Page 21 of The Pairing

“Kit got our drinks,” I say.

“They’re hot,” Kit confirms. “Very hot.”

Something twinges in my gut, a memory gone sour.

When Kit and I were together, our favorite bi-for-bi pastime was pointing out hot people to each other. It was silly and fun, but it meant something to me. It made me feel close to him, like all my incomprehensible, hidden feelings and wants were totally clear from his specific point of view.

Maybe the problem is that he can have the same thing with Maxine, someone who’s a woman in all the ways I’m not. Kit likes boys, and he always liked my most boyish qualities, but every now and then, a worry crept in. When he kissed his flat-chested best friend with bitten-down nails, did he think of someone with plush curves and shiny hair, someone who touches with only the tips of her manicured fingers and leaves a lipstick print in theexact same spot on her glass with every sip? Someone who could be his girl? Someone like Maxine?

I look down at my own glass, covered in smudgy, oily fingerprints.

“I need to see this hot bartender for myself,” I announce, suddenly in need of a break.

Back in the front room, the bartender is as hot as promised. Sharp jaw, broody eyebrows, androgynous. They’re wearing a half-buttoned shirt and pleated gray trousers, and their hair gives the impression of a classic men’s cut growing wild. They work with a cool efficiency I have to admire, as someone intimately familiar with handling a late-night full house. I hope that’s how I look when I do it.

“Whiskey ginger,” I half yell when they lean in, thankful they serve enough tourists to know the English.

I let my eyes drift, scanning for a distraction. Then the door opens, and in she floats: the dancer from Moulin Rouge.

Her hair is down, and she’s swapped her costume for a simple cotton dress, but it’s her. Her face is a dewy, freshly scrubbed pink, red stain lingering on her lips. I turn my body sideways to open space at the bar, and she goes right to it.

“Hi,” I say, before remembering what country I’m in. “Parlez-vous anglais?”

She looks me up and down, then smiles and says, “Enough.” Which answers more than one question.

“I’m Theo.”

She takes my hand, brushes a kiss against my cheek. “Estelle.”

I buy Estelle a drink—she wants a white wine, and she touches my arm when I suggest the one I know to be the best in the bar—and we talk. I tell her that I was at her show earlier and how great she was, and she explains that she lives across the city but likes to come here after work. When I tell her that’s lucky for me, she sneaks a finger through my belt loop.

Once I’ve finished my drink and the hot bartender has pouredEstelle a second glass, I consider bringing her through the wardrobe and introducing her to Kit and Maxine. It could be a double date. She and Kit could talk art. I could slip my hand around her waist while Kit presses a kiss to Maxine’s throat, and then I could watch Kit and Maxine go home together again.

Instead, I push Estelle’s hair behind her ear and ask if she wants to leave.

She laughs as we climb up the hill to the hostel. I hold her hand above her head for a pirouette, watching her dress whip around her thighs, then reel her in and kiss her. She tastes like cigarettes and Muscadet, smells like hairspray and setting powder.

I take my phone out to let Kit know I’m not coming back, then remember I still have his number blocked.

My thumb hovers over the blue letters ofUnblock this Caller.

Not much point to it anymore, is there?

left with someone i met at the bar. good night!I hit send.

In my room, my shirt lands on the floor, Estelle’s balconette bra on the nightstand. I tell her she’s beautiful, because she is, and then I tell her to lie back for me. I like the way she settles herself on the pillows, how everything she does is graceful. I like how her hair falls in her eyes.

I walk her out to her cab after, kiss her good night.

Usually sex helps me sleep, but tonight I’m awake for another hour. I can hear my own heart, and there’s a cadence to its beating, a steadily repeating one-two-three-four.

It sounds unsettlingly likeTheo-and-Kit.

“Have a good night?”

I gasp, nearly fumbling my croissant. The last person I was expecting to see in the hostel hallway this morning is Kit, but here he is, ambushing me at my door. Technically he’s just emerging from his own room looking underslept, but it feels like an ambush.

“What are you doing here?”

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