The Pairing(34)

But I’m standing before a buffet of the most sexually compelling characters of the Saint-Jean-de-Luz hospitality industry, and Paloma is not the only dish. I plant myself in front of the bartender and hold out my Plavina.

“Salut!” I say. “Your glass is empty. Wine?”

By a stroke of delightful luck, he’s Croatian, so he speaks a few languages and is thrilled to see a wine from home. He calls over one of the hotel guys and the gardener, and I pour everyone a round of ruby red. In turn, the bartender offers me a glug of local white wine aged in underwater tanks beyond the seawall. Naturally, I have five hundred questions about this. Soon, I’ve been absorbed into a cluster of English-speaking oenophiles.

Camping lanterns illuminate the circle as I taste a bit of everything and ask question after question, tipsy and eager and rolling around flavors. The butcher tells me about the nineteen months of aging to create Jambon du Kintoa, which tastes faintly of chestnuts because the pigs roam free on the green Pyrenees slopes eating whatever they find. The line cook passes me a hunk of cheese that tastes almost like caramel. Even Kit drifts by on a slow lap around the sand to tell me the history of the gateau Basque, with its buttery crust and tart black cherry filling.

Kit comes by more than once, actually. We’ve gravitated to opposite sides of the language barrier, but he seems exclusively interested in the cheese and wines closest to me. At first I suspect competitive sabotage, until I realize he’s checking on me. He’s making sure I’m okay in an unfamiliar place. It holds the comfort of before, when we’d lock eyes across a party and know that whatever happened, we’d get each other home.

On his fifth visit, after someone’s pulled out a speaker to play Kylie Minogue and we’ve all gotten up to dance in the sand, Kit and Fruit Wife find their way to me at the same time.

“Hi, Kit,” I say. And then, with significantly more interest, “Hi, Juliette. It was nice to meet you at the market.”

Juliette smiles, looking ever the wife with her hair down and her dress slipping off her shoulder. I’m not looking at Kit, but I can sense him finally putting together who she is. My hand finds his thigh, and I dig one blunt fingernail into his skin as a warning not to blow this for me. Juliette keeps smiling. My head goes a little wobbly, and I pull my hand away.

She produces an orange from the folds of her skirt and holds it out to me, saying something in French.

“Oh, merci,” I say, taking the orange. “I—sorry, je ne parle pas fran?ais.”

“Ah.” A pucker appears between her pretty brows. “No English.”

She says something else in French, and Kit shifts closer.

“She was saving this one for you,” Kit translates, looking at me. “She’s happy she got to see you again.”

“Oh! Moi aussi!” I turn from her to Kit. “Can you tell her that I loved the cherries?”

Kit translates dutifully. “She says—ah—she says she thought you would like them because they’re beautiful, and so are you.”

“Oh yeah? Tell her I’d buy anything from her.”

He does, and when she answers, he translates, “You should come back to the market tomorrow, then.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow, but I have all night.”

Kit translates, and Juliette answers, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me for the entire exchange. It’s almost like he’s asking for himself when he translates, “What do you want to do that will take all night?”

I look directly into his eyes and say, “Something I’m very good at.”

For a second, Kit’s face goes completely immobile. Then he lets out a laugh that’s all breath.

“You know what, I don’t think I’m needed here anymore,” he says, holding his hands up.

Juliette and I laugh, which doesn’t need any translation. As everyone begins to collapse into the sand, I find myself sideways on a flower-patterned towel with my head in Juliette’s lap. Kit falls on the other side of the circle with Paloma, talking quietly in the lantern light and sharing the last mouchous.

It feels so natural here, like we’re among our people. Right now, I can imagine us here forever. Theo-and-Kit side-by-side in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. A perfect hyphenate daisy chain. We could have neighboring apartments down the street from Paloma’s and lunches of cheese and fruit from the market. I would swim in the bay every morning, and Kit would go out to the mountains every weekend to sketch plants. We could become best friends again, spend the rest of our lives together.

I realize I’ve never felt this comfortable before, outside of the Valley. I didn’t know it was possible.

My phone buzzes from my hip pack: another email from Schnauzer Bride. I ignore it and open my texts instead, replying to Sloane’s message from this morning.

you know all those times you said i need to get out of the valley? I type. maybe you were onto something . . .

When I’m done, I look up in time to see Kit take Paloma’s face in his hand.

It’s a gentle, exploratory touch, his fingers lacing into the hair at her nape. His thumb brushes her jaw. She’s still for a moment, and then her hand covers his.

His gaze shifts away from her face, to mine.

It’s fleeting, but I catch it. The question in his eyes. The genuine need. It’s a fair trade for earlier, with Juliette. He wants me to watch.