The Pairing(118)

“Say it again,” Paloma says to me as we walk back from the post office, our arms full of packages. “Faster now.”

“Veux-tu m’épouser?”

“Now like you mean it.”

“Veux-tu m’épouser!”

“There you go! Your pronunciation is getting better!”

I grin. Paloma smells faintly of sardines and sweetened coffee. “I’m a fast learner.”

Last summer, when I landed back in California with one of Kit’s sweaters and a whole new idea of what my life could be, I started learning French. I had plenty of help—long emails from Paloma, Cora over the phone, podcasts and apps and Maxine with the air of a sexy drill sergeant. And, of course, Kit. Always Kit and our never-ending conversation, our video calls to test recipes or sketch out plans. Sometimes I’d make him quiz me. Sometimes he simply sat on the other end of the phone and read a novel aloud in French while I soldiered through chores.

(Sometimes we’d get naked. For an intermediate French speaker, I have acquired a truly impressive vocabulary for dirty talk.) “Sounding lovely, Léa!” Paloma calls toward the open window upstairs as we reach our destination. Her little cousin recently switched from flute to clarinet, much to the neighbors’ dismay. “Much less like a dying cat!”

“Shut up, Paloma,” Léa says, sticking her head out. “Hi, Theo!”

“Hi, Léa!” I call back. “See you for dinner tonight!”

“Is Kit coming?”

“Of course.”

“Mama!” Léa shouts, disappearing. “We need another chicken!”

The boxes in my arms are stacked so high, I hear Kit’s laugh before I see him.

“Didn’t I just pick up our packages last week?” he says, taking a few. His face comes into view, and for a moment I’m amazed all over again that this is our life. That I get to wake up every morning to the rush of the ocean and this person, this beautiful, irreplaceable person with paint streaked across his nose and a smile made only for me. He leans in and kisses my cheek.

“You did,” I say. We’re there so often these days, the old man behind the desk knows us both by name. “Gilles says hello.”

With Kit’s help, Paloma and I get our packages inside and pile them on the floor by the pastry case.

“Those are for Mikel,” Kit says, pointing Paloma toward a box of macarons. When we bought the bakery from the old woman who owned it, we bought her recipes too. We both thought some things should stay for good. “And tell him I haven’t forgotten that he still has my copy of Candide.”

“You know you’re never getting that book back, right?”

Kit returns to his arsenal of paint buckets, still smiling. “I know, but it’s fun to bother him.”

“Do you know how many of your friends are coming on Sunday?” I ask Paloma.

“Everyone, love,” she says with a grin. “Fucking everyone. They’re your friends too.”

Paloma leaves us to clock in at the fish counter, striding away with such merry yeoman’s swagger that she nearly bowls over a woman just outside the door. They both apologize before splitting, and then the woman turns, and I see that pretty, familiar, heart-shaped face.

“Oh my God,” I gasp, leaping over boxes. “Sloane!”

My sister yelps as I full-body crash into her, throwing my arms around her and lifting her off the ground.

“Ow, Theo, those are my ribs!”

I set her down, feasting my eyes on her for the first time since I moved abroad almost a year ago. She never shaved her head like she was threatening to, but her hair is much shorter than it was, just above her shoulders and almost back to our natural color. I rub my hand through it to mess it up, enjoying her scowl. “What are you doing here?”

“Friends and family menu tasting?” Sloane says. “You literally invited me.”

“Yeah, but you’re so busy, I didn’t think you’d actually come, and you never said—”

“I bailed on my schedule for the week,” she says with a casual shrug. “Hi, Kit.”

Kit, who is looking at Sloane and me with the soft amusement of someone who once watched us fistfight over the last cupcake at Este’s third birthday party, says, “Hi, Sloane.” And then he’s scooping her up too.

While Kit gets back to work on the mural he’s painting across the shop’s back wall, I give Sloane the investor’s tour of what will soon be Field Day: the new ovens we installed together, the dry storage bins thoughtfully organized by Kit, the mosaic tiles we laid by hand into the wall behind the bar. Our vibe is Old World meets New World, cozy and bright and similar enough to the way it was left to keep the neighbors comfortable. We’ve added café tables and a corner bar, an espresso machine in the corner, plants in every window. Welded into the base of the pastry case is the front bumper of my old bus bar, taken before I sold it to a friend of Montana and Dakota, its battered old VW logo reflecting lights Kit strung overhead.

I finish by showing her what we’ve been prepping for our first menu tasting this weekend. Ribbons of mint, jars of dark red and orange spices, cinnamon sticks, blitzed pistachio. I just finalized the cocktail menu yesterday, but I haven’t finished naming them all yet—in my notebook, they still have placeholder names after the nights that inspired them. The Caterina, the émile, the Estelle.