The Pairing(119)

Sloane leans against the walk-in door, smiling, saying nothing.

“What?” I finally ask.

“Nothing,” she says. “You just look so happy here.”

“I am. It was scary, at first. But I really am happy.”

Truthfully, it was more than scary. It was terrifying. I had the jitters every day of my six months tying up loose ends in the States, applying for my visa, making sure Timo would be okay without me, saying goodbye to the kitchen guys I’d worked alongside since I was nineteen. There was so much logistical wrangling, so much paperwork, budgets and business plans and all the things that are hardest for me. But one thing I’ve learned is that I never really know what I’m capable of until I’m doing it, and the only way to find out is to march on. And when it’s hardest, Kit is there.

I love this life. I love this life with an enormity that would have frightened the hell out of me five years ago, because I wouldn’t have trusted myself to keep it. Instead, I swim in the Atlantic before breakfast, and I hold on tighter every day.

Later, while Kit and Sloane are busy gossiping like middle schoolers, I start unboxing all our deliveries. There are the expected orders—barware, sifters, nuts shipped in from up the Pyrenees—and then there are the things that started pouring in once we put out word about Field Day opening next week. A case of wine with a handwritten note from Gérard and Florian, and another from the Somm with a card from Timo’s bar staff. A parcel of pure drinking chocolate from Santiago, pouches of Australian wattleseed and dried Dorrigo pepper from the Calums, flaky Mediterranean sea salt from Apolline. A good-luck package containing two flax linen aprons, a gilded jigger, and a postcard from Este.

The rest of our out-of-towners start to arrive tomorrow. Maxine is taking the train down from Paris; our parents land in the afternoon. Cora and Ollie coordinated their flights with the Swedes. Valentina has even persuaded Fabrizio to leave Rio in January to come up to France, and Kit nearly fell out of bed laughing when she texted us a photo of him begrudgingly swaddled in a wool sweater. Every night after dinner the past week, Kit and I have stood at our window overlooking the bay and gone over the menu again, determined to make it the most it can be. Not perfect, but the most. That’s us. That’s Theo-and-Kit.

Across our little shop, Kit glows in pink morning light through our big front windows, striped by the shadows of the letters spelling FIELD across the glass. I love the paint stains on his hands, the old cardigan rolled up to his elbows. I love how good he is to me. I love how good I am to myself when he’s around.

I think of the question I’ve been practicing: Veux-tu m’épouser?

He was the first great thing I ever let myself want. This time, I’m keeping him.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS





That was a lot of book, wasn’t it?

When one opens a new page to write, it’s important to have a goal in mind. My main goal with this one was to love writing it, and to write a book that loved being a book. I think I got there. I know I’ve never been loved back by a book quite like this one.

This book had me leaping off a sailboat in the Mediterranean and standing in my kitchen rubbing lemon zest into white sugar. It kissed me good morning and told me to read some Rilke before I clocked in. It asked me to be smarter and more curious, to learn a dozen new things every day. It was my pleasure to write it, and I owe such a tremendous debt of gratitude to so many people for that.

Thank you to my tireless agent, Sara Megibow, and my faithful editor, Vicki Lame. Thank you to the entire team at St. Martin’s Griffin for all the work that went into editing it and putting it into such a beautiful package and sending it out into the world, including Anne Marie Tallberg, Vanessa Aguirre, Meghan Harrington, Alexis Neuville, Brant Janeway, Melanie Sanders, Chrisinda Lynch, Lauren Hougen, Laura Apperson, Sam Dauer, Jeremy Haiting, Devan Norman, Kerri Resnick, and Olga Grlic. Thank you to our cover illustrator, Mira Lou. Thank you to our incredible audiobook actors, Emma Galvin and Max Meyers; our director, Kimberley Wetherell; and the Macmillan audio team, including Elishia Merricks, Emily Dyer, Isabella Narvaez, Ashley Johnson, and Tim Franklin.

Now, I’d better start listing the resources that went into this research quickly, or it’ll be another fifty pages. I’d only been to Europe a few times when I came up with the idea for this book, and I would have been literally and figuratively lost without the dozens of guides—physical, literary, and virtual—who showed me the way. Thank you to the travel YouTubers, whose content was indispensable when I was searching things like “streets of Naples ASMR 4K” at one in the morning, including Oui in France, Tourister, Abroad and Hungry, Chad and Claire, Days We Spend, Euro Trotter, and whoever has been uploading old episodes of Rick Steve’s Europe. Thank you to the writers and editors of the many books I used for reference, including Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker, Italian Hours by Henry James, Wine Simple by Aldo Sohm and Christine Muhlke, The Sommelier’s Atlas of Taste by Rajat Parr and Jordan Mackay, Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller and Sebastien Rouxel, and Wine Folly: Magnum Edition by Madeline Puckette and Justin Hammack. Thank you to the travel bloggers whose writing and photos helped me step inside every scene, including Along Dusty Roads, Bordeaux Travel Guide, and Florence Inferno. Thank you to the TravelMag, AFAR, Lonely Planet, ArchDaily, Atlas Obscura, Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, and Michelin Guide contributors whose work helped in both writing and planning my own travels. Thank you to the hosts and producers of the podcasts I listened to for context, including Half-Arsed History, ArtCurious, Stuff You Missed in History Class, and Wine for Normal People. Thank you to random commenters on the subreddits of each of these destinations for their recommendations. Thank you to the documentary Somm. Thank you to the poet Louise Labé for helping me understand the sexual and romantic derangement of someone from Lyon. Thank you to the Uffizi Gallery for uploading a three-dimensional virtual tour of the Buontalenti Grotto without ever imagining what I would use it for. I would apologize, but I do feel I was honoring the spirit of the place.