She looks uncertain about answering this question on an abandoned street corner as dusk begins to settle around us. “Oh. Well, I used to help my mom cook all the time as a kid. It was something we started doing together around the third grade, when I started sucking at school. My mom thought it would help me develop concentration skills or something, to have to follow recipes and measure everything out. I didn’t care very much about learning how to cook miyeok guk, but there was this place we discovered when we spent our summers in France—”

I roll my eyes, and she smiles self-deprecatingly and adds, “Yes, we summered in France. My parents have a place in Saint-Macaire, this little village near Bordeaux, where one of my grandmas was born. Most summers, my dad would stay inside and work the whole time, and my mom would take my brother and me to explore nearby towns. But every morning, my parents would hand my brother a fistful of euros and we’d go down the street to this patisserie.”

Jack smiles faintly at the memory, her white scar twisting into a fishhook again. I take a step closer to her on the sidewalk. “The woman who ran the patisserie was this masc, Trunchbull-looking woman who would yell at us about our poor French pronunciation, but she also made the most delicate baked goods you’ve ever seen. Fruit tarts and chocolate croissants and macarons, and it was the first time I saw someone who looked like me creating such beautiful, delicate things. It made me feel like I could care about making things pretty and still be me, and I just became obsessed with baking after that. And what are you doing?”

I’d drifted even closer to her, pulled in by her vulnerable words and by that swooping scar that makes me feel like a string is tied around my insides, tied back to her. She’s so beautiful, and not just because of her hair and her freckles and her eyes—not just because of her long limbs and her strong thighs and her lovely neck—but because of the messy shape of her heart, which beats wildly for macarons and pie.

And I just have to fucking kiss her.

I tilt my face up toward hers, and Jack understands. Her hand comes up to cup my chin, cold fingers against the burning blush of my skin. I need something to hold onto. I find the narrow of Jack’s waist beneath her khaki jacket. Then I close my eyes.