The Pairing, page 36
“You did,” I say. We’re there so often these days, the old man behind the desk knows us both by name. “Gilles says hello.”
With Kit’s help, Paloma and I get our packages inside and pile them on the floor by the pastry case.
“Those are for Mikel,” Kit says, pointing Paloma toward a box of macarons. When we bought the bakery from the old woman who owned it, we bought her recipes too. We both thought some things should stay for good. “And tell him I haven’t forgotten that he still has my copy of Candide.”
“You know you’re never getting that book back, right?”
Kit returns to his arsenal of paint buckets, still smiling. “I know, but it’s fun to bother him.”
“Do you know how many of your friends are coming on Sunday?” I ask Paloma.
“Everyone, love,” she says with a grin. “Fucking everyone. They’re your friends too.”
Paloma leaves us to clock in at the fish counter, striding away with such merry yeoman’s swagger that she nearly bowls over a woman just outside the door. They both apologize before splitting, and then the woman turns, and I see that pretty, familiar, heart-shaped face.
“Oh my God,” I gasp, leaping over boxes. “Sloane!”
My sister yelps as I full-body crash into her, throwing my arms around her and lifting her off the ground.
“Ow, Theo, those are my ribs!”
I set her down, feasting my eyes on her for the first time since I moved abroad almost a year ago. She never shaved her head like she was threatening to, but her hair is much shorter than it was, just above her shoulders and almost back to our natural color. I rub my hand through it to mess it up, enjoying her scowl. “What are you doing here?”
“Friends and family menu tasting?” Sloane says. “You literally invited me.”
“Yeah, but you’re so busy, I didn’t think you’d actually come, and you never said—”
“I bailed on my schedule for the week,” she says with a casual shrug. “Hi, Kit.”
Kit, who is looking at Sloane and me with the soft amusement of someone who once watched us fistfight over the last cupcake at Este’s third birthday party, says, “Hi, Sloane.” And then he’s scooping her up too.
While Kit gets back to work on the mural he’s painting across the shop’s back wall, I give Sloane the investor’s tour of what will soon be Field Day: the new ovens we installed together, the dry storage bins thoughtfully organized by Kit, the mosaic tiles we laid by hand into the wall behind the bar. Our vibe is Old World meets New World, cozy and bright and similar enough to the way it was left to keep the neighbors comfortable. We’ve added café tables and a corner bar, an espresso machine in the corner, plants in every window. Welded into the base of the pastry case is the front bumper of my old bus bar, taken before I sold it to a friend of Montana and Dakota, its battered old VW logo reflecting lights Kit strung overhead.
I finish by showing her what we’ve been prepping for our first menu tasting this weekend. Ribbons of mint, jars of dark red and orange spices, cinnamon sticks, blitzed pistachio. I just finalized the cocktail menu yesterday, but I haven’t finished naming them all yet—in my notebook, they still have placeholder names after the nights that inspired them. The Caterina, the Émile, the Estelle.
Sloane leans against the walk-in door, smiling, saying nothing.
“What?” I finally ask.
“Nothing,” she says. “You just look so happy here.”
“I am. It was scary, at first. But I really am happy.”
Truthfully, it was more than scary. It was terrifying. I had the jitters every day of my six months tying up loose ends in the States, applying for my visa, making sure Timo would be okay without me, saying goodbye to the kitchen guys I’d worked alongside since I was nineteen. There was so much logistical wrangling, so much paperwork, budgets and business plans and all the things that are hardest for me. But one thing I’ve learned is that I never really know what I’m capable of until I’m doing it, and the only way to find out is to march on. And when it’s hardest, Kit is there.
I love this life. I love this life with an enormity that would have frightened the hell out of me five years ago, because I wouldn’t have trusted myself to keep it. Instead, I swim in the Atlantic before breakfast, and I hold on tighter every day.
Later, while Kit and Sloane are busy gossiping like middle schoolers, I start unboxing all our deliveries. There are the expected orders—barware, sifters, nuts shipped in from up the Pyrenees—and then there are the things that started pouring in once we put out word about Field Day opening next week. A case of wine with a handwritten note from Gérard and Florian, and another from the Somm with a card from Timo’s bar staff. A parcel of pure drinking chocolate from Santiago, pouches of Australian wattleseed and dried Dorrigo pepper from the Calums, flaky Mediterranean sea salt from Apolline. A good-luck package containing two flax linen aprons, a gilded jigger, and a postcard from Este.
The rest of our out-of-towners start to arrive tomorrow. Maxine is taking the train down from Paris; our parents land in the afternoon. Cora and Ollie coordinated their flights with the Swedes. Valentina has even persuaded Fabrizio to leave Rio in January to come up to France, and Kit nearly fell out of bed laughing when she texted us a photo of him begrudgingly swaddled in a wool sweater. Every night after dinner the past week, Kit and I have stood at our window overlooking the bay and gone over the menu again, determined to make it the most it can be. Not perfect, but the most. That’s us. That’s Theo-and-Kit.
Across our little shop, Kit glows in pink morning light through our big front windows, striped by the shadows of the letters spelling FIELD across the glass. I love the paint stains on his hands, the old cardigan rolled up to his elbows. I love how good he is to me. I love how good I am to myself when he’s around.
I think of the question I’ve been practicing: Veux-tu m’épouser?
He was the first great thing I ever let myself want. This time, I’m keeping him.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
That was a lot of book, wasn’t it?
When one opens a new page to write, it’s important to have a goal in mind. My main goal with this one was to love writing it, and to write a book that loved being a book. I think I got there. I know I’ve never been loved back by a book quite like this one.
This book had me leaping off a sailboat in the Mediterranean and standing in my kitchen rubbing lemon zest into white sugar. It kissed me good morning and told me to read some Rilke before I clocked in. It asked me to be smarter and more curious, to learn a dozen new things every day. It was my pleasure to write it, and I owe such a tremendous debt of gratitude to so many people for that.
Thank you to my tireless agent, Sara Megibow, and my faithful editor, Vicki Lame. Thank you to the entire team at St. Martin’s Griffin for all the work that went into editing it and putting it into such a beautiful package and sending it out into the world, including Anne Marie Tallberg, Vanessa Aguirre, Meghan Harrington, Alexis Neuville, Brant Janeway, Melanie Sanders, Chrisinda Lynch, Lauren Hougen, Laura Apperson, Sam Dauer, Jeremy Haiting, Devan Norman, Kerri Resnick, and Olga Grlic. Thank you to our cover illustrator, Mira Lou. Thank you to our incredible audiobook actors, Emma Galvin and Max Meyers; our director, Kimberly M. Wetherell; and the Macmillan audio team, including Elishia Merricks, Emily Dyer, Isabella Narvaez, Ashley Johnson, and Tim Franklin.
Now, I’d better start listing the resources that went into this research quickly, or it’ll be another fifty pages. I’d only been to Europe a few times when I came up with the idea for this book, and I would have been literally and figuratively lost without the dozens of guides—physical, literary, and virtual—who showed me the way. Thank you to the travel YouTubers, whose content was indispensable when I was searching things like “streets of Naples ASMR 4K” at one in the morning, including Oui in France, Tourister, Abroad and Hungry, Chad and Claire, Days We Spend, Euro Trotter, and whoever has been uploading old episodes of Rick Steve’s Europe. Thank you to the writers and editors of the many books I used for reference, including Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker, Italian Hours by Henry James, Wine Simple by Aldo Sohm and Christine Muhlke, The Sommelier’s Atlas of Taste by Rajat Parr and Jordan Mackay, Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller and Sebastien Rouxel, and Wine Folly: Magnum Edition by Madeline Puckette and Justin Hammack. Thank you to the travel bloggers whose writing and photos helped me step inside every scene, including Along Dusty Roads, Bordeaux Travel Guide, and Florence Inferno. Thank you to the TravelMag, AFAR, Lonely Planet, ArchDaily, Atlas Obscura, Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, and Michelin Guide contributors whose work helped in both writing and planning my own travels. Thank you to the hosts and producers of the podcasts I listened to for context, including Half-Arsed History, ArtCurious, Stuff You Missed in History Class, and Wine for Normal People. Thank you to random commenters on the subreddits of each of these destinations for their recommendations. Thank you to the documentary Somm. Thank you to the poet Louise Labé for helping me understand the sexual and romantic derangement of someone from Lyon. Thank you to the Uffizi Gallery for uploading a three-dimensional virtual tour of the Buontalenti Grotto without ever imagining what I would use it for. I would apologize, but I do feel I was honoring the spirit of the place.
Thank you especially to Anthony Bourdain for World Travel, No Reservations, and just about everything.
As for the brilliant experts and locals who taught me about history, food, and drink, a written thanks here hardly feels like enough. Thank you to my Florentine history guide, Gian; to my Barcelona chocolate guide, Carla; to my tapas guide, Boris of Food Lover Tours (who told me the wine bottle story that Fabrizio tells in the Naples section); to Pierre, who drove me around Paris in an antique Citroën; to Angelo for the Vespa tour of Rome; to Ciao Florence Tours for a sweaty and magnificent day trip through Tuscany; and to Michelle for the Parisian pastry tour. Thank you to Sara of Villa Le Barone for answering my questions about which specific flowers and trees would be in bloom during late August/early September in Chianti. Thank you to my friends Carol Ann, Brenden, and Joey for joining me in France and Spain and speaking more French than me. Huge, huge thanks to Sarah Looper of il Buco for looking over my pages and saving my life with your big somm brain.
Thank you, as always, to my best friend and writing partner, Sasha Peyton Smith, for always encouraging the most indulgent choice; to my family for your unwavering love and support; and to the love of my life, Kris, who was unflaggingly patient as I made so many messes in the kitchen and accumulated so many bottles of wine over the course of writing this book. Thank you to all of my friends who devoured early drafts and told me exactly how horny was horny enough.
And of course, thank you, Reader. I hope you finish this book with a desire to have a second helping of something delicious, try something you can’t pronounce on a menu, and make the most indulgent choice. Settle for nothing less than the most.
Love you. Sluts forever.
ALSO BY
CASEY MCQUISTON
Red, White & Royal Blue
One Last Stop
I Kissed Shara Wheeler
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Casey McQuiston is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of romantic comedies, including One Last Stop, I Kissed Shara Wheeler, and Red, White & Royal Blue, whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, and Bon Appétit. Born and raised in southern Louisiana, Casey now lives in New York City with a poodle mix named Pepper. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
Map
The Beginning
The End
Four Years Later
London
Paris
Bordeaux
Saint-Jean-de-Luz
San Sebastian
Barcelona
Nice
Monaco
The Beginning
The End
Cinque Terre
Pisa
Florence
Chianti
Rome
Naples
Palermo (Day One)
Palermo (Day Two)
Paris (Again)
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Casey McQuiston
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Griffin, an imprint of the St. Martin’s Publishing Group
THE PAIRING. Copyright © 2024 by Casey McQuiston. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Kerri Resnick
Cover illustration by Mira Lou
Map design by Rhys Davies
Cityscape art © Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-86274-7 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-86405-5 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250864055
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
First Edition: 2024
Casey McQuiston, The Pairing
