The pairing, p.25
The Pairing, page 25
Water splashes over my feet, and I peer over my book to see Theo poolside, elbows propped near a tray of sweating cheese and fruit.
“Don’t get the crostini wet,” I say.
Theo snaps off a branch of grapes and lowers one into their mouth like a Roman emperor.
“You’re really not getting in?”
I hold up my book. “I’m on the last chapter. Lucy’s going to admit she’s in love with George.”
“Oh, well”—they push up an invisible pair of glasses—“if Lucy’s going to admit she’s in love with George.”
They kick away, grapes held over their head, and I smile.
When we were in Paris, I watched Theo striding down Boulevard Saint-Germain and wondered if I was seeing what it would have been like if we’d gone on the tour like we planned. I held them beside the image that’s lived in my head all these years, the Theo in a parallel life who came with me to France.
But here, in Chianti, I see only what is, not what could have been. Us, in two arcs bent toward each other. Theo in the water, me content to sit by the pool with a book and a view.
For the first time, it seems better this way.
I continue reading, watching Lucy and George come back together, confess their love, and return to Florence to marry. By the time I reach the last page, emotion tingles sweet in my sinuses like prosecco bubbles. A droplet of water lands on my page, and I think I’ve summoned an actual tear until I hear Theo’s voice above.
“You done yet?”
They’re standing beside my chair, rivulets of water running down their body. I didn’t notice them getting out, but I’m very much noticing now.
“Come on,” they say, finishing my wine. “I want to see what they have for lunch.”
“Almost finished.” A slight wobble in my voice. “One more minute?”
They lower my empty glass to regard me properly.
“Are you crying?”
“It’s a beautiful story!”
“Oh, no, he’s crying!” Theo crows, and then they’re climbing onto the lounger, shaking their damp head over my pages, dripping with malicious intent. Their wet skin skids against mine, cold where mine is warm. I hold the book over my head and settle them with a hand at the small of their back. They wind up half folded across my lap, their knees hooked around my thighs, laughing.
“I’m not embarrassed,” I say.
“I know.”
“I’m allowing art to touch my soul.”
“Okay,” Theo says, doing a jerk-off hand gesture, still smiling.
“I’m being transported. I’m experiencing.”
“Go on.” Theo tugs my book down. “Experience.”
They’re teasing, but I decide to be earnest. I smooth the page with my free hand and pick up at the final passage, the one smudged with Theo’s pool water.
“‘Youth enwrapped them,’” I read aloud, keeping my voice low. “‘The song of Phaethon announced passion requited, love attained. But they were conscious of a love more mysterious than this. The song died away; they heard the river, bearing down the snows of winter into the Mediterranean.’”
For a moment, Theo is quiet. Then they sit up, take a bottle from a nearby ice bucket, and replenish my glass before handing it to me.
“Okay, that was actually really nice.” Their eyes are a little soft, faraway. “Will you come to lunch with me?”
We crunch the gravel path back to the villa’s dining room, where a long antique buffet painted with vines and rosebuds heaves with food: marbled prosciutto, mozzarella on wheels of eggplant, huge garlic-simmered beans, figs and persimmons picked from the garden and sliced open so their flesh shines in the sunlight from the open windows. We fill our plates and carry them out to the biggest terrazzo.
As we eat, I catch Fabrizio watching us from two tables over, clearly noting the practiced ease with which Theo shoves panzanella onto my plate. I point this out to Theo, who instantly has that devious gleam in their eye. They make sure Fabrizio is still looking, and then they slide their hand into my lap.
This time, there’s no tablecloth to hide anything. Just us in our striped chairs before the green backdrop of the garden, Theo’s palm on the inside of my thigh where anyone can see. The tip of their middle finger grazes the stretchy hem of my swim trunks.
Part of wants to move their touch higher, but I think of earlier, how they hid the bottle of wine in the wardrobe, how they turned pink when I read the card from Sloane. I wonder what they’re trying to conceal behind this.
Gently, I lift their hand up and press a kiss to the center of their palm. I lace my fingers through theirs, resting our hands on the table between us.
They don’t pull away, and they don’t laugh. They peer into my eyes for a long moment, daring me to act like this too is a bit. When I don’t, they put their sunglasses on and return one-handed to their plate as if nothing has changed, but they’re pink under their freckles.
After lunch, we borrow bikes and ride into the hills; they blur green-bronze as we take our feet off the pedals and coast. Out here the sun hangs as wonderfully fat in the sky as it did in Florence, but it doesn’t scorch. It soaks into the hills like oil into thick, well-risen bread, and we spread ourselves across them like happy little figs.
It’s nearly time for aperitivo when we return. We take our amaro behind the villa, to the grove where a gardener tends to young, bright green olives. He plucks two straight off the branch for us to taste and laughs mischievously when we choke on their bitterness. Theo jokes that it’s our truest Italian aperitivo yet.
Dinner is served at a long table between the grove and the villa, covered by arching trellises of ivy and twinkling lights. We pass around heavy platters of wild boar ragù and pillowy gnocchi with greens and blistered tomatoes. The food here is rich and hearty, like it’s meant to prepare the body to harvest crops instead of luxuriating with carafes of fine wine beneath a crepuscular sky.
Theo sits across from me, sun-kissed and windswept, wearing that lovely black linen thing from our second night in Paris. Fairy lights dapple their skin through the leaves. I want to touch them so badly. I imagine running my fingertip down the center of their chest to the point of their neckline’s vee.
I let them catch me looking. I tip the last of my wine past my lips and show them the contours of my jaw, how my throat moves when I swallow. They bite their lip.
Soon, the villa’s sweet, muddling magic sweeps us from one moment to the next, and we’re retiring to a dark, warm sitting room. Signora Lucia brings out trays of crunchy, almond-flecked cantucci, and Fabrizio pours viscous vin santo into little crystal cups so we can dip the cookies before we eat them, as is the Tuscan way.
It seems it’s also the Tuscan way to drape ourselves over antique couches and tell long stories in loud voices, because that’s how we spend the rest of the night. I ask Blond Calum for his best emergency medicine stories, knowing I’ll hate the answer as much as Theo will love it. The one he decides to share is about his first, long before he began to study.
He and Calum were thirteen, best friends who never paddled out to surf without each other, which was how he was able to act so quickly when Ginger went under in a cloud of red. A white pointer—a great white—had torn a hunk from his shoulder, and he would have bled out if Blond hadn’t pulled him onto his board, paddled them both to shore, and pressed a towel to the wound until help arrived. Theo and I listen with our hands over our mouths.
“Cheers to that bloody shark,” Blond says, raising his vin santo, “the reason I do what I do.”
“Here, here,” Ginger agrees, lifting his own glass. “Remarkable creature. Can’t hold it against him, can ya?”
“I’ll drink to that,” Theo says. “Hey, how do you feel about Jaws?”
Eventually, the Calums drift off to their rooms with suspiciously similar timing to Montana and Dakota, and Theo draws me lazily to their side, letting out a long breath when I lean my head on their shoulder. I listen as they tell the Swedes a story about a bottle of wine the Somm’s mother left in a window, and then as Lars asks how one bottle could possibly have been worth so much, Theo takes out their phone and dials the Somm on speakerphone.
“Hello, stranger,” says the Somm’s gruff voice on the third ring.
“Hey!” Theo says, leaning in. “Listen, I’m here in Chianti with a couple of Swedes, and I just told them about your mom’s Romanée-Conti. They don’t believe that it was worth forty-two grand. Can you back me up here?”
“It would have been, yes.”
Lars shakes his head, smiling incredulously. “Unbelievable.”
“Thank you!” Theo says. “That’s—”
“But, Theo,” the Somm interrupts, “you’re forgetting the end of the story.”
“I am?”
“We opened it, my brother and I, and we drank it,” he goes on, “and it was the best goddamn wine I ever tasted.”
A slight collapse happens around Theo’s brow, as if this information has somehow injured them.
“I did forget that part.”
“Hey, why’d you leave me hanging on that Scottsdale distributor thing?” the Somm asks. “Are you studying in Chianti? Have you been tasting? You remember, it was the Chianti subregions that got you on the written exam—”
“I know, I know,” Theo says, eyes suddenly wide, “I have them now—”
“You better, if you want to pass this time.”
Theo snatches their phone up and ends the call.
The others barely seem to have noticed, and Theo laughs it off, but they won’t look at me. They drain their glass, mutter something about being tired, and they’re gone.
* * *
I’ve only seen Theo cry three times: when they fell out of a tree and broke their arm at age nine, the first time they saw me after my mother died, and the day I left for New York. It’s not that Theo doesn’t experience huge emotions. They just muscle it down.
They’ll squint and scrunch their nose, as if they’re annoyed to waste energy on something so useless, then their face clears, and they keep going.
Right now, they’re making that face.
I found them upstairs, tearing apart their backpack to get to their dopp kit. They’re at the bathroom vanity now, peeling off their clothes.
“Theo, is there—are you okay?”
“Yeah,” they grunt, stepping out of puddled linen and throwing on a T-shirt. “I’m just really tired all of a sudden.”
“We can talk about it, if you want. You can tell me.”
They try to open their kit, but the zipper is stuck.
“I don’t,” they snap.
With a furious yank, their kit explodes open and expels its contents all over the floor. They swear and fall to their knees, chasing bottles and tubes.
“Theo,” I say, getting down beside them. They swat my hands away. “Theo!”
At last they go still. They sit back on their heels and look up at the terra-cotta ceiling, lip balm and toothpaste clutched in their fists, their face a vivid, mottled red.
“I’m—I fucked up.”
“Okay. What happened?”
“It’s not even something that happened. I think—I think it’s something I am. I’m a fuckup.”
“No, you’re not,” I say, not even beginning to know where this is coming from. I gently work their fingers loose, one by one.
“I am. I’m a fuckup, and I can’t stop being one, no matter how much I grow and how hard I try—and I try so fucking hard—” Their voice breaks. They choke it back. “I can’t change the fact that it’s me. I’m me, and that means I’ll keep fucking up forever.”
“That’s not true. You—”
“I’ve failed the sommelier exam three times.”
That finally pulls my attention from their lip balm. I sit back, watching a muscle clench in Theo’s jaw.
“I’ve been lying to you.” Theo’s voice is flat, sour. “I didn’t plan to lie, just imply, but you were so impressed when you thought I had, and I’m taking it again when I get home, so I thought, you know, if he asked me a month from now it would be true. But, honestly, I’ll probably find some new way to fuck it up, so I might as well come clean.”
“Okay.” I blink slowly, processing. “Is … is that all?”
Theo scowls, like this was the wrong thing to say.
“The bus bar is fucked too.”
Oh, no. “Fucked how?”
“Upside down. Out of money. Negative money.” They start snatching things up and hurling them into their kit. “I get all these big ideas, blow my entire budget on artisanal pickled kumquats and imported Persian saffron for one fucking cocktail, lose track of client emails, and it all gets fucked. I lost that big wedding gig because I got sidetracked with you.” Their eyes flash—I can’t tell if that’s a confession or an accusation. “And now I—I don’t see how it’s not over. That gig was going to save me. I’m gonna have to sell the bus just to pay off my credit cards. So, I lied about that too. I’m nothing I told you I was. There you go.”
They zip the kit up, climb to their feet, and drop it on the bedside table. Then they sit on the edge of the mattress and draw their knees up to their chin, looking absolutely furious with themself.
I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Why … why would you lie to me about all of that?”
“Because I wanted you to think I had my shit together!” Theo says miserably. “I wanted you to think I’d grown. I wanted you to see me for the first time in four years and be amazed.”
“That would have happened no matter what.”
They roll their eyes spectacularly. “Whatever. I couldn’t have you pity me, and I still can’t, so just—please don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you think I could do better,” Theo says. “That’s how Sloane looked at me too.”
“Sloane? Did she—is that why she sent the wine?”
“I tried to talk to her about it, and she sort of laid into me about, you know. My nepo-baby complex.”
I frown. “Your…?”
“She tried to give me money. Called it an investment, like it’s not charity. And when I said no, she went off about how I make my life harder on purpose just to prove a point.”
“Ah. And when was this?”
“In Nice. After I left you with Apolline.”
The pieces of the past few days begin to rearrange themselves.
“So, when we got to Monaco, you were…?”
“In full self-destruct, yeah.”
I pull myself off the floor and sit on the foot of the bed. Is that all this has been to them, with me? Self-destruction?
I don’t know what difference it would make if it was. Does it matter if Theo is fucking me to destroy themself, if I’m destroying myself to fuck Theo?
I push my fingers through my hair and concentrate.
“How do you feel now?”
Theo answers after a long pause, their voice quiet but firm.
“I cannot build a life on being a Flowerday. I want to build a life on being Theo.”
“Then don’t use the family name,” I say. “Or the connections, or the favors—you never needed any of that to be great.” I choose my next words carefully. “But, Theo … maybe you should consider taking the money.”
Theo fixes me with a hard look. “You’d take it, wouldn’t you?”
“I would. And then I’d make it mean something.”
“That’s the problem,” Theo insists. “I won’t do anything great with it. I’d take Sloane’s money and blow it, and that would always be between us. I can’t risk that. She’s my best friend, and I can’t—I can’t—”
The unfinished sentence hangs in the air between us: I can’t lose another best friend.
“You don’t know that’s what would happen, Theo.”
“Precedent says otherwise,” Theo replies. “I want to do all these things on my own, and I—I just can’t. It was stupid to think I could.”
“Then use the money to hire someone to help you.”
“What, and waste someone else’s time too? I’m wasting enough on my own.”
I put my head in my hands, nearing the purlieu of my patience.
“God, Theo, sometimes you just—”
They round on me, eyes wet.
“What, frustrate you? Well, we have that in fucking common. Don’t you think I would fucking love to be different than this?”
“You don’t need to!” The words burst out like bitter olive in a press, crushed beyond the limits of my skin. “Je te jure, Theo, I have never met another person with more to offer the world and less faith in themself. You are brilliant, and magnetic, and strong, and impressive and—and vital, and I cannot keep listening to you talk about someone I love like this, so please, for God’s sake, stop.”
Theo is silent, eyes wide, lips parted in surprise. My heart fills my throat. I realize too late what I’ve done: I’ve said I love them. I go on before they realize it too.
“You have it backward,” I say. “It’s the rest that needs to be solved, not you. Will you hear me, please? You were good enough to get this far. You are good enough to fix it. You are good enough for anything you want, but you have to believe it.”
Theo doesn’t answer. In the dark room, we sit quietly on opposite ends of the bed, contending with our own hearts.
Slowly, Theo begins to unfold their body. They lie back on the bed with their face to the ceiling and extend an arm toward me, palm open. I ease myself backward, shifting my shoulders until our heads are bent toward each other. I lay my hand over theirs, and they twine our fingers together.
“I don’t know where to start,” they say.
I tell them, “Anywhere.”
We lie on our backs with our arms and legs spread as if we’re floating together on a wide sea. Theo takes slow breaths, in and out, until one comes out as a low, rueful laugh.
Gradually, we begin to shift closer. Theo’s ankle hooks over mine. My fingers slip to the tender point of their pulse. When I turn my head, I find them already bent toward me, their eyes deep with desire, with some other enormous thing that doesn’t look destructive at all. It looks like roots, like something that lives and grows.
