“Philippe!” I have no privacy. “I’m still leaving in a couple more months, and there’s no way out of that. I don’t want to get any more involved and any more hurt.”

“So if I correctly understand you, you gave up Cambridge to waste this chance, too?”

I glared at him. “You know what? You try acting consistently in this same situation! It’s not that easy!”

“I wouldn’t get in this same situation.” He handed me a bag with four bottles of maple syrup in it. “There’s no point me taking them back to Québec. And you’ll be staying here, so I thought maybe you could use them. You remember the crêpe recipe I told you, right?”

“Right,” I said glumly, staring at the syrup. I wondered if he really imagined me making crêpes Sunday mornings for my solitary self, in woeful imitation of all the crêpe breakfasts Philippe had sponsored for laughing groups of us.

Sébastien, who could do a pretty good eyebrow-waggle when he wanted to, grinned and didn’t. Instead he asked me up for dinner in his apartment. Not being naïve, I braced expectantly for a little pressure. The great thing about pressure is you can do whatever you want with it: be turned off, since who likes to be pressured; or succumb in a moment of weakness.

His apartment was a minuscule place only about twice as big as his bed. It held a computer for his graphic artwork in one corner, a tiny kitchenette in another, and a lot of fur. It also smelled strongly of products used to clean and mask cat urine. The fluffy culprit yowled, then catapulted from one wall to the window and nearly over the wrought-iron railing to plummet six floors to his death before Sébastien caught him by the nape of the neck and hauled him back inside. He sighed, gazing at the striped beige demonball of fur with a mixture of affection and complete aggravation. “It was either take him or let him be put to sleep. What was I supposed to do?” He sniffed the air, sighed again, glared at his cat, and lit some incense.

“I’m just going to slip into something more comfortable. I’ve been in these clothes all day,” he said and changed into a pressed white shirt. Apparently he was just too exhausted to button it, because he left it hanging open while he worked at the stove. He was making a simple pasta carbonara with crème fraîche and petits lardons. Petits lardons are something like bacon and something like ham but better than both for pasta carbonara purposes. “Could you help set the floor?” he asked. The apartment didn’t have room for a table. “The dishes are right there.” He nodded to a cupboard directly over his head.