Paris Cravings: A Paris & Pastry Novel

by Kimberley Montpetit

  I try to catch his attention to make a funny face, but his eyes slide past me and fasten onto a girl in line. He smiles at her, lifting his chin, and giving her a wink.

  Where did she come from?

  “Bonjour, Mireille,” he says.

  “Bonjour, Jean-Paul,” she answers with a flirty lift of one shoulder. Is this how all the French girls act when they go to the market? Well, I suppose if you live in the same neighborhood as Jean-Paul Dupré you can’t help yourself. Any girl would drool when she came in to buy her evening dessert cakes.

  This girl’s eyes never leave Jean-Paul’s face. I watch him steal glances at her as he rings up the customer in front of her. She’s not in any hurry, one hand casually tucked into the pocket of a very short skirt. Her legs are brown and bare and very defined in skinny red heels. I thought Parisians lived too far north to have a tan. Maybe she just spent the last week on a Mediterranean beach in a bikini.

  I try not to choke with envy as I study her honey-colored hair falling in perfect, silky waves. Above her skirt, she wears a yellow blouse with the top two buttons undone. A gold chain around her neck ends in cleavage. She also wears bangles on each wrist and matching earrings that brush her neck as she moves her head.

  She notices me watching and gives me a long look, her eyes flicking down to my wrapped ankle and the solitary sandal on my good foot.

  I slowly fling my hair over my shoulder so it looks like I don’t care who’s watching me. She’s just some unknown customer, but I suddenly feel stupid in my stained pink jacket.

  Turning my eyes away from her piercing blue ones, I concentrate on thinking about Mathew, my tall, handsome Texas boyfriend whom I’ll get to talk to in a few hours. Unless he sleeps really, really late. Unless he meets Parvati and forgets to call me. Okay, that was stupid. Instead, I’ll focus on the promises Mathew made right before I left. And the promise I made when I told him I’d give him a second chance.

  Somebody ought to shoot me. I can’t help glancing at the line of customers again and I have this urge to yell at this girl and tell her to quit looking at Jean-Paul. She’s really annoying me, waiting until she’s the last customer in the shop so she can be alone with him.

  And then to my complete and utter astonishment, the girl leans over the counter and kisses Jean-Paul. Kisses him! Not the usual double cheek greeting that everyone in France does with every single friend or relative they meet on the street. No, she kisses him on the lips! Who is this girl?

  After the warm, lingering kiss, the girl places her order, in perfect, beautiful French, pointing out the pastries she wants with pretty, expressive hands, and chatting with Jean-Paul the entire time. But of course.

  My heart is pumping and my ears are buzzing, and I concentrate on the black swirly letters of the La Patisserie window menu, trying to understand what Jean-Paul and the girl are saying, but I’m lost in all that French.

  “Chloe.”

  I give a start, ripping my eyes away from a mother and teenage son who are having an argument at the bus stop.

  Jean-Paul is beckoning to me to come over to the counter, but then he slaps his forehead. “Bien-sûr! I am not thinking. You stay in your chair, Chloe. I will come there. Of course you can’t walk on your foot.”

  “Chloe?” the girl says, lifting a perfectly plucked eyebrow. At least they’re not painted on like the dress shop owner’s eyebrows.

  Jean-Paul comes around the cash register. “Mireille, this is the girl I told you about this morning on the phone.”

  What? Rewind please.

  He was talking on the phone with her? This morning? About me?

  “Chloe, this is Mireille,” he continues. I’m still sitting and they’re both hovering over me and I feel like a little kid. I’m also at a huge disadvantage because I can’t get up and walk away. Which is what I really want to do. My legs itch to go running. Cross-country and fast.

  “Mireille—is my girlfriend,” Jean-Paul concludes, stammering slightly.

  Mireille slips her palm into Jean-Paul’s hand and laces her fingers with his. She smiles at me, very slowly, very sweetly.

  Unable. To. Breathe.

  I’m frozen to my chair, not knowing what to do or what to say. Actually, I’m trying not to whimper. But that’s silly. Why should I care about her, this beautiful, stunning Mireille girl?

  Jean-Paul’s girlfriend.

  I plaster a smile across my face and manage to gasp, “Enchanté, I’m sure.”

  Jean-Paul gives me a funny look.

  “Oui, enchanté,” Mireille says with a little laugh as she clutches Jean-Paul closer, putting a hand against his chest.

  Her body language speaks volumes. I feel like I’m looking at one of my mother’s romance book jackets come to life before my eyes—a beautiful, airbrushed couple hanging on each other with looks of adoration on their faces. All she needs is to be wearing a flowing off-the-shoulder dress while pressed up against Jean-Paul’s naked chest to complete the right novel pose.

  The unspoken words in Mireille’s eyes are loud and clear.

  Hands off my boyfriend, American tourist chick.

  Who—moi?

  Three Months Earlier

  The manager at Sam’s Sandwich Shop snapped his fingers, indicating my order was ready. I grabbed the bag of food and drinks and headed back to the bookstore where Mom was doing a book signing.

  Then I saw him. Mathew. Coming out of the music store directly across the crowded mall. I tried to wave, but the drink tray sloshed, threatening to spill all over the tile floor.

  “Hey!” I squeaked, but my greeting was lost in the piped music. He stopped by a group of benches and potted plants, hands dangling from the pockets of his jeans. His profile was so damn good, and my stomach jumped just to see him standing there.

  The hair on my neck rose like stinging prickles when Parvati walked out of the music store thirty seconds later, right after Mathew. What was she doing here?

  My heart slammed against my ribs and I told myself to take long, deep breaths. I wished I had Mom’s emergency paper bag for panic attacks, but I vowed to stay cool, calm, and collected. It had to be pure random chance that Parvati was here at the very same time my boyfriend was hanging out.

  A flicker of pride swept through my mind. I could be an adult about this. I wasn’t going to go off in a rage just because Parvati happened to be buying a CD at the same time Mathew was shopping for—someone.

  The next instant Parvati shrieked Mathew’s name like she hadn’t seen him in a year instead of just Spring Break. I watched as she wrapped her arms around his neck. As if bouquets of mistletoe hung above her head everywhere she went now.

  Mathew’s glance skirted the bustling mall, and that’s when his eyes met mine.

  His entire body froze and he quickly straightened, but Parvati’s hand clung to his arm. Mathew’s face drained of color and he gave me a weak smile, but Parvati was in his face, talking, jabbering, and pulling him to the storefront window.

  My mouth went dry. I wished there was a bench underneath my trembling legs.

  “Yeah, it’s Chloe, your girlfriend!” I wanted to scream. Or did you forget I exist? I’ve only been gone to Florida a few days to visit my grandfather, not a month.

  It should have been me beside Mathew. Me kissing him hello after Spring Break. I thought about the phone calls we’d exchanged since I’d returned, but this was the first time I’d actually seen him.

  For some weird reason we were failing to connect.

  Like destiny was conspiring against us.

  I didn’t think it was possible to get depressed while in Paris.

  Well, you can. In spades.

  Turns out, Mireille works part-time at the pastry shop after school. Yes, it’s June and school is out back home, but here in France, schools don’t get out for their summer holiday until later.

  On the wall along the staircase of the Dupré apartment I notice a photo of Mireille and Jean-Paul at a school dance. He looks amazing in a tu
xedo. I try not to look at her, but it’s hard not to notice the deep lavender dress, the corsage, her hair in ringlets and flowers. I can’t help admiring her at the same time I’m so jealous I can’t stand it.

  Suddenly she’s everywhere. I comment on a beautiful scarf hanging on the coat rack and am told it belongs to Mireille. I drool over Madame Dupré’s incredible beignets and discover they’re Mireille’s favorite, too.

  She has a huge presence in their lives. I also figure out in my limited conversation with Madame Dupré that Mireille and Jean-Paul have been dating for months and have known each other for years. Their families go “way back.” How charming.

  Then Madame Dupré tells me—with lots of hand gesturing—that Jean-Paul and Mireille are attending an amateur band concert in the park. Tonight. The day I practically break my leg jumping out of a moving taxi so I can run back here and satisfy my craving to be around Jean-Paul—I mean—learn the deep, dark secrets of French pastry making! Now I get to spend my evening hanging out with his mother. I try not to whimper at the thought of Jean-Paul and Mireille together.

  Instead I focus on the fact that Jean-Paul is going to take me to the American Embassy so I can get a new passport before he meets Mireille. My To Do list consists of finding/getting a new passport, getting to the airport, and then going home. Leaving Paris forever. The thought makes my soul ache. Jean-Paul holding Mireille’s hand makes me ache with a whole new meaning.

  I don’t want a To Do list. I’d like to forget about my old life for a few more days. Is Mathew really waiting for me? The persistent thought won’t leave my brain, but he promised. I still feel so betrayed after what happened, but I’m not even sure I should be. Perhaps Parvati really did take him by surprise. On the other hand, when I talk to him on the phone he seems distant and unfocused, avoiding the topic of us.

  Maybe he’s still having major guilt, but maybe I’ve just been gone too long. Before I left for France, I wondered how I could stand not to be with him for ten days. Now I’m getting used to not being around him or talking to him every two hours. I should be missing him more, not less.

  The strange thing is, I also feel a tiny bit betrayed by Jean-Paul, which I know is completely ridiculous. I only met him eight hours ago, and yet I’ve spent every moment of the last eight hours at his side. Or, rather, in many ways he’s been at my side.

  Jean-Paul hands me a slice of warm crusty bread slathered with butter and I bite into it as we head out the door. Absurd ideas flare inside my silly brain. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if my mother wanted to get adventurous and relocate to Paris for a year? It could inspire her muse. I definitely think her fictional heroines need a new home town, something old, yet modern, with artists painting romantic drawings on the sidewalks and gargoyles leering down from church spires.

  I shake the preposterous ideas from my head as we blend in with the crowds, late afternoon sun slanting over the rooftops. “We take the Metro again,” Jean-Paul tells me as we head that direction. “It is too many miles to the Embassy.”

  I’m just happy to have lost the ugly crutches in the taxi. I breathe in the sweet smell of Paris as we walk, knowing that my mother would never in a million years consider moving away from New York. She was born and raised there. Her friends are there, her editor and publisher, and Dad’s grave. I’ll have to wait until after high school and by then it might be too late to change my life. I already made plans and commitments with Mathew about college and apartments and our relationship. There’s no room in the plan for me to just leave for a year in Paris. But now I’m not so sure I want that plan any more.

  All of this makes me seriously wonder about my life. I’m eighteen but already stuck in a rut.

  Jean-Paul says in his thoughtful voice, tugging me out of my head, “You do it again.”

  I look up, startled. “Do what?”

  “I watch your face and your mind is a million miles away.”

  “Nope, only about three thousand.”

  He nods sympathetically. “You miss your life, your home and friends.”

  What can I say—that I don’t want to go home and face my boyfriend and all of our problems? That I don’t want to endure The Talk, which I know is going to be painful and awkward, and may not make me feel any better even if we get through it without yelling at each other?

  I’m coming to the realization that I don’t want to have the same old life any longer. I’m confused and unsettled and I suddenly want more from my life. It’d be helpful if I knew what that something was, of course. But hey, why can’t I stop the roller coaster, or the train chugging away with me on it, and figure it out first?

  As Jean-Paul and I walk toward the Metro station, I can feel endings happening all around me. An ending to Paris, and an ending to my life in New York. I want a new beginning, but I have no idea how to make that happen.

  “You don’t have to hide your homesickness, Chloe,” Jean-Paul tells me. “I understand.”

  I shake my head, wondering how I can explain without discussing the complication that is Mathew. “No, you don’t understand.”

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve never been away from my home or been left behind with a strange family in a foreign country, so I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Jean-Paul.” If he only really knew, but Jean-Paul has Mireille so the last thing he cares about are my boyfriend problems. “I do have stuff on my mind, but none of my problems have to do with being homesick or being here with you.”

  His face brightens with a measure of relief, and at that moment I know I have to confront Mathew and make him tell me the truth once and for all. If I’m honest, I know that our relationship isn’t as strong as I once thought, and that my own feelings are dwindling—because of so many reasons.

  If one trip can do this to us, maybe we aren’t meant to be together. But do I actually want to break up with him? Never be with Mathew again? It’s so final.

  I try to imagine the rest of the summer without a boyfriend, going back to school unattached, seeing Mathew with somebody else. I feel lonely already, but it would be so nice not to have any more arguments about what he’s doing, where we’re going—why I don’t want to be alone in his bedroom while his parents aren’t home. That I worry he would just undress me while I protested and push me down on the bed.

  When I glance up, Jean-Paul is standing very close, watching me. Studying me. I get the crazy feeling he’s going to reach out and hug me, as if he wants to comfort me. I’m so surprised I end up pulling back, and he quickly turns away, a flush rising up his face. Without a word, he buys our tickets and we board the next train.

  I sink into an empty seat and, too late, I wish I could talk to Jean-Paul and tell him what’s happening. I need somebody else’s perspective, but the moment is gone.

  Mathew would be so pissed if I discussed him with someone I barely know. Besides, Jean-Paul’s life is so perfect. I’m sure he doesn’t want to get tangled up in my messy, neurotic life.

  Tunnels and stations whiz past. After spending most of the ride staring at the maps on the train’s walls, Jean-Paul suddenly puts a hand on my arm. His chocolate brown eyes are staring at me intently.

  “Could I talk to you, Chloe?” he asks. “Really talk to you—as a friend?”

  “Of course,” I assure him. “You can talk to me anytime.”

  There’s a catch in my throat at the whole friendship thing, but isn’t that what I want to have with Jean-Paul? I’m pulled to him with an intense attraction I’ve never felt before, but all our time together has been purely friendly. And it’s nice. Really nice. I can’t remember ever being just friends with a guy on more than a superficial, goofing around in class, level.

  “Here’s our stop,” he says and pulls me to my feet so I won’t get caught in the rush when the doors whoosh open. My ankle still feels a bit tender so I lean on him self-consciously, but he doesn’t seem to notice my timidity, or worry about his hands in mine. It feels natural, too natural.

  Still
holding my hand so we don’t get separated in the crowd, Jean-Paul leads me out of the station back up to the sidewalk. Warm sunshine and the aroma of Paris greets us. Actually, there’s a boulangerie right in front of us, and the smell of baked bread is spectacular.

  Jean-Paul has a girlfriend, and yet he doesn’t act guilty steering me around or touching me. But then we’re friends. And the French go around kissing everybody they know. Each time they greet someone it’s kiss-kiss on both cheeks, even if the person is of the opposite sex. It’s part of their culture. It doesn’t mean anything. Not like in America.

  “Oui?” he asks again, looking at me with those incredibly gentle, knowing eyes.

  He appears so serious I’m starting to wonder what’s on his mind. “Where should we go to talk?” I ask.

  Glancing around the thinning crowd, his face turns thoughtful. It’s that hour when shops begin to close, but dinner is still far away. A moment later, he looks down at me and gives me a gentle smile. “After the Embassy. We’ll find a place.”

  When we walk through the doors of the Embassy and cross the polished tile floors, the place is practically silent as a tomb. A few people here and there, but we’re too late. The offices are closed and locked. In fact, everything is closed. A sign tells us that passports are only issued Monday through Friday from 8-12. Even emergency passports.

  A moment of panic pricks at my chest. “If I can’t find my passport in my luggage, I’m truly stuck.”

  “Will that be so bad?” Jean-Paul says, teasing me.

  Actually no, but I feel too shy to say that to him.

  “Chloe, you can always take a flight later. You will get home. Your tour people will help you.”

  “My mother will have a fit.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Let’s just say she won’t exactly be jumping up and down for joy.”

  “Have faith, little American girl,” he says. “You will find the passport and be home on time. And then your life will be good again.”