Paris Cravings: A Paris & Pastry Novel

by Kimberley Montpetit

  He guides me to the river and I’m feeling daring the whole way. Butterflies flutter nervously in my stomach, and yet I’m excited, too. I just want to be free. I want to focus on Jean-Paul and the things we just said to each other on the Metro. I don’t want any more distractions. My life is moving forward really fast and I have to be able to think.

  The Seine is a black streak in front of us. Lights behind us and lights from the city across the bank sparkle and shimmer in my eyes.

  “See you soon, Mom!” I cry out as I pull back my arm and throw the phone into the darkness. There’s a distant plop and I just wish I could have actually watched the phone drown and disappear.

  Okay, I’m a little guilty, too, but I already talked to my mother three times today and it’s not like I’m disappearing. I’ll see her in about twelve hours, give or take. And she’ll be asleep for some of those. At least, she should be.

  “In a few minutes, Gerald Polk will be standing in this very spot wondering why your phone signal evaporates in the river,” Jean-Paul tells me with a wicked laugh. “Now let’s go eat. I’m starving.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we arrive at La Crepe Restaurante, and Jean-Paul orders the variety platter. We feed each other bites of fruit crepes and sugared crepes and chocolate crepes and vegetable crepes and chicken crepes. We’re slow and talking so much that by the time we’ve finished eating and ordering another round of soda refills, it’s after two o’clock in the morning.

  The place is emptying and finally, the restaurant manager kicks us out. “Allez, allez!” he says, shooing us out the door in a friendly way. He taps his watch repeatedly. “Curfew.”

  We stroll back to the shop, hand in hand, talking and talking and talking. I lose track of time completely, as well as the number of blocks we’ve walked since our pace is slow. I don’t think I’ve talked this much with Mathew in the last three months.

  But I also have to ask about Mireille again. I do not want to be Parvati to her, I really don’t—even though the girl intimidates the heck out of me. I need to know what’s going on between them as well as what is happening between me and Jean-Paul. I refuse to be a one-night Paris fling.

  Before I can say anything, we’re passing a small park with a fountain and suddenly Jean-Paul pulls me off the sidewalk and onto the winding footpath. We stroll down the trail, going deeper into the canopy of trees until we reach a crumbling gazebo surrounded by shrubbery and quaint iron benches.

  Sitting cross-legged on the cool concrete slab of the gazebo, we face each other. Jean-Paul traces my face with his fingers. The way he touches me so gently, so romantically, is incredibly perfect. I never want him to stop, but I know I need to speak up, to get this over with.

  “I have a feeling I know what you’re thinking,” he says.

  “You do?” I tease, wondering what he’s about to say.

  “You’re thinking about Mireille and what all this means—you and me.”

  I look down at our hands entwined together, and then raise my face to his and nod. My mind is racing. I’ve already made the decision that even if tonight is just a brief romance with a foreign girl, I plan on breaking up with Mathew once and for all when I get home. There’s no way I can go back to him. I realize that he and I are over, just like my vacation in Paris is over. It’s going to be hard, but I know I’ve made the right choice. We’ve been drifting apart for a long time and we’re not good for each other. At least, he’s not good for me—because I can’t be me when I’m with him. Mathew wants me to be somebody else. I know I’ll spend the rest of the summer wondering if he and Parvati are having a secret relationship. Especially when they’re in that play together. But perhaps they’re the ones meant to be together.

  I finally feel ready, and it also feels like a huge burden has been lifted from my life. I’m lighter, happier. I think I could float straight up into the air.

  Jean-Paul puts a finger under my chin and stares into my eyes. “I want you to know that Mireille and I broke up yesterday. Officially that is.”

  I swallow, not expecting that at all. “What do you mean, officially?”

  “It’s been coming—long before you and I met. I told you that she and I are going in two directions. I’ve had this feeling for a while, I just didn’t know what to do about it, and I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Mostly our families. They’ve expected us to be together. Mireille’s parents are upset. Our families have been close since we were children. I’ve known Mireille my whole life.”

  “What about your maman?” I hated to think of Madame Dupré upset. She’d been so kind and sweet to me.

  “She’s handling it well, but then, she and I have gotten used to losing people. First my father left when I was very young and then my sister’s death—” he breaks off and I swear there are tears glistening in his eyes. That would never happen with Mathew. He probably wouldn’t even think about crying over me or anyone else. And I’m watching Jean-Paul get upset just because he’s hurting over losing his sister—and because he might have hurt someone else.

  I can’t stop myself. I reach out and put my hand to Jean-Paul’s face. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. Then I slip my arms around his neck. He pulls me close and I almost end up in his lap as we embrace.

  It’s the most romantic and intimate hug I’ve ever had in my life. I’m aware of his face next to mine, his chest tight against my own. It feels like I’m falling and flying at the same time. The powerful connection between us is overwhelming, but I’m not frightened, just amazed and excited and eager to find out everything about him.

  I pull back, studying him, my hands still around his neck, but we’re nearly nose to nose we’re sitting so close. “I wish I could have known your sister, Elise. Is your father here in Paris?”

  He shakes his head. “He’s down in Nice, opposite end of the country. I only see him once a year if I’m lucky. But that’s not near as hard as keeping Maman together the past two years after we buried Elise.”

  “I know what you mean. Losing my dad made my mom go crazy. I don’t know if she’ll ever get over it. She hides it mostly, and copes, like we all have to.”

  “What about you?” Jean-Paul asks, and I can feel him smiling against my hair. “Are you crazy like your maman, too?”

  “Only about you,” I whisper, and his arms tighten around me. “I think I need to take the advice I’ve always given my mother and choose my relationships more carefully. She always tells me not to be afraid to meet new people and do lots of things with my life. We talk about this sort of stuff when we’re hanging out at the cemetery. Is that weird?”

  “Not at all,” Jean-Paul says, shaking his head. “Cemeteries are quiet and good places to think about the past and the future.”

  “My best friend Sera would probably quote Eleanor Roosevelt right about now. ‘Life was meant to be lived. Do one thing every day that scares you.’”

  Jean-Paul smiles at me, as if he’s quite amused.

  “I guess I took Eleanor’s advice.”

  “You were broke, too. Broken foot. No money.”

  I give him my best smirk. “See, I embraced Eleanor’s advice fully!”

  “Funny girl. So what’s happening with this boyfriend? I heard you on the phone back at the café.”

  I make another face. “He’s going to be history very soon. Actually, he already is, I just have to tell him when I get home, but I don’t think he’ll be surprised. I think he already has a new girlfriend, but hasn’t had the guts to actually tell me to my face.”

  I really don’t want to talk about Mathew or think about him anymore. I feel free, light, carefree, as if my life suddenly opened up in a thousand new ways. “So how did Mireille take it when you talked to her?”

  “She’s not too happy right now, and I think that’s why she went away for a couple of days. But I think she knows it is best for both of us. She has many plans that do not include me, anyway.”

  Our eyes meet again and there’s an
invisible cord between us that I think is going to end up stretching clear across the Atlantic Ocean.

  “Speaking of planes, there’s this one I have to catch early in the morning. And morning’s coming faster than I want it to.”

  Jean-Paul gives me a grin. “We weren’t talking about planes, Chloe. Time has stood still tonight, but I guess the clock is still ticking.”

  “I like your thought about time,” I tell him, reaching for his arm to look at the watch on his wrist. “Wow, it’s almost three-thirty. Doesn’t feel like it, does it? I’m not tired at all.”

  His breath is warm on my face. “Everybody who comes to Paris has to stay up one whole night. It is tradition.”

  “I think I like that tradition. As soon as we get back to the shop I’ll have to get ready to leave for the airport. But I don’t want to.”

  “I don’t want you to, either,” Jean-Paul tells me. His voice grows more serious. “That’s why right now I’m going to do what I’ve been wanting to do all day. It’s time to stop talking for awhile.”

  My heart leaps crazily into my throat as Jean-Paul wraps his arms around my shoulders, pulls me close to him again, and slowly bends down to press his mouth against mine.

  Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy. Now time does stand still and I think I’ve died and gone to heaven for real this time. I’m not sure I know up from down because the universe disappears around me. All I know is Jean-Paul Dupré’s lips on mine and the incredible feeling rushing through my body as he kisses me and kisses me and kisses me some more. I’m breathless as we lay down on the grass and time does stand still as I taste his lips and mouth and his hand catches my head, his fingers tangling in my hair, our bodies so close I don’t know where I end and he begins.

  What is happening to me? It’s not something I could ever explain. All I know is that this feeling is so much bigger, so much more overpowering and significant than being with Mathew ever was.

  After several long minutes, Jean-Paul pulls me to my feet and we wander the park, stopping in various spots to kiss some more.

  We sit on one of the benches and kiss. We stop against a tree and kiss. Then we leave the park and kiss on each corner as we walk the last few blocks home in the dark night. La Patisserie is filled with shadows, a single nightlight illuminating the empty shelves.

  “It’s probably time to start baking,” I murmur against Jean-Paul’s mouth.

  He kisses me again as we walk up the stairwell to the overhead apartment. “It’s a good thing you’re leaving, Chloe. It would be hard to restrain myself with you right next door to my bedroom.”

  Now I know he’s the guy for me. He cares more about me than himself. How did I get so lucky?

  We enter the apartment and Madame Dupré is already awake and up. I can hear the shower running down the hallway. My life in Paris is truly over.

  “I’m personally taking you to the airport,” Jean-Paul says as we lean against the door together, my head in the crook of his neck as he holds me tight. “But I have to know when are you coming back to France.”

  I shake my head. “I have no idea.”

  “This can’t be it, my Chloe girl.”

  “Neither of us have any money to cross the Atlantic.”

  “I’ll write to you—email.”

  Tears begin to slip out of my eyes and I laugh to cover it up. “I don’t want to spoil this night.”

  “Will we never see each other again?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It would take me more than a summer to earn enough for even a one-way ticket.”

  He reaches over and brushes his fingers across my cheeks. I feel tears stinging my eyes, and it feels unbearable not to ever see him again. Not to ever experience his touch or his lips on mine.

  Tightly, he says, “Someday we will see each other again, Chloe. I know it.”

  “How can you know that?” This is harder than I thought it would be. “I’m so afraid, Jean-Paul, that this night will disappear once I get on that plane.”

  He grabs me and pulls me close again, his lips against my hair. “Don’t be afraid,” he says, and then he pulls away to look me in the eye with those pools of deep, rich brown. His words are low and intense. “Do you believe in destiny?”

  It was a question he’d asked earlier at the first café.

  I bite my lips and taste Jean-Paul’s scent lingering there. “So many things can go wrong. The fact that I’m even here with you at this very moment has been pure chance.”

  “A single minute changed your life,” he whispers. “And mine.”

  Were Jean-Paul and I meant to meet each other? The idea is pretty mind-boggling.

  “If we’re supposed to find each other, how can I leave? And yet I have to. I can’t leave New York. Or my mom. And neither can you leave Paris.”

  “This can’t be chance,” Jean-Paul says, his hands cupping my face. “Somehow destiny will find us again.”

  “I don’t want to say goodbye.” I honestly think my heart is going to break.

  “Neither do I. That’s why we met each other in Paris instead of New York so we need only say au revoir—until we meet again. And know that it won’t be the last time.”

  Madame Dupré enters the room and cries out in surprise when she sees us now lounging on the couch. She speaks to her son in French and he slaps his forehead. “Mais oui,” he mutters.

  “Don’t tell me,” I say. “Time to make the pastries.”

  Jean-Paul laughs and kisses me on the cheek. “How did you guess?”

  “There’s something about living in a pastry shop that gives me ESP.”

  “It would be a good way to end the night, don’t you think?”

  “A perfect ending to a perfect day,” I whisper back.

  Outside, the streets are dark and it’s the middle of the night, and we’re in our own little cocoon before the world wakes up. The windows to the street are black as midnight, but the kitchen is bright and cheery and warm.

  I’m secretly thrilled.

  “You are our guest, I’m not going to make you work,” Jean-Paul tells me as he ties his apron around his waist.

  We play a short game of “no, you won’t,” and “yes, I will,” and in the end I get my own white apron.

  Assignment: stove duty as Official Chocolate Melter. Using a sharp knife, I break up chunks of sweet chocolate and dark Belgian chocolate from the thick slabs kept in the cool, dark pantry near the freezer.

  The chunks of chocolate go into two different double boilers and then I begin stirring until my arms ache. I swear my muscles are growing bigger. When Jean-Paul walks by as I’m taking a break to give my arm a rest, I roll up my sleeve and flex my biceps to show him.

  “No need for a personal fitness trainer. Just come to La Patisserie,” he says, pulling on the strings of my apron so that I have to retie them.

  A radio plays and Jean-Paul whistles as he works. I love it. The whistling reminds me of my dad, which is what he used to do when he was working around the house or doing accounts at his desk.

  At home, my dad was also the official taste tester. I remember bringing him weird popsicle mixes I’d frozen in plastic trays. Things like guava juice and cranberry. Tomato and pineapple. Once I made brownies and accidentally put twice as much sugar. He still loved them. Even though I’m thousands of miles from home, sometimes it feels like he’s watching over me, and as Jean-Paul whistles, the peaceful feeling stays.

  Jean-Paul starts whistling “Think of Me” from Phantom of the Opera as he boils water and melts butter and whips eggs for the éclair dough.

  Madame Dupré calls it pâte à choux, and I roll the words around on my tongue practicing. I’m going to learn French even if it kills me. And it probably will!

  Once the flour and eggs are beaten into a sticky pâte à choux, Jean-Paul shapes them into rectangular éclairs on the baking trays and sticks them in the oven.When they’re done baking and are cooling on wire racks, we get out pudding and whipping cream from the refrigerator.


  The next moment Jean-Paul’s at my side, scooping up a ladle full of warm melted chocolate to pour onto the tubes.

  “Looks perfect, Chloe,” he says. My heart soars and I feel my face turn red. I’ll blame it on the heat from the stove. “Now come help me stuff the éclairs,” he orders. “Maman said she showed you how earlier today.”

  “Those were practice, but these are for paying customers,” I protest. “I don’t want to mess them up.”

  “No arguments,” he says, pulling me to the table, which is loaded with five trays of pastries ready for their filling and waiting to be iced.

  “That’s exactly right,” he says when I attempt the first éclair and finish successfully. “Keep on going.”

  By the time we get to the last tray of two dozen, we end up having a race and Jean-Paul beats me, but not by much.

  Madame Dupré bursts into rapid French, shaking her head at our antics.

  “Are we busted?”

  “Oui,” Jean-Paul says sternly. “Go to your corner and fry one hundred beignets, pronto.”

  “Right away, sir! Show me to my jail cell and the dough.”

  It doesn’t seem possible to have so much fun at a time of day I’ve never even seen before. The sun is barely cracking the horizon, and tarts are next on the list, but since the filling is already done, the pastry bakes up quickly. Ten minutes in the oven is all they take.

  Madame Dupré is chattering about a hundred miles an hour as she runs around cutting cakes and laying them out on trays. Dollops of whip cream punctuate practically everything in sight.

  It’s almost five-thirty when the last of the tarts and cakes and beignets are finished and displayed in the glass cases in the shop. I’m ready for a break, but I have to get to the airport instead. And fast. If I miss this plane, I’ll be grounded for the rest of my life, but I’m having too much fun, even when we have to scrub the kitchen down.

  When I glance around the clean counters and stovetops, I realize how familiar it’s all become and feel a prick of melancholy. I admire the gorgeous trays of fruit tarts and lemon squares and éclairs and beignets and croissants we created. The air smells heavenly.