Page 133 of The Pairing

I marvel at the little boat floating on the crystal clear water that surrounds Favignana. Its round, inflatable walls gleam pristine white like Italian meringue in the sun. It has two horizontal rows of benches and an adorably small motor on the back, and thanks to Theo, it’s temporarily ours.

“Yougot us a boat.”

Theo hops down onto the dinghy’s deck with steady sea legs. The sandwiches in my hands are beginning to leak juices through their wax paper and down my wrists, but I barely notice.

“You said, ‘Go get us sandwiches, I’ll find something to drink,’ and you came back with aboat.”

“Oh! I have drinks too!” They dig a shopping bag out from under a bench and show me a sweating bottle of white wine. “It’s not that cold anymore, but it’s a good one.”

“Theo,how?”

“I made friends with a guy at the enoteca, don’t worry about it,” they say dismissively, as if charming a stranger into lending out a boat on a remote Mediterranean island is something anyone could do. “Come on, we only have it for two hours. Pass me the sandwiches and get in.”

When I was sixteen in New York, I envied every person in theValley who got to witness Theo’s career as a house-party king. I wanted to see them like that, strutting cocksure around the room like a young James Dean, magically conjuring up the object of anyone’s desire. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see the return of that Theo, until now.

“James fucking Dean,” I say faintly to myself, and I do as Theo says.

Every place we’ve stopped on this tour has been so singular, but Favignana truly is unlike anywhere else. The island is tumbled together from sun-bleached beige rock, so uniform in color that even the blocky houses lining its streets are the same shade of eggshell. The beaches are quiet here, natural pockets of white sand between jagged stone shores and the occasional tuft of scruffy yellow-green grass. And the water—the water is so brilliantly clear that boats seem to magically float on thin air.

Since the island is too small to get lost on, we have time to explore on our own. Theo and I have already wandered most of the dusty roads hand in hand, past homes with every window frame and door painted an identical shade of deep sea blue, past cactus-lined terrazzos where old women hang sheets on their lines and old men crack mussels. Eventually, we found our way back to the shoreline, where we split up to gather lunch.

I’ll admit, I was a bit smug about the food. I found a yellow truck near a cove selling fresh-caught fish and ordered two overstuffed sandwiches of tuna kebab and tomato, dripping with onion agrodolce and spritzed with lemon between oily, herb-rubbed bread. They smell incredible, but they are undeniably not a boat. Theo takes this round.

Aboard, I ask them, “Do you know how to drive this thing?”

Theo shrugs, wrapping a confident hand around the throttle. “I’m sure I can figure it out. I’m the Crocodile Hunter.”

“The what?” I ask, but it’s drowned out by the crank of the engine.

As with almost anything Theo has ever put their mind to, ittakes them only a few minutes of hands-on trial and error to get the hang of it. Soon, we’re skipping like a stone across the turquoise bay, following the curve of the island.

I’m trying very hard not to think about how this time tomorrow, I’ll be on my way to Paris, and we’ll be apart, and I don’t know when I’ll see Theo again. Instead, I memorize every detail of this moment. The sunlight on the waves, the hum of the motor and the rush of wind, the silvery fish darting beneath us. Theo, with their dust storm of freckles, hair in the wind, smile radiant.

Theo steers into a secluded cove within steep, curving walls of rock and throws the anchor. There, we float, eating and taking turns drinking from the bottle.

“Fuck,” Theo moans as they chew. “Why is this, like, the best sandwich I’ve ever had?”

“I have a theory about this,” I say. “I call it the contextual sandwich.”

“Contextual sandwich?”

“Yes,” I say. “Sometimes, a perfect sandwich is not just about the sandwich itself, but about thesetting.Theexperienceof eating the sandwich. Context can elevate a great sandwich to a spiritual experience.”

“I’m following,” Theo says, nodding thoughtfully. “I think it’s that and also the onion agrodolce.”

“The onion agrodolce is everything,” I agree. “I want to make a baby with it.”

“Ooh.” Theo sits up, inspired. “Onion agrodolce, on the fly.”

“Well, I already said, I would take the onion agrodolce and make a baby.”

“Something you can eat, Kit.”

“Why not the baby? Like Saturn devouring his son.”

“Kit devouring his onion baby,” Theo imagines. “I can see the painting now.”

“Art historians hate him.”

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