The Pairing(51)

Would that be such a bad thing?

Logistically, it would be stupid to fall back in love with Kit. For one, we live 5,600 miles apart. He loves his job and would never leave it, and I’ve never seriously imagined myself doing anything more than what I’ve been doing back home. And even if we lived on the same street, it wouldn’t matter, unless Kit still has feelings for me. And I have every reason to believe he doesn’t.

He said it in San Sebastián: I thought I should let you go, so that’s what I did.

Maybe something more than friendship still shimmers between us—a friction, the tension of two people who know they’re the best at fucking each other—but I know the difference between sex and love. I don’t know which he feels when his body is close to mine, or what he sees when he looks at me. It’s been so long, and I’m not the girl he wanted to marry anymore.

“Theo!”

I spin. Kit’s only a few feet away now. He’s ridiculous out here in a sea of lavender, a sprig between his thumb and forefinger. I shift my weight to steady myself on both feet.

“Did you have anything in mind for the afternoon?” he asks me.

“I—um, the Calums invited me to climb Castle Hill with them.” I glance toward the goat pen. Ginger Calum is now lying flat on his back, halfway under a shrub. Blond Calum prods him with a stick. “But I have a feeling they’re not gonna make it.”

“A friend of mine from pastry school opened a boulangerie in Nice a few months ago,” Kit says. “I thought I might pop in. Do you want to come?”

“Sure,” I say, because there’s no reason to say no. “Yeah, that sounds fun.”

He looks me up and down, like he’s taking his first opportunity to get the whole view of me this morning. My tan work pants cinched at the waist, the dust on my boots, the open collar of my shirt. He reaches up and tucks the lavender sprig behind my ear, his thumb brushing the topmost hoop in my earlobe.

“You’re very handsome today.”

My heart kicks in my chest.

I could ask him. If there’s a lesson to take from the aftermath of us, it’s that. Not here, not now, but maybe during one of our nights alone in a dimly lit bar, I could put my hand on his and ask if he could ever love me again. And if he said no, at least it would be an answer.

But if he said yes—

If he said he could fall again, I’d tell him I already have.


At the corner of two streets in Nice, a young woman slumps on a doorstep under a sign that says BOULANGERIE in gold letters. She’s staring at a cup of tea like she might start crying into it. A huge splatter of pink-red covers her apron and shirt and mats the ends of her blond hair. She looks like hell.

“Apolline?” Kit says.

She looks up and sees Kit, her exhausted eyes going wide in surprise.

“Kit? Qu’est-ce que tu fais là?”

He answers, and gestures to me and says in English, “This is Theo, we were coming to see the shop, but—are you okay? What happened?”

She looks down at the grisly stain on her chest and sighs.

“Raspberry.”

Apolline—whose accent suggests she’s spent a few years in England—has had a clusterfuck of a day. Her entire staff is out with food poisoning from a party the night before, so she’s been running the register and the kitchen by herself since early morning. She barely got half of the day’s bread baked before opening, and she’s sold out of almost everything. She also knocked a five-liter tub of raspberry filling off the top shelf of the walk-in and caught it with her face.

“We open for the afternoon in thirty minutes, and we need the business.” She glances at her watch. “Je ne sais pas quoi faire.”

Kit looks at me. I nod.

“Let us help you,” Kit says to Apolline.

Inside, I clean up the debris of the morning shift while Kit and Apolline strategize in rapid French. When they’re done repeating the words feuilleté and pate à choux over and over, Kit sends her home to change clothes, and I meet him in the kitchen.

“Okay.” Kit pushes aside a pile of mixing bowls that appear to have been dumped in a panic. “We’re going to be making eight things at once. Apolline’s on the register, so I need you.”

His eyes shine with the eager determination of Kit on a mission. I forgot how thrilling it is to be on the receiving end of that look. I grin at him, and he grins back, wolfish and ready.

“What’s first?”

He hauls over a tub of dough, its domed surface jiggling.

“I’ve got to roll this out,” he says, turning the dough out onto the workstation, “and cut and assemble—croissants, pains au chocolat, pains aux raisins, all those boys. While those are rising, I’ll make the pate à choux. Can you handle glazes?”

I shrug. “I can handle most liquids if you give me a recipe.”

“Perfect. I’ll pipe chouquettes and éclairs, and you make the glazes. We’ll do breads in between, and fillings are already prepped.” He’s working the dough now, pressing it out into a large rectangle. “There should be some sheets of butter in the walk-in, can you—?”

I’m already pulling the door open before he can finish. “What shelf?”

“Left side, second from top.”