Page 74 of The Pairing

The first six months after Theo left me, I lived on sex, croissants, and a volume of Rilke’s collected poems from Thierry’s bookshelf.

I sat up at night and drew circles around the lines that most made me think of Theo, copied down the best ones until they stitched together a new verse.Dream in the eyes, the brow as if in touch with something far away.And,Was it not summer, was it not sun—all that heat from you, that measureless radiant warmth?And,Alone: What shall I do with my mouth?

Well. Sex and croissants, that’s what.

It was Maxine who, at the end of a long evening that could have been a first date if she hadn’t seen right through me, went scouring my notebook for a recipe and found the page with the Rilke. She asked, “How long have you loved them?” And I said, “Almost my whole life.” And she said, “Putain de merde,” and opened her cigarette case.

That was the night we became friends, and it was the night I told her about the tour. On the first day of every subsequent summer, she asked if this was the year I’d redeem my voucher, and every year I told her I couldn’t, because I was waiting. I was holding out hope that someday, somehow, Theo would come back.

It isn’t as if I’ve loved the same cold memory all this time. Rilke wrote,Even your not being there is warm with you.I’m in love with Theo’s residual warmth, the indentation she left for me to grow around. All those living petals, never falling.

That’s my life, in the kitchen and the café and the épicerie every morning thumbing orange rinds, nights looking into empty corners of the apartment where a liquor cabinet or a pair of boots might fit, mornings waking up on the left side of the bed. I leave space for Theo to be something that’s still happening to me.

But four yearsisa long time, and this year when Maxine asks about the ticket, I say I’ll do it as a farewell tour. I’ll take my unsent letter to a beach in Palermo and bury it at sea, and I’ll return to Paris and spend the rest of my life loving someone I’ll never see again.

And then Theo walks out of a dream and onto a bus in London, fiercer and stronger and screamingly hotter than ever before. She can’t stand to be next to me, but she wants to try, so I say yes, because I’ll take whatever she’ll give me. She calls me her friend in the same breath that she proposes having sex with other people, and I say yes to that too, because it’s a good distraction. Because as long as we’re counting, we have something to talk about, and I’ve missed the sound of her voice.

And she’s looking at me while I’m touching someone else, and we’re sleeping in the same bed, and I’m thinking of her every time I sink into another person’s body, and she’s sighing into my palm on the deck of a yacht. I have no room left in myself to hold it all. It has to overflow. And so, I kiss her.

I kiss Theo because I’m in love with her. I always have been. I always will be.

I’m still getting used to how different Theo looks.

The last time I saw her, her hair fell past her shoulders and down her back. She wore nail polish until it chipped away and she painted over it, shadowed her eyelids before work for better tips, wore skirts on weekends. Sometimes I would notice her checking her posture, as if she could soften the natural breadth of her shoulders, make herself delicate.

Now, she stands with her shoulders back, moves as if sheknows a thousand ways to use her body and fears none of them. Her face has hardened and sharpened slightly, but it still holds a raw, hardy friendliness that makes strangers tell her their secrets, and there’s never anything on it but freckles. She wears practical boots and overalls with cargo pockets and ugly bucket hats, and her hair is so short that her neck and jaw are always on display.

A month ago I’d have sworn I could never want anyone more than the Theo I knew. Then I saw this new Theo, and suddenly want wasn’t big enough. This is more likeneed.

We’re in Monterosso al Mare, the northernmost of the five villages clustered along the curve of Italy’s northwestern coast, Cinque Terre. Here, pastel palazzos cascade down steep cliffs to the bright blue Mediterranean Sea. Terraced farms line green hills, growing olives and lemons and basil, and rows of striped umbrellas cram the pebbly beaches below. It’s wilder and warmer here than on the Côte d’Azur, but the salt on the air is the same, and the resort beaches are almost the same, and so I am thinking—miserably, inescapably—about Monaco. About yesterday, about need.

I’m thinking about Theo between my open thighs, nothing but dried sweat and salt water between our skin. About how casually she settled there, ready for anything, while it took everything in me to keep my voice steady and my hands still. The weight of her gaze on my mouth, the pressure of her hand on my thigh, her damp hair on my shoulder, all the hysterical need I poured into Émile so Theo wouldn’t feel it. I was so completely willing to do anything she wanted, and so afraid that the moment I touched her, she would know it meant so much more to me.

I wonder, as I watch her ruthlessly shred basil leaves, if that was the last time we’ll ever be that close.

Theo’s wearing boots today—her sensible Blundstones—with hiking shorts and yesterday’s linen shirt, still smelling of sea salt and expensive champagne. Perhaps she chose them for this morning excursion on a basil farm because a good viticulturistis always prepared. Or maybe it’s because I kissed her, and she’s going to kick me off a palazzo.

I hold a leaf between my thumb and forefinger and squeeze until the fibers collapse, but its new, wet bruise only reminds me of the shine on Theo’s lower lip in a dark alley. Theo’s mouth against mine for five long seconds before I broke off and I started apologizing. The cool laugh she forced when I swore I was drunk and caught in the moment, that I hadn’t meant it.

We walked back to the hotel in silence, and she hasn’t spoken to me since. Not on the bus here, not during our tour of the farm, not when we were set loose to gather our own basil, not even during our adorable old farmer’s lesson on making pesto. Presently, she’s focused on crushing leaves with a righteous, wholehearted fury. The table creaks under her mortar and pestle, bottles of olive oil rattling nervously.

“Are you alright, Theo?” Stig asks.

“I’m great,” Theo says brightly, which means she’s angry, and when she’s angry, she breaks things.

My hands are graceless on my own pestle, the taste of regret too thick in my mouth to get the flavors right. It took time to understand how I’d made Theo so angry she could leave me back then, but this time it’s simple. I’m supposed to be her friend, and I kissed her. All the flirting and innuendos, the platonic nudity and almost threesomes—I made them mean something she never agreed to. I’d kick myself off a palazzo if I could.

When we taste everyone’s finished pesto, Theo’s is vibrant and complex and perfectly balanced, exactly as creamy as it should be because she whisked in the olive oil at the end instead of dumping everything together like half of us did. Theo has never encountered a straightforward, useful skill she couldn’t instantly master by will and instinct.Jack of all trades, master of cunt,she once said. I’ve never liked anyone more than her.

I dip a corner of bread into my bowl and discover it doesn’t taste like much of anything. It’s the most pitiable, anemic thingI’ve made since pâtisserie school.

“You didn’t crush the basil hard enough,” Theo says, working her lip with her teeth. She slides a finger around the rim of my bowl, then sucks oil and herbs off her fingertip. “It tastes apologetic. Fucking commit to something, man.”

I don’t have an answer for that. She’s right, but even if she weren’t, I deserve to be bullied today.

When I took her hand on the cliff in Dover, I wondered how I could give her a reason to keep me this time. This new person with carpenter calluses where each finger meets her palm, who packs light and crosses oceans alone, the sturdier, broader Theo who cut off her hair—what would she see in me?

She saw friendship, and I was lucky for that. I shouldn’t have asked for more.

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