“You didn’t.”
“What if I object on principle?”
“You might,” Damien says. “But you’ll still eat the pastry.”
I lean back in my chair. “You’re insufferable.”
“Yes,” he says.
He says it so calmly that I laugh. The coffee arrives first, then water, then a small plate with two pastries still warm enough to release butter when the server sets them between us. One is folded with apricot. The other is darker, filled with something almond-scented and glossy at the edge. He pushes the apricot toward me.
I look at the plate. “Why this one?”
“Because you bought figs, cherries, and goat cheese, which means you like fruit when it still has a little acid.”
I stare at him. He drinks his coffee as if he has not just reached across the table and plucked a piece of truth out of my basket.
“You are a little terrifying,” I say.
Damien lowers the cup. “Only a little?”
“I’m being polite.”
“No,” he says. “You are not.”
I pick up the pastry and take a bite because refusing it now would be giving him more satisfaction than eating it.
It is excellent.
Damn him.
The apricot is soft but still bright, the pastry flaky, the butter deep without heaviness. It tastes like morning and bad decisions made slowly enough to justify themselves.
He watches my face.
I swallow and set the pastry down. “It’s good.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I was hoping to be right on principle.”
“You still can be,” he says.
“Principles are very adaptable when people are determined.”
“That sounds like experience.”
“It is.”
We sit there longer than I intended. The canal moves beside us. The shade shifts over the table. I eat the pastry despite my objections and drink coffee that is better than I expected. Damien eats his almond pastry with the same attention he gives herbs and wine, not reverent, not theatrical, simply present. He asks me about San Sebastián, and I tell him about the anchovy pintxo that slowed an entire room down. He does not laugh at the line. He asks what was under the anchovy.
“Slow-cooked onion,” I say.
Damien nods. “Of course.”
“Of course?”
“Anchovy needs something willing to disappear underneath it.”
