I’m finishing the Pont l’Évêque when Maxine says, “Oh God, he’s flirting with the waiter.”
Across the table, Kit is talking to the waiter refilling his water. The smile on his lips is soft, intrigued, like he’s just noticed the waiter is hot and is curious how he missed it. He murmurs something, and the waiter misses Kit’s glass entirely and has to run off for a towel.
“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s just how Kit is.”
“Please.” Maxine rolls her eyes. She doesn’t seem jealous, more like fondly exasperated. “Do you know how deliberately you have to flirt to get your water refilled in Paris?”
Except, Kit never knew what he was doing. He was deliberate in a lot of things, but never, what?Seduction?
“He does that a lot?”
“You mean Kit?” Maxine arches a brow. “The Sex God of École Desjardins?”
I nearly spit out my wine again. “The—what?”
“Oh, only the most annoying thing about him,” she says. “He hadeveryonehe wanted. It was like a rite of passage in our year to have one glorious night with Kit and then be in love with him for a week. I know three different men who thought they were straight until him.”
“That’s,” I reply, “something.”
Now the dessert course is coming out, and I’m confronting the idea of Kit distributing life-changing orgasms to his entire pastry school class.
Of the thoughts I don’t have about Kit, the memory of what he’s like in bed is one I keep inside a steel-reinforced vault. I was born a dumb, hot, horny creature who will abandon all reason if I think too long about the kind of sex we used to have, so I don’t. Not an inch of skin, not a flash of pink tongue, not one hot, slutty breath on the side of my neck.
I’m not about to start now. If Kit has become some kind of minor sex celebrity, that’s none of my business.
The waiter returns to mop up the spill, but Kit takes the towel and insists on doing it himself, which only flusters the waiter more. He backs into a waitress and gets a citron tart smashed into his shirt before beating another retreat.
“Get off your knees, man,” Maxine says in a low voice. “Have some dignity.”
I make sure to laugh at the right time.
After Fabrizio has pressed kisses to the cheeks of every waiter, we gather on the street. Maxine steps away to pull a silver cigarette case from her purse and light up.
“Theo.”
Kit is waiting for me, half lit by the orange streetlight glow.
Longer hair suits him. It curls at his collar and kisses the highest points of his cheeks with a languid grace all his own. I wonder hopefully if it irritates him when he’s baking, if he has to tie it back to get it out of his face.
He holds out a small paper shopping bag he’s been carrying since the afternoon.
“It seemed like this one was your favorite,” he says. “I thought you should have one to yourself, in case you’re not in Paris again for a while.”
Inside is a shiny olive oil cake, packed tidily in a ribbon-tied box.
“Did I get the right one?” he asks, and I realize I’ve been staring into the bag in stunned silence for five full seconds.
“Yeah, you did,” I say. “How did you know?”
He glances away, up at a flower box in a window across the street.
“Lucky guess.”
As if waiting for her cue, Maxine appears and links her arm through his, and now I understand. She probably takes note of what guests like on her tours, and she slipped him a hint. This is a couple gift. A conciliatory treat. An olive-cake olive branch.
“Thank you,” I say to them, resolving not to feel pitied. “I heard the Calums and some of the others are going out for another drink, are you guys coming?”
Maxine takes a drag and exhales a cloud of smoke that smells like tobacco and lotus and high-end weed. She smokes hand-rolled herbal spliffs. Jesus, she’s so fucking chic. I can’t even remember to charge my vape.
