Page 38 of From Paris, with Butter
Inside my apartment, I took a hot shower and scoured my body with my eucalyptus body scrub until I was pink and shining. I ran cocoa butter all over my skin, then made myself a cup of tea. Sitting in the windowsill, I sipped my tea slowly, replaying the entire date in my mind.
Despite the cozy warmth of my apartment, I shivered. It was almost a little frightening to be this into someone. For all the dating I’ve done, I didn’t remember ever before having this overwhelming passion, of feeling so full of emotions they seemed close to spilling over.
I huddled closer against the window, and my movement knocked a small bundle of papers to the ground. I bent to see what they were. Of course. It was an application for pastry school, halfway finished. I tossed it back on the ground. Nothing was going to ruin the rest of this evening.
Chapter 15
“Well, I’m glad you at least kissed,” Yasmine said as she struggled with her dough. “I wish you two had been able to seal the deal, though.”
I stood in Yasmine’s kitchen, trying to follow the recipe her mother had written out for Makroud el Louse cookies. There was another gala meeting in a few hours, and I was trying my hand at some North African desserts as I refined menu ideas.
“I’m so happy for you, Margot,” Yasmine’s mother said, coming in to appraise our progress. “Maybe this will be the relationship that sticks.”
“Mom,oh my god,” Yasmine said, switching briefly to English. “You don’t need to remind her of all the losers she’s dated.”
I reached for the orange blossom water. “Don’t worry, Madame Saidi. I understood what you meant.” And there was certainly a part of me that hoped, too, that this relationship with Laurent would be more than a fling.
“Don’t mind her,” Yasmine said to me. “She’s just thrilled that somebody she knows is in a relationship.”
“It certainly isn’t you,” Madame Saidi said pointedly to her daughter.
“I tried that once, and it went disastrously, remember?” Yasmine said, meeting her mother’s gaze without blinking.
I busied myself with rolling out my dough. Yasmine had gotten married—and divorced—before I’d met her. As she’d described it, she’d been young, caught up in a new relationship, and heavily pressured by her parents—especially her father—to get married quickly.
“It was a nightmare from start to finish,” Yasmine had said the first time she’d recounted her marriage. “I can’t even describe what it feels like, Margot, to dread going home because the person you share that home with is hellbent onmaking your life miserable. I started feeling nauseous every time I walked through the front door. I never want that for you.”
Yasmine’s father had vehemently opposed his daughter getting a divorce, but Madame Saidi had gone to bat for her daughter, and Yasmine and her mother make a formidable pair. Eventually, the divorce went through, and, by the time I met her, Yasmine had sworn off any sort of serious dating.
Right now she was grinning at her mother. “Why should I get into a relationship when I do so well on Tinder? Margot, did I tell you about the guy I hooked up with on Sunday? An Athenian descended directly from the Greek gods themselves, I swear. And the body oil he had…”
Yasmine winked. “Well, let’s just say he had a dozen scents and we gave them each a test drive.”
I laughed. Yasmine was goading her mother, but I knew Yasmine’s dating habits still caused tension between her and her parents. Madame Saidi just wanted to see her daughter happy, but Yasmine’s father was much more traditional. He made it clear he detested Yasmine’s proclivity for casual dating and thought it lessened any chance she had for another marriage. (“That’s just an added bonus,” Yasmine always said.)
“Why do yours look so much better?” Yasmine complained, looking between our cookies. While my dough was smooth and shiny, hers was lumpy, and there were streaks of sugar where it hadn’t been mixed completely.
“Because you never cook,” her mother said. “I tried and tried, but you only wanted to go dancing or waste your life lounging in cafés.” Yasmine rolled her eyes, then mother and daughter smiled fondly at each other.
My chest tightened, and I turned my attention back to the cookies.
When they came out of the oven, Madame Saidi tasted one of mine and declared it excellent. “You’re so talented, Margot. The gala is lucky to have your skills.” She took the four best cookies and wrapped them in a checkered cloth. “Now go bring these to your boyfriend.”
I blushed to hear Laurent referred to as my boyfriend, although it was true. I’d dated a few American men and seen plenty of American movies, and dating there always seemed so fraught. Just endless discussions of when to become exclusive, what officially counted as “dating,” when to give each other labels…
In France, it was much simpler. If you went on a date, kissed, and wanted to keep seeing each other, then you were in a relationship. Easy as that. So Iwouldgo bring these cookies to my boyfriend.
“Margot,” Yasmine said as soon as we’d stepped out of her apartment. “Don’t listen to my mom when it comes to relationships. Seriously, listen to her advice on literally anything else, but not relationships.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Just that she wants everyone to be in a relationship. She wants everyone to get married. And I’m not opposed to that,” Yasmine said, her eyes wide and animated. “It’s just…It’s just that I know how much you sometimes idolize marriages. But they’re not always wonderful. They don’t always make a relationship wonderful.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course they don’talways.But sometimes they do. My mother always said her own parents never really treated each other well until they got married when she was young.”
I glanced at Yasmine. She looked worried and unhappy. “I know your mother said that,” she said finally. “You’ve told me that a lot.”
Color rose in my cheeks. So what if I did? People retold family stories all the time. But I knew what Yasmine was carefully not saying: that I’d also told her many times about my mother’s bitterness over my father never marrying her. My mother had been convinced that if they’d been married when she’d gotten pregnant, my father would have devoted himself to his wife and child, instead of walking out of our lives without a glance back.
