38. Café Americano
CAFé AMERICANO
*a little water keeps the espresso from spoiling.
T he village of Saint-Cyprien was exactly the kind of place I’d imagined when I asked Ondine for recommendations of where to live.
Stone houses with terracotta roofs and periwinkle shutters clustered around a medieval abbey at the top of the hill, from which narrow streets worn smooth by centuries of footsteps wound to the Dordogne River.
A few intersected at a small central square surrounding a small fountain, into which passersby sometimes threw spare change.
It was the fourth town on Ondine’s list that I’d visited in the south of France since arriving two weeks earlier.
Carcassonne had been too large for my taste, and the villages around Toulouse were inaccessible by train.
Only fifteen hundred people lived in Saint-Cyprien, but it was on a main train line to Bordeaux and Périgueux, and only thirty minutes’ drive to Sarlat, where a friend of Xavier’s ran a Michelin-starred restaurant.
I was officially welcome to stage there as a line cook whenever I was ready.
For now, I was sitting at a café on the square, reading a new Jane Austen retelling, nursing an espresso made by a friendly young woman named Sandrine, and taking in the rhythms of village life, when my phone buzzed with an incoming FaceTime call from Joni.
“Oh my God, finally !” Joni’s face filled the screen, bright and animated as always. Behind her, I could see Nathan’s apartment, which meant she was probably between rehearsals. “You never sent me any updates yesterday. I’ve been waiting for my daily check-in.”
After sitting with me on the bathroom floor for a good part of an hour, the only way that I managed to face the facts of my situation was with my sister spending the night with me in the guest room, sleeping next to each other like we had as kids.
In the morning, Joni had tried to convince me to stay in New York, at least until I had decided what I wanted to do.
But I couldn’t. For whatever reason, the situation felt like now or never. I knew if I stayed, I’d never leave.
It was only after I promised to check in every day that Joni agreed to let me go and keep the news of my pregnancy to herself until I decided what to do about it and tell our siblings (or not) myself.
“Oh, sorry.” I blinked. “I got in late last night on the drive here.”
“Where is here?”
I turned the phone to show her the square, the buildings, and the people of this charming little commune.
“Saint-Cyprien,” I said as I turned the phone back and propped it up on my book so I could keep sipping my coffee. “I’m renting an Airbnb here for the next few weeks to make sure, but yeah. I think this is it, Jo.”
“Oh my God , it’s so cute!” Joni squealed. “I love the blue shutters! And that fountain is adorbs!”
I grinned. “Yeah, it’s pretty idyllic.”
Joni grinned right back. “I miss you like crazy, but you look so happy, sitting in some chic French café like you belong there. I’m so freaking proud of you for doing this.”
I balked. “Really?”
Joni hadn’t exactly been thrilled when I told her about my plan to move to France permanently. She had almost immediately crawled into Nathan’s lap and started crying, occasionally sobbing things like, “But I just got you back!” and “We finally get along, and now you’re leaving ?”
It appeared she had a change of heart.
“Well, I won’t lie about wishing that you stayed in New York.
I was kind of looking forward to you living ten minutes from the new house.
” She sighed. “But when I really thought about it, yeah. It’s pretty awesome.
A month ago, you would have needed two weeks of ‘thinking’ about it just to get out the door.
A year ago, the idea of traveling the French countryside all by yourself wouldn’t have even occurred to you. ”
I bit my lip. “I wasn’t that bad, was I?”
Her expression told me I was. “You look good. You look like you, in the best possible way. I’m proud of you.”
The compliment warmed me more than the autumn sunshine.
She was right, too. Even a month ago, the idea of walking through a Brazilian park had scared me.
I couldn’t say I wasn’t still a little worried every time I tried something new.
But it was getting easier with each new venture.
The world was always going to be full of scary possibilities and surprises that I couldn’t prevent.
I could hide from them, or I could embrace them.
I was ready to choose the latter.
Even the biggest one of all, I thought as I slid my hand over my still-flat stomach.
“How are you feeling?” Joni asked, as though she could read my mind. “You know. With…everything.”
I sighed. Because we’d been checking in almost daily, she was up-to-date on my situation. She was my first call when I’d left the clinic in Toulouse, where a very nice doctor had confirmed that, yes, I was pregnant. About five weeks along.
We had talked about my options, and at the time, I’d thought it was an obvious choice to accept a prescription for the pills to end the pregnancy.
I hadn’t actually told anyone but Joni what had happened, and at the moment, that felt smart because I wasn’t going to keep the baby.
Why would I? Lucas and I were never anything real to begin with, I hadn’t heard a word from him since leaving him in Paris, and I was certainly moving on myself.
Two weeks later, however, the pills were still in the bottom of my backpack along with directions in English on how to use them.
I hadn’t looked at them once. I had, however, quietly discovered that Saint-Cyprien had primary and intermediate schools within walking distance of the center of town and that Sarlat also contained a hospital with an OBGYN and a midwife who traveled to the nearby communes, including this one.
I glanced around the café to make sure no one was close enough to overhear, then lowered my voice. “I’m fine. Just…taking my time.”
“Taking your time?” Joni looked genuinely confused. “It’s been two weeks. Isn’t there, you know, kind of a time limit on these things?”
I sighed. “Yes, but…”
I could have gone off on the abortion laws in France or made up something about how I needed a quiet place where I was going to stay for a bit to do it. But any excuse would have all been false. And I didn’t want to lie anymore, not to myself, and not to my sister.
“I keep meaning to take the pills, but then…I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“How do you think it happened? I mean, you were careful, right? I know I didn’t teach you wrong about wrapping it up.”
I sighed. We must have had this conversation at least five times, but Joni kept returning to it, almost like she was scared it could happen to her and needed to figure out how to prevent it.
“We used protection every time.” Heat flooded my cheeks as I remembered those moments. “But I’m not on birth control, and condoms aren’t infallible. Things break, and…I mean, it was only a few times, but I guess that’s all it takes.”
“Tell me you’re getting an IUD or something after.”
“Of course. They told me to come in after it’s all settled.”
I didn’t mention that the idea of needing birth control seemed abstract at best. Being with anyone else still seemed absurd. The idea of anyone else’s hands on me felt like sacrilege.
Vaguely, I wondered when that feeling would go away. Or if I would need another earth-shaking love to wake me from my obsession with Lucas the way he had disintegrated my girlish dreams about his brother.
Unfortunately, I suspected earth-shattering loves were few and far between. I also wasn’t certain I could handle another.
“Maybe you should just have it.”
I jerked my head back to Joni. “What?” She might as well have been suggesting I have an extra cup of coffee this afternoon.
She grinned. “You know, ride that gravy train for the next eighteen years. Lucas Lyons as a baby daddy would set you up for life. You’d have more than enough to support the kid, start your restaurant, whatever else you want to do.”
“Are you kidding me?” I practically seethed, then calmed my features when I attracted the curious glance of an older woman walking her dog.
I nodded at her with a smile, then turned back to Joni.
“How could you even suggest something like that? I don’t care how rich Lucas is, I would never take advantage of him that way?—”
I was interrupted by my sister’s low, satisfied chuckle. “I knew it. I knew you still cared about him.”
The conclusion she’d already come to swept through me right along with the autumn breeze blowing orange maple leaves across the cobblestoned square. It wasn’t the suggestion that I could ever be a gold digger that bothered me, but the implication that Lucas was only good for his money.
Even now, even after everything he’d done, I was still protective of him.
My mouth fell open. “You brat .”
“A brat who loves you. A brat who wants to see you happy. Did you see this?”
A moment later, my phone pinged with a message from her bearing a link to a news article. I opened it to a feature in the New York Post .
More Details on the ‘Wedding of the Decade!’
The article contained pictures of Daniel next to a slim, absurdly young Emma Hubbard, standing under a flowered arch in front of at least a few hundred guests.
She was obviously pregnant if you knew to look for it, but otherwise her growing belly was hidden well in an empire dress.
Daniel, in a crisp tuxedo, with his blond hair combed back in a neat coif, looked like a man attending his own funeral.
I had no doubt there was a flask hidden somewhere in his jacket.
The article was dated from yesterday, but, as I already knew, the wedding had happened two weeks ago. Joni had been sending me updates since I left for France.
“He looks miserable in this one too,” I observed.
“Yeah, but then I saw this on social media.”