Paris, My Sweet by Amy Thomas

she had quickly become serious. I was keen to get to know who had stolen my best friend’s heart but had to wait a couple more days for her return. In the meantime, what I needed was some good old American bonding. I rallied the troops at one of my favorite old haunts, Sweet & Vicious.
    Everyone had been complaining about what a washout the New York summer had been, but after a perfect season in Paris I was now lucking out with a heat wave. It was a warm and still evening. The first to arrive, I settled on a picnic table bench on the bar’s back patio with a fresh vodka tonic, admiring the brick tenement buildings looming over me with their rickety fire escapes—so New York! I was wearing a sleeveless grey silk blouse I had bought in one of the Marais’s chic boutiques and sandals to show off my pedicure—the first one I’d had in six months, as they cost twice as much in Paris, and I stubbornly refused to spend30 on having my toes polished when that money would be better spent on wine, cheese, and chocolate. Waiting on the patio, I had butterflies in my stomach as if an old flame was about to show up. It was the most excited I had been since arriving in New York.
    â€œAmy, darlin’!” My six-foot-five-inch giant of a friend, Jonathan, ducked through the door and enveloped me in a bear hug. “Oh, my girl. I’m so happy to see you.” He looked down at me with his sideways smile and shook his head. This is what I needed, I told myself, melting into his mass, familiar and warm.
    â€œYou too, love! How are you?” I asked, buried in his armpit, which was both disgusting and wonderful. But I didn’t give him time to answer. “Tell me what’s going on at work,” I commanded, reluctantly pulling away to look at his face. As a project manager, he was forever plotting to take over the production department of his ad agency. I knew that he had six months of intrigue and cattiness to unload and that other friends would soon arrive and interrupt us. He rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to share the latest drama when—too late—the girls arrived.
    â€œAmmmmyyyy!” Melanie, Mary, Krista, and Carrie sprang through the back door, looking fabulous in their heels, handbags, and jewelry—New York to the nines. After sipping sidecars and sharing secrets for so many years, we were now like teenage girls reunited after the long summer vacation. Our chorus of squeals and hugs provoked a couple curious looks but everyone on the patio quickly turned back to their cocktails and conversation. A flood of happiness washed over me. It wasn’t just seeing my friends again. But for the first time in months, I was at a normal bar where you stood around and socialized, instead of clustering yourselves in private groups around café tables. You could actually mingle and act rowdy—absolutely unacceptable behavior in Paris. Tonight, there was none of that impossibly hip and aloof French attitude. None of the cliquish there’s-no-way-in-hell-you’re-breaking-in-here protectionism. I was on familiar territory, in the arms of old friends. I had forgotten what the home court advantage felt like.
    Within the hour, Mike and Corey showed up. Then Ben and Merrill. And Kurt and Christy. It had been a long time since everyone had been together and there was lots of catching up to do. As I looked around at my friends, I realized that while I had been settling into Paris, everyone here had been settling into domesticated bliss. Aside from my band of girlfriends from work, all my New York friends were paired up. It gave me a strange flashback to when I was six years old and would watch my parents’ hippie friends with their cigarettes and joints, whiskey and rosé, mingling and laughing at casual parties on our big front porch. They had seemed so artsy and fabulous—so adult. I now found myself looking at my friends with the same wide-eyed wonder, and even a