Page 10 of The Pairing

Kit considers that. The sheep licks his palm.

“Are you saying you want to be friends?”

“I’msayingI didn’t fly across the world to feel weird and bad for three weeks. I came to drink champagne and eat cannelloni until I throw up. So, we could try . . . peacefully coexisting.”

Kit tucks the inside of his cheek between his back teeth, hollowing it out prettily.

“I’d like that.”

“And maybe we don’t have to talk about everything that happened,” I say. “Maybe we just get through it. And then it’s done.”

After a long moment, Kit holds out the hand not covered in sheep saliva.

“Okay,” he says. “As long as that’s what you want.”

I take his hand in mine, and we shake on it.

“AB positive,” Kit says. My blood type.

“O negative,” I say back. His.

“Baa,” says the sheep.

I’ve learned a lot from taking the Court of Master Sommeliers certification exam three times. Most important: I have a naturally gifted nose.

When I’m sweating in front of stone-faced judges for a blind tasting, the faint distinction between fennel and anise calms me down. When Timo closes for the night, and the dishwashers are scraping forty-two-dollar hand-stuffed tortellini into the trash, and the chef sommelier sets down a glass of white and tells me to identify it, I can clock the spiciness of a grape grown in red slate soils or the airiness of a sandy coast.

Some of that is practice—sniffing produce, licking rocks on mountain hikes, a Rocky Balboa training montage through every botanical garden in Southern California—but you can’t teach instinct. I didn’t have to be taught to match the note of white pepper in the chef’s new special to a bottle of Aglianico, or to concoct a gimlet that tastes like a bride’s memory of her mother’s perfume. My nose just tells me. When I’m uncertain, or intimidated, or worried I’m about to fuck something up, I can count on that.

So, I prop open the window of my single room in Paris, close my eyes, and take a deep breath. Notes: dark roast coffee, fresh bread from the café down the street, garden aromas of foxglove and elderberry, sulfur from the igneous rock in the cobblestones, car exhaust and ivy and cigarette smoke.

My heart rate slows. My fists unclench. I open my eyes to see Montmartre’s rosy bricks and slate mansard roofs, the citysplayed at the foot of the hill.

I can do this. It’ll befun.It’s a morning pastry tour through Paris, not The fucking Hague. It doesn’t matter that Kit literally left me to study Parisian pastry. It doesn’t matter that I once whispered to the universe,I don’t ever want to know how Kit is doing, I’d rather imagine him sitting alone in an empty room forever,and instead the universe has answered with a live-action role-play of Kit’s daily life, starring Kit.

“I’m in Paris,” I say, pulling on light wash jeans and a boxy linen button-up. “I’m inParis,” I say, checking the mirror, thankful for short, effortless shag haircuts. “I’min Paris,” I say on my way out, like if I say it enough, it’ll stop feeling so weird and big.

I’m here. I’m unbothered. I’m peacefully coexisting. I look great, I smell nice, and I’m going to eat my weight in chou à la crème.

Kit appears as I’m waiting for the jangly old elevator.

I’m surprised to see a creature of comfort like Kit in our tiny Montmartre hostel when he has his own pied-à-terre a few miles away, but hehasalways loved committing to a bit. He’s probably all juiced up to play tourist. Tasting everything like it’s the first time, falling in love all over again, aesthetically jerking himself off.

“Morning,” he says with a small smile.

“Morning,” I say.

I note his drapey linen shirt and pale blue trousers. Then I look down at myself and try not to swear out loud.

“We’re wearing—” he begins.

“—the same outfit,” I conclude. “You know what? I’m gonna take the stairs.”

“Mark your name off, love, so I know I’ve not left anyone behind,” Orla says as she thrusts a clipboard at me.

I draw a check next toFlowerday, Theodora,take my seat in the last row, and pull out my phone. Sloane’s texted,We just gotnew pages and Lincoln has twice as many lines now. He’s definitely fucking the director. How’s Kit?

Last night, she called between shoots and demanded to hear everything. The Kit subject is tricky with my sisters: They’ve known him as long as they can remember, and he’s, well, Kit. Even after everything, I know they only stopped speaking to him and his siblings out of loyalty to me, and we were the only exception to Sloane’s opinion that love is a waste of time. She might actually be enjoying this.

---