paris

It feels like there must be such a tremendous distance between Palermo and home, between where Theo is and where Theo isn't, but the flight only takes two and a half hours. I close my eyes to Ravel in my headphones, and when I open them, I'm once again arriving in Paris alone. This time, I'm here because we chose it. That has to count for something.

At home, everything is how I left it. The embroidered pillows on the sofa, the shelves of my and Thierry's books. Maxine has washed and changed the bedsheets, even spritzed them with the lavender oil I keep beside the bed. The plants in the windows are happy and verdant, their leaves plump and shiny in the early afternoon light. The detailed list of plant care instructions I left on the chalkboard by the kitchen has been erased and replaced with a stick-figure drawing of Maxine and me riding a giant strawberry.

The first thing I do, once I've unpacked and showered and applied all the nice skincare products I couldn't pack, is go to the market. I pick up the basics to ready my kitchen for everyday use again—eggs, butter, milk, ripe tomatoes on the vine, a fresh loaf of peasant bread, paper cartons of berries, lemons, heavy cream—and then carefully select the ingredients for a tarte tatin. Summer will end soon, and in a few months autumn will bring quinces; today, I choose peaches.

I haven't made a tarte tatin since patisserie school, and it turns out I've forgotten how tricky they can be. A quarter of the peaches stick to the pan. Not my best work, but if I'm being honest, Guillaume isn't the best fuck. Both will do in a pinch.

It's a twelve-minute bike ride from my apartment to Guillaume's, and I spend it reflecting on what exactly I've been doing with him. I like him, but I like a lot of people. He's sweet, and he manages the best café in Bastille, and last month he physically mailed me a poem, which means he's probably at least a little in love with me. I never asked him to be, and I've never suggested it would be a good idea. But I do bring him a tart every so often, which Maxine says is "evil, misleading boyfriend behavior." I haven't been trying to mislead him. It's just that the way he smiles every time is so lovely.

He gives me that smile when he answers the door to me and my tart, which makes me feel even guiltier that I'm here to break things off.

I know, the same as I've known since I was nine years old in the desert, that I'll always love Theo. But I can't keep doing what I've been doing with that love. It doesn't feel fair to go on burying it in other people, showing them all the flowers Theo has frescoed over my heart without telling them I've already put someone else's statue in the fountain at its center. Guillaume is the first on the list. Tomorrow I'll call Delphine, and Luis, and Eva, and Antoine, and—maybe I should write this down later.

Guillaume takes it reasonably well, but he lets me know in no uncertain terms that I will not be getting my plate back. Fair.

When I get home, I do the next thing on my housekeeping list: I call my dad. He answers as if we last spoke a few days ago, which doesn't surprise me. He's not in Rome, but he is currently writing in residence at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan, even though his apartment is only six blocks over. He's been translating a German vampire novel for fun in his spare time. I tell him about the tour, about the food and the paintings and the sea, but not about Theo. The closest we get to addressing our last conversation is a vague mention he makes of wanting to visit Paris and "leave work at home this time."

"I'm not sure how much longer I'll be living here," I tell him. "I've been thinking about making some changes."

On the other end of the line, he's quiet for long enough that I think he must not have been paying attention. My suspicions seem confirmed when he says, "Did I mention my editor is leaving? I had dinner with him last week."

"Oh?" I begin trimming the basil plant in my kitchen window, ready to ease myself out of the conversation.

"I was telling him how happy Violette would be to know you'd wound up back in France."

My scissors still.

"You were?"

"He's moving abroad for his wife's job, and they have two sons. Sixteen and eleven. He asked me how the three of you adjusted when we moved from France. I said, well, Ollie was old enough to be excited about it, and Cora was too young to remember much. But our Kit—he was the one Violette worried most about. Our sensitive one. He's the most like his mother, and her heart belonged in France."

My throat tightens. He doesn't like to talk about my mother, especially not with my siblings and me. I think it hurts too much to draw attention to all the pieces of her in us, like how I spoke only French the first few months after losing Theo so I wouldn't have to hear the English phrases and inflections I'd adopted from them. This is the first time in years he's said something like this to me. It's the closest he's ever come to saying he regrets taking her away from France for the last six years of her life.

I glance at the watercolor paintings that hang on the kitchen wall exactly as they have since Thierry hung them years and years ago. The centermost one is a garden scene, all green except for the brown shape of a little fox curled up in the roots of an orange tree.

"Do you think I should stay, then?" I ask.

"I think," he says, "that I'm thankful you have my spirit, but her heart."

That night, I scroll job listings in bed, half-heartedly searching for something that might make me happier than my current one does. There are plenty of openings for part-time bread makers and sous chefs and cake decorators, but the more I try to imagine myself doing any of them, the harder it gets to ignore what I don't feel: the startling rush of possibility I felt when Paloma told me about the patisserie in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

I type out a text to Paloma: can i call you tomorrow?

When I've sent it, I swipe back into my messages, to my conversation with Theo. I haven't heard from them all day, and I tell myself it's nothing to be concerned about. They've probably been busy enjoying their time alone in Palermo, sunning themself on the beach and eating arancini. I'll hear from them tomorrow. We promised.

I fall asleep thinking of them. The curve of their shoulder, the slant of their smile. Their hands covered in pizza grease, an apricot-flavored kiss. I miss them so badly already. But I've learned to love that ache.

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 to see 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 to this."

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 on their 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 at The 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 would never let 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—

If I can catch Theo before they get on the plane, I can tell them I was wrong. That I was afraid, but I don't want to be anymore. That being with them is worth anything. Everything. Whatever it costs, however it ends. The only thing I'd regret more than losing them is never getting to love them the way I could love them now.

The chance I'll make it is so small, but I have to try. I have to.

I turn off the oven, pocket my keys, snatch my wallet and my passport from the bowl above the fireplace, charge toward the door and throw it open and—

On the other side of my apartment door, wide-eyed and breathless, their pack still on their shoulders and their right hand raised as if to knock, is—

"Theo."

They stare.

"Hi." They scan my frantic expression, the passport in my hand. "Were you going somewhere?"

"The airport," I say faintly. Theo is here. Theo is here, at the pied-à-terre, on my doormat. "How did you—"

They hold up a yellowed, crinkled envelope. It's been unfurled from the tight roll I put it in, and one side is ripped open.

"Return address."

"You—" I try to form words, to get my head to stop spinning. "You opened it."

"I was on the plane from Palermo," Theo says, "and I realized, I'm never going to love you less."

I'm gripping my passport so hard I think I might tattoo its crest into my hand.

"There I was, on another plane without you. And there you were, in Paris without me. Everything we've been through, everything we said to each other, everything we've done to try to be better, and we're right back where we started. And somehow, we talked ourselves into believing that means we've grown up. But, Kit, I have grown—I've grown into someone who's better for you. And you've become someone who's better for me. And I know you want to put our friendship first, and I'm so afraid of fucking that up. I'm so, so afraid of fucking everything up all the time. I don't know how we would make it work, I don't even know where we would live, or what my life is supposed to look like, or what happens if I take the wrong chance, but—but that's not the worst mistake I could make. This isn't the worst mistake I could make. The worst mistake I could ever make is pretending I'd be happy as just your friend for the rest of my life. And I'm sorry if that's not what you want to hear, but I couldn't go home without saying it."

They let out a huge breath, as if they've been holding it since I opened the door. Bright tears blaze in their eyes. Their hair is dirty from traveling, their face red from running, and if I could commission an oil painting of them in this state of absolute, screaming perfection, I would.

"Also," Theo says. "It would be so great if I could crash on your couch tonight, because the next flight out is tomorrow."

"Theo," I say. My voice shakes. Every nerve in my body sings together a three-movement opera. "Fuck the couch. Come get in my bed."

And, with all the momentum of twenty years and a hundred thousand miles, Theo smashes into me.

The force of their kiss knocks me backward into my apartment, toppling the shoe rack and at least two of Thierry's hand-thrown vases, which shatter on the floor by our feet. I barely notice. I'll make it up to him. Right now, I'm being thrown up against the wall, and I'm fisting my hands in Theo's hair, and I'm kissing them like we're twenty-two again, courageous and astonished and pushing our luck. I'm kissing them like we're twenty-four, full of dreams and fears, and like we're twenty-six, lost in each other's memory. I kiss them like now, twenty-eight, wiser and steadier and evolved and still so fucking gone for each other.

"To be clear," Theo gasps, breaking away from my mouth, "when you said you were going to the airport—"

"I was coming to get you," I say. "You keep beating me to it."

"Nice. I love winning," Theo replies, smiling hysterically. They're still wearing their backpack. I think I might be stepping on my passport. "And that means you—you feel the same—"

"I love you," I say. "I want you back."

"And you're not going to change your mind in the morning?"

"Theo." I look directly into their brilliant, searching eyes. "If a priest lived in this building, I would take you to his door right now and tell him to marry us."

"Oh," Theo says. "I was thinking it'd be fun if Fabrizio officiated."

"You were—" My heart stammers. They're not even joking. "There are so many things I want to ask you, but Theo, I swear to God, if you don't get in my bed right now I will die."

So we go, Theo's pack thrown down on the carpet, shoes kicked off into different corners, clothes removed so quickly that buttons go flying and skittering across the floor. Theo kisses me hard enough to bruise, and I'm so thankful, I'm so fucking unbelievably, shatteringly thankful for this.

The next morning, I wake Theo up with cinnamon rolls.

"You finally found the perfect recipe," they say after their first bite. They're resplendent, sitting in my kitchen chair wearing nothing but a pair of my underwear, hair matted in the back from sex.

"This is the same recipe I used the first morning we were together," I tell them.

"Oh. Well. Maybe that's why I like it so much."

I place a cup of black coffee beside their plate, following their gaze to the kitchen wall next to the chalkboard.

"I can't believe you bought one of those," they say, smiling at the calendar I brought back from a roadside souvenir stand in Rome, the one featuring a hot priest for every month. "Wait, what am I saying—of course you did. You're Kit."

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," I say, kissing their temple. Then I look more closely at the calendar and realize the date. "Wait, Theo, weren't you supposed to take the somm exam today?"

They reach for the sugar bowl and dump a spoonful into their cup.

"I think I know what I want my one thing to be," they say. "And I don't know that I need to pass a test to do it."

I sit in the chair beside theirs, holding my coffee cup between my palms, letting its warmth spread into me.

"Tell me."

"Imagine a bar," Theo begins, "but it's also a bakery. New menu every week, only five or six special items dependent on what's in season, plus a permanent selection of local staples. French-focused, but with Spanish and Italian elements. Everything sourced directly through personal relationships with farms, vineyards, fishmongers, chocolatiers, bakers. And the concept is, every dish is designed to pair with a drink. A customized cocktail, a specifically chosen glass of wine. Every pairing is designed to tell a story, so when you order, you're ordering a full experience."

I nod. I adore this idea. "And what's this place called?"

"I was thinking," Theo says, "Field Day."

It dawns on me slowly. Fairfield. Flowerday. Fairflower was our first dream. This could be our new one.

"If you want," Theo adds. "It's just an idea. I don't even know where we could open it."

I look at Theo, bathed in morning glow, and I picture them in the sea with me, swimming back to each other, meeting again and again. I see sand as white and fine as sugar.

"I might have a suggestion."