Page 15 of From Paris, with Butter
Jolting me back to the present, Laurent looked up just then and smiled—actually smiled—at me.
His teeth were slightly crooked. Despite the world’s growing preference for perfectly straight, perfectly white rows of teeth, I still preferred an imperfect smile.
And Monsieur Roche’s certainly did wonders. His smile transformed him from a scowling, solemn office drone to an actual human who looked like he might crack a joke at a posh restaurant then raise an eyebrow when you burst into laughter and the other diners glared.
“This is Minerva,” he said, stroking the cat, who began to purr as he ruffled her fur. “She’s incredibly spoiled. I found her poking around trashcans for scraps as a kitten, and now her favorite food is coq au vin, cooled to just above room temperature.”
He looked down at his little cat and smiled again. I did not think him a man for dimples; his carved features suggested stone and ice more than any hint of softness, but a dimple he had, right on his left cheek. It made him—was it possible?—ever so slightly adorable.
I made a split-second decision. It was the dimple that made me do it. That and how much he clearly loved his cat.
“Monsieur Roche, would you like to come over some evening for dinner? I’m not as good at cooking as I am at baking, but you’ll be able to give the takeaway shops an evening off.” I laughed a little, the joke not landing quite as I wanted it to.
The smile slipped from Laurent’s face, and he was back to being all angles and hard lines. He and Minerva both blinked their golden eyes. “Well…” He brushed a stray curl from his forehead. “That’s possible, although it might be difficult to find an evening that fits our schedules. Work takes up a lot of my time.”
I blinked. What an odd thing to say, especially for a Frenchman. It was nearly unpatriotic. I had never known a fellow countryman to decline an open dinner invitation due to busy schedules. Half the country would probably be willing to cancel their plans and sit down to a meal right this very moment if promised decent wine and a fresh baguette.
Monsieur Roche was staring at his shoes, which had been burnished to a high sheen. “I’ll look into it,” he said finally, his tone suggesting that he’d rather be eaten alive by vultures than spend another minute considering the idea. “I should go now.”
Still not meeting my eyes, Laurent Roche gently placed Minerva back inside. He shut the door and slipped past me. In another moment he was on the street, walking quickly without looking back.
***
“He what?” Yasmine said, eyebrows raised high. “No, tell the story again, you must have told it wrong.”
It was several hours later, and the Le Jules Verne staff was sitting together for a glass of wine before guests began arriving for dinner service. I had only meant totell Yasmine about my run-in with Laurent Roche, but it was nearly impossible to say anything in private at the restaurant. The rest of the servers had quickly come over to listen.
“And I thought the rejection I got last weekend from the guy at my gym was brutal,” Luc put in.
“It wasn’t a date. It was just a neighborly invitation,” I said.
“Even worse,” Luc declared. “There could be all kinds of reasons for turning down a date, but when it’s just a dinner invite, you know it’s only because he hates you.”
“He told you that he was toobusy?” Paul repeated. “This is not a Frenchman. Are you sure he’s not some Brit or American in disguise?”
“Maybe he doesn’t like eating in other people’s homes,” Colette said as she applied lipstick. “My grandmother was a picky eater, and she only liked food she made herself.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing something. “He did try my food, actually. I had extra macarons, and when we met, I thought I’d do something nice, so I gave them to him. He told me he liked them, but…”
In my head, I replayed my conversation with Laurent. What had I been thinking? He was a posh businessman who was probably used to dining in Paris’ best restaurants every night. And I’d forced half a dozen sad, squashed macarons on him.
How pathetic. He probably felt bad for me. That’s why he’d complimented me. Like a parent accepting an inedible creation from their child but not wanting to break their heart.
Oh, God. This was a low point. I’d rather go back to him communicating only in scowls.
As I sat, staring into the void as my coworkers debated what could make a man turn down a dinner invitation, Chef La Croix came in and bellowed at us to get ready for the first diners.
Last night, after dinner service had ended, Chef La Croix had given me a loud and public dressing down for letting Mateo and Anna onto the terrace. He’d achieved impressive feats of theatrics (“And if they’d fallen off the Tower, Margot, what would have happened then? You would have gone straight to jail,and I wouldn’t have shed a single tear over you.”), and I’d made sure to look appropriately cowed. He gave me an extra stern look this evening. I managed to plaster on my sunniest smile in return, but my heart wasn’t in it.
Dinner service started off poorly, with a guest handing me a napkin dripping with snot and telling me to get them a new one.
“Things can only go up from here,” I told myself as I scrubbed my hands under scalding water in the staff bathroom.
“I have news for you,” Yasmine said as we passed each other in the kitchens.
“If it’s that table seventeen still wants yellow mustard instead of Dijon, I already told them we don’t have any,” I responded.And the next time they want yellow mustard, they should try a ballpark.
“No, not about work. Well, it’s work, but notthiswork,” Yasmine said enigmatically, then rushed off.
