The market is four blocks away, tucked into a narrow street that smells like fresh herbs and aged cheese and the specific, unfair perfume of French bread that makes every bakery in Americafeel like a personal insult. Ian pushes the cart. He always pushes the cart—something about sight lines, which he explained once and I decided not to think too hard about.
I throw things in. He takes things out.
“Sophia. We do not need three kinds of Comte.”
“One is for cooking. One is for the board. And one is for eating at two a.m. when I can't sleep.”
“That's the same cheese three times.”
“It's three different ages. They taste completely different. The eighteen-month is nuttier, the twelve-month is creamier, and the?—”
“I'll stop you right there.” He holds up both hands. “If you explain cheese aging to me one more time, I will leave you in this store.”
“You wouldn't.”
“Try me.”
All three blocks of Comte make it into the cart. They always do. Every week we do this, and every week I win, and every week he acts like next time will be different. It won't be.
“We need soup,” he says, studying a display of canned options.
“Soup is not dinner.”
“Soup is absolutely dinner.”
“Soup is what dinner gives up and becomes when it loses the will to live.”
He looks at me. “That is the most dramatic thing anyone has ever said about soup.”
“I stand by it.”
Two cans go in the cart anyway. That's his victory. We each have ours—mine is the cheese, his is the soup. The balance formed on its own. Neither of us negotiated it.
Back at the apartment, the kitchen fills with the smell of garlic and olive oil. Ian takes over the cutting board the way he always does. His hands go still and focused when he picks up a blade, like the knife is an extension of his arm and the onion was already halved and just didn't know it yet. It's muscle memory from a life I don't ask about.
I handle everything else, which mostly means seasoning things by instinct and pretending that's a skill. Ian stopped questioning my methods after the thyme incident, which we've agreed never to speak of again.
The pasta comes together the way it usually does—a small disaster that resolves into something edible through stubbornness and Ian's last-minute saves. I plate it. He pours wine. We sit at the table by the window where Paris is doing its evening thing, all amber light and rooftops going soft against a sky still holding the last blue of a long summer day.
“This is actually good,” Ian says around a mouthful.
“You sound surprised.”
“I am surprised. Last week you cremated a chicken.”
“That chicken was already dead when I started.”
“It was more dead when you finished.” He takes another bite. “But this. This is genuinely good, Crazy.”
I smile. “Thanks.”
He finishes before me. Stacks both plates and carries them to the sink. “I got dishes. Go sit. Take the wine.”
“You don't have to?—”
“I want to. Go. Balcony.”
I grab the bottle and my glass and push through the balcony doors into the warm evening air.
