Page 11 of The Pairing

oh, you know, I reply,he’s kit.Then,have you considered also fucking the director?

Not every problem can be solved by sleeping with it, Sloane replies.

not with that attitude.

I see Kit coming and move to the window seat before he has the chance to magnanimously offer it to me.

“I was going to tell you to take the window,” Kit says as he sits down, “since it’s your first time in Paris.”

I force myself to smile.

“How do you know I haven’t been to Paris since the last time we saw each other?”

“I don’t,” Kit concedes. “Have you?”

I fold my arms. “No. But I could have.”

Orla takes us to our local guide by way of a scenic tour. We careen around the wide, lawless circle of the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs-Élysées to the gardens that fringe the Louvre, then over the silver-green Seine and around the island that holds Notre-Dame. It’s a nearly cloudless August morning, and the sun glitters on the golden dome of Les Invalides. Fabrizio tells us how Napoleon divided Paris into arrondissements, this pretty grid of uniform limestone and slate. Everything is peach and lilac and cream, except for the gardens, which are riotously green.

When we arrive at the park across from Le Bon Marché, a woman is waiting at the carousel in the chic, all-black ensembleof someone who’d prefer to be anywhere but next to a children’s amusement ride. Her lavender hair is cut in a severe chin-length bob, and she’s petite, but her boots add a few inches. She eyes Fabrizio’s puppet on a stick with long-suffering distaste and gamely accepts an air-kiss from him, even when one of Pinocchio’s dangling feet kicks her smooth, stern forehead.

“Group, this is Maxine!” Fabrizio says. “She is a pastry chef here in Paris! She leads our Parisian pastry tour since last year. Knows the best pâtisseries, orders the best for us. Maxine, will you introduce yourself?”

“I’m Maxine,” Maxine says with finality, and Kit stifles a laugh.

“Okay!” Fabrizio claps his hands. “Andiamo!”

Maxine leads us out of the park and to a small corner shop with a simple black sign declaringHUGO & VICTOR.

“This,” Maxine says, in brusque English, “is where we begin. My favorite pâtisserie in Paris.”

The pâtisserie is so small that we can only squeeze inside in shifts, but it smells heavenly. One section is all house-made chocolates in boxes made to look like Victor Hugo hardcovers. Another is dedicated to artisanal marshmallows. Glass cases hold pavlova clouds topped with split figs, bubbles of sunshine-yellow yuzu cheesecake, and precise triangles of tarts—grapefruit, lime, apple and caramel, tonka bean, passionfruit. Maxine orders a mountain of pastries, and at the sidewalk tables outside, shefloats around telling us about everything.

“These are called financiers,” she says of a small loaf-shaped almond cake, explaining that some say their name comes from their ability to hold shape for hours in the pockets of Parisian stockbrokers. “And this—could you—” She gestures.

And Kit, who’s closest, takes the financier and swaps her a tube-shaped pastry with a golden crust and a kiss of icing sugar at its peak. It kind of looks like a dick.

“Merci,” she says. “Thisis my favorite brioche in Paris. Willyou?”

At her polite cue, Kit carefully cuts the brioche open to reveal bouncy, round air bubbles and a pocket of raspberry compote.

“Parfait, mon cher,” she says to him. He smiles, pleased to have pleased her. Teacher’s pet. “The typical brioche you buy from the store is a loaf, yes? This is brioche mousseline. It is traditionally baked in a cylinder mold or even a tin can, and it has twice as much butter as most brioche. A rich man’s brioche. You will taste—”

Someone at another table interrupts, calling out a question for Maxine. Kit murmurs something to her in French, and when she nods, Kit trots off.

“I can answer that for you!”

Maxine’s pretty lips quirk into a smile as she describes the process of brioche dough, and I squint from her to Kit, suspicious.

Kit has this thing—we used to call it his “condition”—where he accidentally makes people fall in love with him. He neverknewhe was doing it. He just happened to be born with the face of a fancy little god-prince and a way of approaching every interaction with total, sincere interest. Attempting a casual flirt with him is like trying to discuss the weather with the sun.

If my first experience in Paris is Maxine falling for Kit right in front of my dick brioche, I might jump in the Seine.

We carry on through the 6th and 7th Arrondissements, visiting pâtisseries and boulangeries and chocolateries. My thumbs almost can’t keep up with the notes on my phone. At a narrow chocolate shop lined with antique cigarette machines, Maxine hands out paper cones of creamy one-hundred-percent dark chocolate. At a sleek pâtisserie owned by a famed French chef, we try glass-smooth cakes shaped like mangoes and hazelnuts and, my favorite, a complex olive oil cake in the shape of a green olive.

I try to focus on flavors, but it’s hard to ignore how Kit travels the streets of Paris like he was born in them. It’s one thingto share someone’s life and then find yourself spectating on it, and another to watch him live the dream he left you for. He buys groceries here. He picks up loaves of bread and makes plans for lunch. While the rest of us are gawking at the Eiffel Tower, he’s ducking back into a pâtisserie to chat with the head chef like an old friend. If he ever stands on these cobbles and thinks of his life with me, he probably considers it quaint. Small, cute, a bit embarrassing.

Our penultimate stop is a macaron shop, and we sit in the square around Fontaine Saint-Sulpice passing them around, tasting flavors so much bigger than their delicate packages: banana and acai, lychee with raspberry and rose, yuzu with wasabi and candied grapefruit.

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