"Je Voudrais... You?"

Jasper had only been in Marseille for five days, and already he was sunburned, under-caffeinated, and so deeply reliant on Google Translate that he’d started speaking in weird hybrid sentences like “Je need un café maintenant, s’il te please.”

He had come to the south of France for art, peace, and one of those rustic “reconnect with yourself” sabbaticals that people always blogged about while wearing linen shirts and eating bread as if they had just discovered gluten for the first time.

Jasper, a watercolor hobbyist and full-time overthinker, had envisioned mornings spent painting rocky coastlines and afternoons sipping wine in sun-dappled courtyards, maybe journaling something profound about shadows and soul alignment. Instead, he’d spent most of his time getting lost, ordering the wrong things at cafés, and once accidentally buying sheep’s cheese shampoo.

What he hadn’t expected—what no inspirational travel blogger had prepared him for—was to fall in love.

With a fruit stand.

More specifically, with the woman behind the fruit stand.

Her name, he eventually discovered after a sweaty and mortifying exchange involving a bag of apricots and a mumbled “Je suis un poisson” (he meant to say “Je suis confus”), was Élise. She wore a red kerchief in her hair, gold hoops in her ears, and the sort of smile that made you forget how verbs worked, how breathing worked, how your knees worked.

Her stall—Le Goût du Soleil (“The Taste of Sunshine”)—stood at the corner of the market, proudly chaotic and bursting with produce so beautiful it could’ve starred in a lifestyle magazine. Figs the size of baby fists. Sun-warmed nectarines. Mangoes so golden and shiny they looked photoshopped by someone who was emotionally invested in tropical fruit.

Each morning, Jasper made increasingly unconvincing excuses to walk past the stall. He’d pretend he was comparing melon prices (he wasn’t), or casually ask if figs were in season (they very much were), or just stand nearby “checking his phone” while absolutely checking her out.

She seemed to find his awkwardness amusing—like a puppy who kept tripping over its own feet but wagged its tail anyway. Once, when he accidentally complimented her onions instead of her oranges (don’t ask), she laughed so hard she gave him a free apple. He ate it slowly, like a sacrament.

And that’s how it began, powered entirely by fresh produce, mild linguistic trauma, and the sheer force of Jasper’s romantic ineptitude.

On Day 6, Jasper tried to buy mangoes.

On Day 6, Élise thought he asked her to marry him.

It all started with one clumsy phrase.

Jasper had practiced it like his future depended on it—which, in a way, it did.

He’d repeated it in the mirror of his Airbnb for two full mornings, miming polite hand gestures:

“Je voudrais quelques mangues, s’il vous plaît.”

Easy.

Polite.

Harmless.

But nerves are tricky things. And mangoes, as it turns out, are deceptively high-stakes fruit.

What actually came out of Jasper’s mouth, in a voice cracking with effort and optimism, was:

“Je veux me marier avec mangues… euh… avec toi… très, très s’il vous plaît.”

(Translation: “I want to marry mangoes… um… with you… very, very please.”)

There was a silence so profound you could hear a grape drop.

Élise stared at him.

Jasper, already sweating from a combination of heat, nerves, and his wool-beret-that-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time, panicked. He had no idea what she’d said, but she was smiling and not calling security, so he took it as a good sign.

So naturally, he gave her a thumbs-up.

Because nothing says “I am mentally stable and trustworthy” like a panicked tourist doing jazz hands with his thumbs.

Her eyebrows lifted. “Tu veux te marier avec moi… à cause des mangues?” she asked, trying not to laugh.

Jasper, who caught exactly three words—moi, mangues, and marier—interpreted this as, “Do you want mangoes with me or separately?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “Yes! Very mango with you!”

Élise paused mid-pear-stack, and tilted her head. A slow, knowing smile spread across her face. She let out a delighted laugh, threw three mangoes into a brown paper bag, and added a bonus apricot like a prize for effort. Then, with the flair of someone about to make life interesting, she leaned forward over the crate of kiwis and asked, “On va dîner ensemble, alors?”

Jasper, who interpreted this as “Are these ripe enough for dinner?” replied with a confident, “Yes. Perfect. Very ripe.”

She blinked again. Then she took a pen from behind her ear, scribbled something on the bag, and held it out.

An address.

A time.

“Ce soir,” she said with a wink.

Jasper, assuming this meant “Best enjoyed tonight,” beamed and nodded like a Labrador being offered cheese.

Élise, half amused, half intrigued, just shook her head and muttered “Les Anglais sont fous” , as he wandered away—brown paper bag clutched to his chest like a sacred scroll.

Behind her, a customer asked, “C’était quoi, ça ?”

Élise grinned.

“Un fiancé, apparemment.”

At 7 PM, Jasper arrived at the address Élise had scribbled on the mango bag.

He expected a cooking class.

Maybe some aprons.

A kindly French chef with a mustache.

The smell of something gently being flambéed.

Instead, he found… an apartment.

A very cozy, candlelit, dangerously romantic apartment.

Élise opened the door in a summer dress so floaty it should’ve had its own weather report. Her eyes were lined with kohl, her smile soft and teasing, and faint jazz floated out behind her like she lived inside a movie.

Jasper panicked. But instead of saying something sensible like “Hi,” he held out the sliced mangoes, arranged on a plate with the care of a man who had watched one too many episodes of The Great British Bake Off.

“I, uh… brought fruit?” he said.

“Tu es sérieux, alors?” she asked, stepping aside to let him in.

“Always serious about fruit,” he replied solemnly, as if he were being knighted.

They sat.

They dined.

Élise had cooked a delicate tagine with couscous and herbs Jasper couldn’t name but enthusiastically chewed. He understood maybe 40% of what she said, but thanks to hand gestures, sound effects, and miming that rivaled a Paris street performer, the evening felt like a success.

When she asked about his sketchbook, he lit up.

Inside were drawings of market stalls, hunched old men playing pétanque with theatrical grumpiness, and, most prominently—her fruit stand. Le Goût du Soleil appeared on nearly every page, like a Where’s Waldo of vitamin C. One whole spread was just Élise, surrounded by oranges and sunflowers, her smile immortalized in ink.

She stared at the sketchbook for a long time.

Then her phone rang.

It was on speaker.

Élise answered, laughing, “Oui, Mamie. Il est là. Très charmant… Oui, il a dit qu’il veut m’épouser! On va voir!”

Jasper, halfway through a sip of wine, nearly choked.

“Épouser?” he wheezed, coughing Pinot Noir into his napkin.

At that moment, Élise blinked slowly, as if trying to reload Jasper’s sentence like a glitchy webpage.

“You just… wanted mangoes?” she repeated.

“Well—yes.” Jasper nodded, suddenly aware he was still holding a tiny decorative cocktail fork he’d been using to eat cheese cubes like a dignified adult. “I mean, they’re very good mangoes. Possibly the best mangoes I’ve ever had. But not… y’know… matrimonial mangoes.”

Élise looked at him for a long second, then burst out laughing. Not a polite giggle, but the kind of laugh that made her bend double and slap the kitchen counter. Jasper wasn’t sure if he’d said something charming or accidentally insulted all of France.

“I told my grandmother you proposed,” she said, wiping her eyes. “She’s already checking church availability.”

“Brilliant,” Jasper said. “Shall I call my mum and tell her to dust off her hat?”

Élise poured him another glass of wine. “You’re lucky she likes British men. She once had a crush on Colin Firth and insists all of you are ‘sensitive, misunderstood, and damp.’”

“That’s… not entirely inaccurate,” Jasper admitted. “I did cry once during a documentary about sea otters.”

“Perfect. She’ll adore you.”

They clinked glasses. The tension melted away like brie left in the sun too long.

Dinner continued with more wine, more mispronounced nouns, and Jasper somehow complimenting her chicken by calling it chic underwear (“ce poulet est très... sous-vêtement chic?”). Élise wheezed with laughter and declared him “un trésor anglais,” which he decided to take as a compliment unless proven otherwise.

Later, they sat on her tiny balcony overlooking the street, lit only by fairy lights and Marseille’s faintly chaotic traffic noise. Élise handed him a small photo album. Inside were old pictures—her as a toddler covered in jam, her mother in a sunflower field, her grandmother in heels and a fur coat holding a baguette like a sword.

Jasper, still tipsy and confused by life in general, blinked at one photo. It was Élise, maybe seventeen, standing in front of the same fruit stall. The sign—Le Goût du Soleil—was hand-painted and crooked.

“That was my first summer running the stall,” she said. “It was my mum’s before that. And her mum’s before her.”

“So,” Jasper said, “you’re… what? A fourth-generation mango merchant?”

Élise grinned. “Technically, I’m a Fruit Duchess.”

Jasper raised his glass. “To Her Royal Peach-ness.”

They laughed again. And just when it felt like the night couldn’t get any stranger or sweeter, a cat walked into the room wearing a tiny knitted sweater.

“Oh, that’s Gérard,” Élise said casually.

Jasper stared at the cat, then at her. “Why is he wearing… cable knit?”

“He gets cold. And dramatic.”

“Fair.”

Gérard meowed in a tone that sounded deeply judgmental, leapt onto Jasper’s lap, and promptly fell asleep.

Jasper looked down. “Well. I guess I’ve been chosen.”

“That means you’re officially family,” Élise said, grinning.

“So… marriage is back on the table?”

“Only if you promise to never say ‘sous-vêtement chic’ in public again.”

“Deal.”

They clinked glasses one last time as Gérard snored, the fairy lights flickered, and somewhere in the distance, a grandmother whispered into the phone, “Je te l’avais dit. The British are coming.”

The next morning, under the blue umbrella at Le Goût du Soleil, Élise handed Jasper a paper bag with three perfectly ripe mangoes and a cheeky smile. On the bag, she’d scrawled in looping script:

“Practice your French. Meet me for dinner. Again.”

Below that, in smaller writing:

“No accidental proposals this time, please.”

Jasper grinned like an idiot all the way back to his Airbnb, mango juice leaking onto his shorts and heart doing the cha-cha.

He did meet her for dinner. That night.

And the next.

And the next.

Every day for the rest of the summer, Jasper showed up—sometimes with flowers, sometimes with new cheeses he didn’t know how to eat, once with an accordion (which Élise confiscated almost immediately).

And while Jasper still couldn’t conjugate half his verbs and regularly confused pain (bread) with peine (sorrow), he slowly learned the important ones:

Vouloir – to want.

As in, je veux te voir encore. I want to see you again.

(Which he once accidentally said as je veux te voir en corps, or, “I want to see you as a body,” but Élise let it slide.)

Aimer – to love.

As in, j’aime ta robe, I love your dress.

(Although when he said j’aime ton chien to a stranger, he didn’t expect to get invited to a dog wedding. It was awkward but beautiful.)

Essayer – to try.

As in, je vais essayer de ne pas ruiner le dîner.

I will try not to ruin dinner.

(He did, once. The fire department was very understanding.)

He also learned other useful phrases:

C’est brûlé – It’s burnt.

Ce n’était pas censé exploser – It wasn’t supposed to explode.

Le chat l’a mangé – The cat ate it. (Used frequently. Gérard was ruthless.)

They danced in the kitchen. They shared wine and secrets. They argued passionately about the proper cheese-to-bread ratio. Élise taught him how to haggle at the market and say "no" to overripe cantaloupe. Jasper taught her the meaning of “awkward turtle” and introduced her to Marmite, which she described as “le goût de regret.”

And though Jasper never got truly fluent in French, and Élise never fully understood the appeal of Doctor Who, somehow… they understood each other perfectly.

Because some things don’t need translating:

A look.

A laugh.

A mango, offered like a peace treaty.

A scribbled note on a brown paper bag that says, Dîner chez moi? Toujours.

Dinner at my place? Always.