Paris Cravings: A Paris & Pastry Novel (2 page)

“Okay, already!” I whisper, shooting glances at the pastry lady in her starched white apron. “Robert won’t leave us,” I tell her, although even I have my doubts. “Aren’t there rules about not abandoning your tour students?”

Sera speaks between clenched teeth. “Do you know what drop dead time means?”

Unfortunately, I do. This is it. I’ll never walk across the bridges of the Seine River again. Or eat a croissant. Or lick the chocolate off the top of an éclair.

I swear I’m beginning to wonder if I was swapped at the hospital with another baby eighteen years ago. Maybe some French woman gave birth while visiting New York. I’ve only taken two semesters of the language, but the words are starting to roll off my tongue like a native.

Maybe I should do a foreign exchange program. I can totally imagine living here; touring the museums, walking to school from my Paris flat. Having a French sister.

But what about Mathew—will he wait for me while I’m gone for an entire school year?
And
fight off the girls? Girls like Parvati Eswana, the drop-dead gorgeous girl from India who showed up last November to film a movie. Parvati had arrived at Roosevelt High straight from Bollywood, the Indian film world of Bombay. She’d stayed because her mother had decided to fulfill her own lifetime dream of medical school.

All the guys at school flocked around her the first day she showed up.

Parvati, that is—not her mother. Actually, all the girls flocked around her, too. She’s beautiful and mesmerizing and I loved her accent and the way her hair dripped like water around her waist. That’s when I started growing my own hair out, but the length hit my shoulders and went into remission.

There’s a pain in my stomach. The Talk with Mathew looms over me, closer than ever, and it’s not going to be pretty, but I don’t want to lose him, despite what he did. Maybe I shouldn’t go anywhere at all again, let alone a semester abroad. In fact, maybe this ten-day trip to Paris has been nine days too long.

My cell phone rings as the bakery woman lays the last pastry into the white cardboard box and ties it up with ribbon. It’s my mother—again. She’s still getting over Jerry, the man who reminded me of my dad and treated her like royalty. He seemed like the perfect guy—until he informed her that he wasn’t ready to commit to an instant family, even though he’s forty-five.

“Mom, I’m about to catch the bus for our last tour and I’m in a shop and—I’ll see you in like, a day or two, okay?” Alright, it was closer to two than one. But really, I should have thrown my cell in the Seine and bought a calling card. My mother still has her sad days and she wears a lot of black even though it’s been four years. Her excuse is that black is slimming and looks dramatic with her pale skin and red lipstick.

I lower the phone when I realize that Sera has left the shop and is motioning to me through the window from the sidewalk.

“We’re going to get stuck,” Sera says, mouthing the words through the glass. “In Paris forever! I’m going to run ahead,” she adds, pointing with her finger. “Just hurry, will you!” Her last words are so loud, I can actually hear them through the window.

I give her a nod and a thumbs up sign. I can do a mile in about six minutes. I think I can make a few blocks in about sixty seconds. Piece of cake. Which reminds me. “Can I get that last square of three-layer lemon chiffon in the corner?”

“
Mademoiselle
?” the woman questions, about to tie the ribbon into a permanent bow.

“Um, there.
S’il vous plait.
” I show her the cake in question. When in doubt, just point straight at the item you want. It works great.

While she wraps the lemon chiffon in tissue, faint screeching noises seem to come out of nowhere. I glance around and the bakery owner’s eyes dart to my hands.

“Huh?” Wait, that isn’t French at all. How do you say, “Huh,” in French? Now where did I put my dictionary?

The woman points again. “
Te-le-fone
.”

My mother is still waiting on the other end of the line. “Sorry, Mom,” I tell her hurriedly. “I’ll see you soon. Promise. Love you—bye!”

I flip the cell closed. My mother will eventually calm down, order Chinese, and watch reruns of Tom Selleck, Magnum P. I. I guess he’s cute—for an old guy from the 80s.

I used to think I had a cool mom but that ended when I was like—eight.

“
Quinze euros et vingt-huit
,” the pastry woman says, ringing me up.

I dig out my last ten euro bill and scatter a handful of one and two-euro coins. “Keep the change.”

“
Merci
,” she answers.

“You’re welcome. I mean,
de rien
.” I have to speak French because this is my last stop. My last purchase. My last minutes in Paris. I’ll never see a
La Patisserie
again. I want to sit down and eat the whole box of pastries by myself. Except I’ll hate myself in the morning.

Jostling my cell phone into my handbag, I sling it over my shoulder. The flimsy bakery box is heavier than I expect and I feel myself teetering on my high heels. No self-respecting French girl wears comfortable sneakers that you can actually walk in. I buried mine in the bottom of my suitcase after the first day and wore heels like they did. Big mistake. I have blisters the size of the Chrysler building.

My handbag slides down my arm, bumping the pastry box, which wobbles dangerously. My heart lurches at the thought of losing my very last edible souvenirs to the floor, but I get the box righted again and pause to make sure it’s not going to slip again. Gripping the rest of my shopping bags, I turn backward to push myself out the heavy glass door. It doesn’t budge. I probably need to pull it toward me instead, but I don’t have a free hand.

The bakery woman is speaking rapid French and waving her arms, but I can’t understand a word. The man next in line ignores me, raising his voice to place his order.

How do you say
Help!
in French? Knowing I have to sprint five blocks carrying all of this in my arms—in less than a minute—makes me suddenly want to cry.

“Okay, get a grip,” I mutter, concocting a plan. If I balance the pastry box and the bags in one hand, reach out to pull the door toward me with the other hand, and then quickly slide through and hope the door doesn’t smack me in the arm and spill everything, I can make it out of here.

But as soon as I start to do just that, the pastries suddenly shift inside the box, throwing off my balance. The beautiful white box begins to slide out of my one-handed grip. I let go of the door, grab the box and steady everything once more.

The bakery lady gives me a sympathetic smile and holds up a hand, signaling that she’ll be there in a moment. My heart is in panic mode and I’m trying not to scream. The grumpy customer has decided he wants coffee and the lady is changing out the filter.

Then I spot a policeman standing on the curb and try to catch his attention to help me open the shop door, but he’s distracted by a commotion on the sidewalk. A guy with his hat pulled low over his eyes knocks into an old woman—and grabs her purse!

The thief takes off across the street, darting around a skidding taxi like a sprinter. The woman rips off her head scarf and shakes her fist screaming, “
Voleur! Voleur!
” Not hard to translate that.

The cop is gone, racing after the thief before I can even take a second breath. My potential savior has disappeared.

This is ridiculous. I’m going to get out of here if my life depends on it. Balancing the bags, pastry box, and my purse once more, I reach out to yank the door toward me, get one foot through, put my knee against the door’s edge and try to launch myself through the six-inch space. The plan turns out to be the worst move I could make.

My high-heeled sandal slips on the shiny tiled floor. What happens next becomes one of those “seeing your life pass in front of your eyes” experiences.

Snapping like a flimsy pencil, my spiked heel goes flying through the air and my foot keeps right on sliding, too. I’m definitely wearing the wrong outfit because my bare leg in the chic tight skirt flies up in an unexpected karate kick.
Not
on purpose. My other foot twists as I try to keep my balance and the pastry box scrambles like eggs in my hands.

My backside has a date with the hard floor and pain shoots right up my rear. The last thing I see is the box of pastries flying straight up like a big, square, gooey softball. The box turns upside down, the lid flips open, and suddenly all my pastries are raining down around me with smears of cream and lemon filling.

Pain shoots straight up my foot and into my ankle—and tomorrow morning my
derrière
is going to be seriously black and blue.

Silence fills
La Patisserie
. I’m adrift in a sea of whipped cream and broken tart shells and I try not to cry like a stupid baby as I stare at my now ruined pastries.

A flurry of noise breaks through the gooey cream stuffed into my right ear. I can hear a woman shrieking, and then there’s a deeper voice somewhere off to my left. I lift my chin and try to focus.

I must have a concussion because the woman who placed my pastries in a box with doilies and lace has suddenly had a sex change.

Hovering above me is a boy about my age, maybe a little older. He looks at me with dark brown Hershey syrup eyes, then holds up two fingers and I grin like an idiot.

“How many fingers?” he asks in English.

What does a girl do when confronted by possibly the best-looking guy she’s ever seen on the planet? “Um, have you got the time?” I ask.

So I’m not going to be asked to join the Mensa club for geniuses any time soon.

“
Bien sur.
” His voice matches his eyes, like Hershey’s syrup and vanilla make the perfect ice cream combo. “
Il est huit heures onze
.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and moan as I mentally translate, “
huit heures onze.
” It’s 8:11. We’re supposed to be at the bus by 8:00. Robert had said drop-dead time was 8:10. Anybody who wasn’t on the bus and in her seat belt was going to be left behind. His steely blue eyes had looked straight at me to make sure I got the message.

I am in major trouble.

If only that purse-snatcher had been just one minute later, the cop could have opened the door for me. If only that customer had been a gentleman for, like, sixty seconds and helped me with the door instead of thinking only of his dumb coffee. If only that glass door hadn’t opened in the wrong direction. One minute. One single minute.

I guess it’s my fault for being in love with French pastries. And spending hard-earned babysitting money on high heels to impress my boyfriend with the Italian pedigree, even if he is from a hick town in Texas.

Whatever.

All I know is that everything has gone wrong.

I’ve missed my bus.

Eight Months
Earlier

I was surreptitiously sneaking in a few paragraphs of a majorly romantic kissing scene from the latest Julia Quinn novel while Mrs. Olson drilled a few bad notes with the alto section when Mathew Perotti changed seats, sliding into the bass section behind the sopranos.

My heart went into overdrive. The new guy was suddenly right behind me, mere inches away, and the vibes coming off him were so strong I thought I’d faint. I stuck my finger in my novel, sat up straight, crossed my legs, and was dying to turn around and say something really smart or funny or provocative, but I held back because, naturally, I didn’t want to look too sappy and puppy-dog eager.

He leaned forward and began to sing real soft—just soft enough that only I could hear. My book slid to the floor. Out of his mouth came the voice of John Mayer, Elvis Presley, and Justin Bieber,
all rolled into one. I froze in my seat listening to the words that made every girl swoon like an idiot.
“We got the afternoon, One thing I've left to do, Discover me, discovering you.”

His warm breath fell against my neck and shivers raced up my spine.

When it comes to Texans, everybody in New York automatically thinks cowboys, horses, and an eye-rolling twangy accent, but Mathew’s drawl was subtle around the edges and absolutely fascinating.

Too bad the rest of the girls thought the same thing.

Mathew suddenly bent down and brushed his lips against my bare shoulder. I was wearing a pink sleeveless shirt and my arms were tanned from the visit to my grandfather in Florida. I’d spent every waking moment in the pool. When I felt Mathew’s warm touch, the unexpected flirty kiss, my stomach flipped at least seventeen times.

“Hey, new boy. What’s that for?” I turned around, attempting to flirt, which for me is a struggling art form.

His gaze drifted up to my eyes as he shrugged. “What can I say? You have nice shoulders.”

That was the day Mathew Perotti picked me for his girlfriend. Me, Chloe Dillard. The boring girl, the nice girl, the nobody girl.