Page 74 of From Paris, with Butter
“Leave the restaurant?” It was almost funny. “Yasmine, that place saved me five years ago when I was barely able to function after my mother died. Do you remember what a wreck I was when I started working there? Making people happy gave me a reason to get up in the morning. I’m up to one hundred and ninety-one proposals.Idid that. I helped those people have one of the happiest moments of their life.”
“But Margot, you neverbecameone of those happy people. You’ve spent the last five years always smiling, always solving problems as you chased happiness for guests, but you haven’t figured out how to get it for yourself.”
I looked away. I couldn’t believe I was getting attacked like this, and in McDonald’s, of all places.
“Have you—” Yasmine hesitated. “Have you considered applying to pastry school again?”
“Yasmine, I can’t think about this right now. It’s just too much, with the gala coming up, and ending things with Laurent…”
“But why not?” Yasmine pressed. “What’s a better time to change your life than when it’s at its worst? What if this is your sign to really go after what you want?”
I remembered Laurent’s words the day we broke up, how he’d accused me of giving up on my dream.
He wasn’t wrong.
But still.
“Why should I be good enough for pastry school?” I said heavily. “I’ve already failed at it once. I’m not even good enough to be a girlfriend. I’m back to being as single as ever.”
Yasmine rolled her eyes so hard I thought she’d crick her neck. “Margot Delcour. You are not going to sit here and tell me you won’t start living your life until someone tells you you’re good enough. Don’t give them that power. Sabine thinks you’re the worst baker to have ever walked the Earth? Make your gala desserts so good that she cries herself to sleep. You want to go back topastry school? Finally finish one of those applications you’ve been littering your wastebasket with for years, and get back to it. Only this time, go to the schoolyou wantto go to, not the school your mother wanted you to go to.
“And if you fail again? I mean, that’s a great story. Who fails pastry school twice? As for Laurent, he can go cry himself to sleep in Berlin. You don’t need someone to choose you, Margot.” Yasmine’s eyes were blazing. “You choose yourself.”
The fluorescent lights of the McDonald’s smeared and blurred as my eyes filled with tears.
“Margot, I know you love the restaurant, and making people’s dreams come true, but it’s become your excuse to not take any risks. Just tell me this: do you still want to be a pastry chef?”
I made myself meet Yasmine’s gaze.
“More than anything,” I said, and although my voice was barely a whisper, Yasmine heard me.
Yasmine leaned across the plastic table. “Then why don’t you do it?”
On the tip of my tongue were the lines I’d used for years: that I was fine, that everything was great, that I wassohappy, couldn’t you tell by how much I was smiling? But this time the usual words wouldn’t come.
I sniffed, then said the only thing I could manage: “I can’t have this conversation without a milkshake.”
Yasmine hurried to get our food, and, as I pulled my tray toward me, a tear splashed onto my food. I sighed. It seemed cosmically unfair that, on top of everything else, I couldn’t even enjoy crispy fries.
“I don’t know if I’m up for this,” I admitted. “I’m afraid of failing and letting down my mom again.”
Yasmine looked as forceful as I’d ever seen her. “Margot. You didn’t let down your mother. You didn’t even fail. You just had a setback. It only defines you if you let it. It can just be one page in your story. It doesn’t need to be the end.”
“But what if I’m terrible at pastry school again, and I learn I’m actually not as good at baking as my mother thought I was?”
“I don’t think that’ll happen, but if it does, then your mom still has adaughter who was brave enough to try again after the hardest failure of her life. How could she be disappointed with that?”
I wrapped my trembling hands around my milkshake. My voice was small. “I don’t know how to start.”
Yasmine gripped my greasy fingers. “Just take one step forward.”
Chapter 28
Istarted with baby steps. Two days after McDonald’s, I booked a trip to Sicily for the end of summer. It was a place I’d always wanted to go, but I’d been waiting for a boyfriend who’d join me. But why? I didn’t need a partner to go on a cycling tour of Mt. Etna wineries, walk the cobbled streets of Palermo, or stuff my face with cannoli.
Next, I finally stepped inside the animal shelter I’d walked past almost every week.
“Do you have any older cats who need to be adopted?” I asked.
