Page 138 of The Pairing

The next day, I go back to work, and it feels better than it has in a long time—not because I’ve decided to stay, but because I’ve decided to leave. I find that I can put up with any amount of tweezering when I can imagine my own tasting menus while I do it. It’s good to feel like I’m working toward something, even if I don’t yet know exactly what that will be.

I still haven’t heard from Theo. I sent one text this morning, asking if they’ve eaten any more granita and brioche since I left, but they haven’t responded. I catch myself leaving my phone face up on my station all morning, even though it’s expressly forbidden. Maybe Theo’s preparing for their transatlantic flight tonight. Maybe that’s all it is. Any minute, they could send me a photo of a priceless sculpture’s cock and balls, and everything will be fine.

Maxine meets me for apéro at our usual café. She’s happy tosee me, once she’s finished scolding me because Guillaume has started charging her for coffees again. I tell her that I’m trying to break things off with every hookup in my rotation, and she says it’d be faster to send out a newsletter.

I tell her everything that happened on the trip—even the horny parts, which are more interesting to her than the parts where I experience new heights of human emotion while staring at old churches. She understands how we arrived at the decision we made, but she doesn’t agree with it. I find it harder and harder the longer I talk to explain why it makes sense.

It made perfect sense two days ago, when I was so afraid of my own predisposed selfishness, so sure I’d carry on the family curse. But I keep remembering my dad’s words.Your mother’s heart.I wish I could talk to her about it, have her tell me I’ve done the right thing. I wish she could tell me if she ever doubted what she gave up for love.

“What about you?” I ask Maxine, eager to change the subject. “Did you go on any dates while I was gone?”

Maxine scoffs, reaching for her glass. “Darling, I don’t even know the last time I met someone I’d consider putting my mouth on.”

“Maxine,” I plead. “There has to be someone.”

She considers, leaning back in her chair, an elegantly rolled spliff dangling from her manicured fingers.

“Did you say you got Fabrizio’s personal number?”

“I did,” I say, unable to suppress a smile. Another North American victim of Fabrizio’s charm offensive. “But listen tothis.”

Maxine offers to stay over, knowing how much I hate sleeping alone, but I tell her I’ll be fine. I should get used to it. I walk home through dusk, stopping at the market on the way. I have an idea I want to test.

The sun is gone by the time I get home. Theo should be ontheir layover now. Somewhere just outside the city, they’re ordering a bitter coffee at Brioche Dorée and browsing French liqueurs in the duty-free store, looking out of airport windows into the same night as me. Tomorrow we’ll be back on separate hemispheres, but for a few short hours tonight, we’re in the same city.

I lay all my ingredients out on the kitchen counter and get to work making the madeleines I dreamed up while looking atThe Birth of Venus.

It’s all going well, until I turn on my stand mixer. It’s been so long since I used it, a screw must have come loose somewhere without my notice. It rockets across the narrow kitchen, bouncing off the refrigerator and toward the framed paintings on the adjacent wall. In a fraction of a second, the garden scene I noticed last night takes a direct hit and tips sideways, the hanging wire on the back tugs the decades-old nail out of the wall, and it crashes to the kitchen floor.

Miraculously, the glass hasn’t broken. A corner of the frame has split, but the painting itself is unharmed.

When I turn the frame over to check the back for damage, I see something I never knew was there: an inscription, written in French and dated two years before my parents met.

I have to sit down when I recognize my mother’s handwriting.

Thierry,

Happy birthday, my dear brother!

Please do not let your girlfriend hang this one in her house. I would like to see it again! HA—just kidding. I hope one day I can be more like you. If I can give my whole heart to love without fearing the cost, I will regret nothing.

Love, your sister Vi

My breath catches.

I read the last sentence again, and again.

I put my hand over my heart. I feel it pounding, feel it breaking. Feel the love forever regenerating.

I’ve been willing to accept being wrong about so much. About the choices I made when I thought I knew best, about the dreams I believed would materialize if I simply decided they should. About Paris, about what Theo wanted. About love meaning a person must give up everything, and love meaning a person must give up nothing. About what we deserved from each other. I’ve gotten down on my knees and begged myself to understand that I’ll never do it all right like I do in my fantasies, that a love that’s ended is the only kind I can have, because I can’t possibly lose it.

But before all of those things, I was a boy in a ridiculous fairy-tale hamlet. I was a child with his mother’s eyes and heart, a heart she wanted to give over to love. And I have the one chance of my life to do the same, and I’m in my kitchen making madeleines because I’m afraid of the cost. God, she wouldneverlet me hear the end of it.

What am I doing? What have I done?

The clock on the oven says a quarter to ten. Theo should be boarding in an hour and a half.

If I run—if I catch the fastest cab in Paris—if I buy the first available international ticket on the way to the airport—if I can get to the gate in time—

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