Paris Cravings: A Paris & Pastry Novel by Kimberley Montpetit Page A

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