It never is.
It was about the fear that love would shrink their worlds, make them smaller instead of bigger. That being together meant losing pieces of themselves they'd fought hard to build.
That night, they didn't talk.
But by morning, Talia left a note on the counter:
"We'll figure it out. All of it. One small storm at a time."
Ezra made coffee and slid her a croissant with a small smile. "Agreed."
Their fellowship deepened as spring bloomed over Marseille.
They interviewed patients in broken French and late-night English. Talia wrote a story about a woman who had survived cancer twice and now ran a flower stall outside the hospital. Ezra helped a child recover from a difficult surgery by drawing cartoon kidneys on her cast.
They laughed. They learned.
And one night, as they stood on the balcony, watching the sun bleed into the sea, Ezra said, "I could see us here longer."
Talia turned to him. "You mean... after the fellowship?"
"I mean… maybe. A little longer. Just enough to know what it's like to stay still. To stop running toward something and just… live it."
She didn't answer right away.
Then, quietly, she said, "Let's see where the story takes us."