"So now, we just have to roll out the dough and layer it with butter," Audrine tells me as she slaps the dough down on the kitchen counter. When I came to visit Audrine, she had expressed that she has a new croissant recipe she'd like to try and I was eager to spend time with her, so I asked if I could help.

"How many times do I fold it over?"

"Fold it into thirds like a brochure, and then roll it out. You just need to do it five times," She instructs me as she hands me a roller.

I begin doing as she instructed, starting by rolling the dough out into a flatter shape.

"Charlie used to love my croissants," Audrine tells me with a faint smile on her face. "And he'd try to help make them, but he was pretty useless at it."

"Yeah, I never saw him cook anything a day in his life," I say with a laugh. My grandma loves to cook, so their relationship worked really well that way. After they divorced, my grandpa hired a personal chef to help him cook his meals. He always had a lot of money, but wasn't ever one to flaunt his wealth. He always said he felt weird hiring somebody to cook for him, but if he didn't, he would have been ordering takeout way too often, so my mom convinced him to do it.

"How is your tattoo healing?" she changes the subject. I guess that she thinks the dough is rolled out enough, because she places a flat slab of butter on the dough and I know that it's time to start folding. A process she called laminating the dough.

"Pretty well. It doesn't hurt, but it is starting to scab," I glance down at the two-day old tattoo on my arm.

"It looks nice. Silas said that you handled it well, which is more than I can say for him. I was there when he went in for his first tattoo and he whined like a baby the whole time," she tells me as she's mixing some more dough.

"Really?" I can't help but laugh at the thought of Silas whining about getting his tattoo. Not because imagining him in pain is funny, but it is kind of adorable in some weird way. It makes him more human in my mind whereas until now, he's been more of a perfect deity that floats above the rest of us mortals.

"He likes to act tough, but he's such a baby," she says with a laugh.

"Does this look good?" I ask her for her opinion on how I've folded the dough. Once she gives me her approval, I continue to roll it out.

"I'm thinking this batch will be maple walnut. And then the next one, maybe we'll try cherry chips," Audrine starts to brainstorm different croissant flavors.

"That sounds good. My grandma makes this amazing chocolate cherry chip banana bread," I try to be helpful in the conversation. "It's one of my favorite things."

"Banana," she repeats me. "That's interesting."

I'm suddenly nervous because if she uses my idea and it's bad, I'll feel guilty for wasting her time and ingredients. But I want to be helpful, so I don't stop her from going with it.

"Did you ever write my grandpa?" I ask her curiously as I continue to roll out the dough and she prepares the next batch in the stand mixer of the restaurant's kitchen.

"I didn't have his address," she answers me. "The plan was that he'd write me first, I'd get his address from that to be able to write him back. I just didn't even think of the thought that the letters wouldn't get to me."

"Can I ask you another question?" I ask her.

"Of course, dear."

"Do you think that you and my grandpa were soulmates?" I blurt out my question. "I know you only knew each other for a few months, but I think he loved you until the day that he died. He never stopped."

She pauses what she's doing to take a moment to think about it. "I suppose so," she finally answers me. "But it's hard to say. I look back at that summer as one of the best times of my life. But we never had the chance to become anything more. Maybe we were soulmates, or maybe we both built it up into more than it was, because we never got the chance to fight, or to learn about each other's flaws."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"When you lose something too soon, you never really can know what it might have turned into," Audrine says as I'm folding the dough for the second time.

"I think you two would have lasted forever," I admit to her. "Maybe that's just me being a romantic, but I think he would have been so happy here, just painting his days away with you. Not just because of the connection you had back then, but even now, you two are so similar."

"It's a shame we never got the chance," she sighs.

As I'm rolling out the dough for the third time, I hear somebody walking through the kitchen door from the front of the restaurant. "Mamé," Silas joins us. Suddenly feeling very aware of the flour on my face from earlier mixing of the dough, I quickly start to wipe off my face in an attempt to not look like a total mess. "There's somebody out here asking for you."

The restaurant is closed today, so we both look confused as to why somebody is even here today.

"Okay, I'll be out in a second," Audrine tells him as she wipes her hands off on her apron and then unties it from her waist.

"Are you expecting somebody today?" he asks her.

"No, but I think I know who it is," she says, and she doesn't sound very excited about it. Quickly, she heads toward the front of the restaurant.

When it's just Silas and I in the back, he looks at me and says, "I didn't know that you were here today."

"I'm helping make croissants," I inform him, motioning toward the unfinished dough on the counter beside me.

"Your tattoo looks like it's healing well," he observes. "I'm going to go see what those guys want, I'm curious."

I follow him out of the kitchen to where Audrine is talking to two tall men in business suits. Of course, I don't understand a word they're saying because they're speaking so quickly in French. Nobody looks happy though, so I wonder if maybe I shouldn't be here at all.

One of the men is talking to Audrine, and then she says something, he says something back, and then Silas steps in to respond as well.

Once the second strange man says something to Silas with an irritated frown on his face, Audrine snaps at the two men, pointing to her left and sounding very irritated. I can only go off of facial expressions and tone, so all I can gather from the conversation is that these two men are irritated, but Silas and Audrine seem offended and upset.

The conversation doesn't last long, and the two men are gone rather quickly.

Before I can ask what was going on, Silas starts to fill me in. "They want to buy the building that's for sale next door and turn it into a restaurant, so they offered to buy this one so that they can basically demolish it."

"And it's never going to happen," Audrine insists. "I'd never sell to them. Especially not so they can just destroy everything that I've built."

"Do you think it would hurt business if they opened a competing restaurant next door?" I ask her.

"We'll be alright," she says, trying her best not to sound worried, but the waver in her voice tells a different story. "Let's get back to the croissants, we don't want the butter to melt."

It's clear she doesn't want to talk about this at all, so I drop it and just follow her back to the kitchen to return to the laminating of the dough.

"They haven't bought that building yet," Silas doesn't drop it though as he comes back into the kitchen with us. "Isn't there something we can do to stop that from happening?"

"Like what?" she asks him. "They have just as much of a right to open a restaurant as I do. Let's not stress about things that we can't control, okay?"

"Okay, mamé," he gives in. "When will the croissants be ready?"

"Twenty minutes," Audrine answers him. "I thought you were out with your friends?"

On my last roll out of the dough, I'm starting to feel very out of shape as my arms are really starting to ache now. I don't want them to see how much I'm struggling though, so I just silently continue pushing on.

"I just got back," he says. "They would have stayed longer if we knew it was experiment day."

"Well, now that you're here, would you mind cutting up some cherries?" Audrine asks him.

"Putting cherries in the croissants?" Silas questions his grandmother, but he still pulls an apron off of the wall and starts tying it around his waist.

"Cherries in the dough, with a banana filling," she elaborates.

"I think I'm done rolling this dough out," I announce to her once I've done my five fold and rolls. I'm not exactly sure how thick the dough needs to be before we start cutting it into the triangle shapes. I hope that I'm close though, because I really want to be done rolling out this dough.

"Just a little bit more," Audrine tells me. "It should be a little thinner."

My arms are on fire, but I persist.

"So Maisie," she changes the subject from the croissants to me. "You sound like such a romantic. Do you have a boyfriend back home?"

"No, I don't really date," I shake my head at her. "I was always too busy in high school with other stuff."

"She's going to Brown in the fall," Silas adds.

"Oh, wow, good for you. Your parents must be so proud."

"Yeah, thank you."

"That dough looks good," Audrine stops me from continuing to roll out the dough in front of me. "I'll cut it and add the walnut filling, if you can help Silas get the cherries chopped up for the second dough and then that'll be ready to roll out too."

I do as I'm instructed and go over to where Silas is standing at the counter chopping up some fresh cherries. I notice how muscular his forearms look, the veins flowing like little rivers just under his skin, and I wonder if he got that way by rolling out so much dough.

"I'm just cutting them in fourths like this," he instructs me and then hands me a knife and demonstrates how to cute the cherries.

"Merci," I take the knife from him and stop looking at his arms. I've got to stop staring at him so much.

"Yeah, Maisie's been working on her French lately, mamé," Silas tells Audrine over his shoulder. "And her vocabulary is getting better. Her accent is still shit though."

"I'm trying," I defend myself. "I just can't get that guttural sound, no matter how hard I try. But I really do think I'm understanding it a lot more. As long as it's spoken slowly."

"That's still progress," Audrine assures me in a very comforting voice. "When Silas moved here when he was little, he didn't speak a lick of French for two months."

"Not because I couldn't," he tries to justify himself. "I was protesting because I didn't want to leave home."

"And look at you now."

"Have you ever thought about going back to America?" I ask him curiously.

"I visit sometimes to see my dad, but I've never thought about going back to live there," he answers me. "I hated leaving all of my friends and my dad in the States when I was little, but I have my life here now and I like it."

"Plus, I would fall apart without you here," Audrine adds. "I would be too lonely."

Once we're done cutting up the cherries, we mix them into the dough and then help Audrine roll up the maple walnut ones and get them ready to bake. The whole time, they keep trying to help me perfect my french accent with the nasal and guttural sounds. It really just ends in me feeling dumb and them laughing at how badly I can't make it sound right. When I try to make a sound with the back of my throat, I somehow always end up rolling my tongue and when I try to make a nasally sound, I usually sound like a snorting pig. Audrine insists that I just need more practice. Silas thinks that I'm doomed to sound like this forever.

"Why didn't you bring any friends with you to come to France?" Audrine asks me once both batches of the croissants are in the oven.

After a long pause as I tried to come up with a lie, I end up just admitting the very embarrassing truth. I wish I could lie, but I'm so bad at it. "I don't really have any."

"You were too busy for friends too?" Silas raises his dark eyebrows at me.

"Yeah, I didn't really have any free time. I had study groups, but I didn't really like them very much. I went to a private school, and I never felt like I fit in there. I mean, I did, because my family was just like everybody else's. I just found the other students to be so snobby about it. I didn't really have much in common with most of them."

"What a loser," he teases me. I laugh, because it doesn't really bother me that I didn't have friends in high school. It's kind of embarrassing to admit out loud, sure, but I really didn't like the snobby rich kids at my school so I was always content not being friends with them.

"But I'm the coolest loser you'll ever meet," I fire back at him. "I'm pretty introverted anyway, so I don't really mind."

"Who do you talk about your problems with?" he asks me.

I pinch my lips together and close my eyes for a long moment before saying, "My grandpa. He was a really great listener."

"I'm sorry," Silas suddenly looks so guilty for even asking that question.

"It's okay," I assure him. Although thinking about him does make me sad, and I lost the closest person to me, that I don't have anybody to talk about my problems with anymore. But it's not Silas's fault, and I don't want him to feel bad for just asking a question. "Maybe I'll meet more likable people when I go to college."

"Well, they'd be dumb not to like you," he says.

"Nice save, Silas," Audrine teases him just as the timer on the oven beeps. She uses a couple oven mitts to pull both trays of croissants out of the oven, inspecting them to make sure that they're cooked. I have no idea how to tell, but she seems to feel confident that they're done because she sits them on the counter to let them cool. "This half of the banana cherry croissants have chocolate in them, and this half don't."

"They look really good," Silas observes and then he licks his finger and uses that finger to touch one of the croissants with chocolate. "That one is mine."

Audrine lightly slaps his arm and says, "Disgusting. Get some plates."

My first try is one of the maple walnut croissants and although it is really hot, my mouth is almost watering so I take a small bite of the corner. "This is the most amazing croissant I've ever had," I blurt out before even swallowing my bite. It's so flaky and the walnut gives it a good crunch, the maple adds a sweetness. Just like the madeleines that Audrine made earlier, I could eat the entire batch of these croissants by myself.

I think those people that want to open a restaurant right next door are the stupidest people in the world, because I can't imagine anybody wanting to go anywhere else when they could just come here and eat all of this delicious food.

"I like the chocolate," Silas says with a mouthful of the banana, cherry, and chocolate croissant.

"It's too much banana," Audrine decides, and then she writes something down on a notebook that's sitting on the counter. "But if we cut back on that, I think that we have a winner."

I'm relieved that the maple croissants look just as flaky as the cherry ones, because I was the one in charge of the maple ones. Silas had rolled out the cherry ones, and they both seem to have the same amount of flake. I was a little worried that I might have messed that up for the maple ones.

"You're a pro," Silas smiles at me after he takes a bite of one of the maple croissants, apparently also noticing the successful flake. "Really good job on the dough."

"Thank you," I can't help but feel very proud of myself, and to let a smile spread across my face.

"How are your arms feeling?" he asks me.

I laugh, because I really didn't think that I was showing how much pain I was in after battling with that dough for over twenty minutes. "They ache," I admit to him.

"That goes away after a while," he assures me.

"It's okay, it was totally worth it," I say as I take another bite. "These are so delicious."

"Rolling out the dough is such a workout so you can work off the calories that you put on while you eat them," Audrine explains to me with a joking smile. "It evens out."

"I like that thinking," I say, as I shove the rest of my croissant into my mouth like an animal.

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Song: La Javanaise - Serge Gainsbourg