Page 77 of The Pairing

“Why?”

Every day of this trip, I’ve wanted to tell her. And every day, I’ve told myself no. But I’ve been so close to her, and everything has been so beautiful, and I’ve swallowed so many words already. I’ve made meals of my heart. If she keeps pushing, I’m afraid I won’t last.

“Theo, I know I fucked up last night, and you have every right to be angry,” I say, closing my eyes, “but was that necessary? In front of the Calums?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind,” Theo says, “since you said it didn’t mean anything to you.”

And I hear myself say, “I meant it.”

Rilke wrote,Who hasn’t sat trembling before his heart’s curtain?

“I meant it,” I say again. “I’m sorry I did it, and I wish I could take it back, because I have loved being your friend again, but I have been going out of my mind trying to hide this from you, and then on the yacht, when I thought we might—when we almost—it was toomuch,Theo. And for one moment, I couldn’t keep pretending that I haven’t wanted to kiss you since you walked onto that bus in London.” I take a breath. “But I will never do it again if you don’t want me to.”

Theo stares at me, lips parted, chest falling and rising. The trees above us shiver in the wind.

“Iknewit,” she says at last. I was braced for that, but not for the furious triumph in her voice. “You feel it too.”

My heart thumps hard in my chest. She can’t mean—

“Theo,” I say, “what do you feel?”

“This—this—thing between us,” Theo says. “Thisproblem.”

Ah.

Theo continues, beginning to pace.

“We’ve had sex in the past,” she says, “and now we’re not having sex anymore, but we’re talking about sex all the time, and thinking about sex, and thinking about each other having sex with other people, and I thought that would help, but it’s doing the opposite. Not fucking each other is making us both stupid. And I think we have to do something about it. Like, get it out of the way.”

I put my hands on Theo’s shoulders, stopping her pacing. A cloud of dust settles around her boots. Her face is inches from mine, eyes bright.

“What are you saying?” I ask her. “That we should have sex?”

“No, that would be too much like getting back together, and we’re not getting back together,” Theo says plainly. “That’s out of the question. Right?”

“I—” I remove my hands. “I do see how having sex would feel like getting back together.”

“Yeah,” Theo says, nodding hard. “But we have to do something because—” She sucks in a breath and pins me under her steady gaze. “Because I do very much still want to fuck you. So, do you want to fuck me?”

“Theo,” I say. “Worse than you can possibly imagine.”

“Great,” Theo says. Color bursts high in her cheeks, her breath short like she’s about to take off running. I love her. “Then, I think—I think we should have sex, just. . .without actually having sex.”

“Yes,” I say immediately. “Or—I don’t know what you mean, but yes. Tell me how.”

“Pretty Womanrules. No kissing on the mouth.” She thinks about it. “But no skin-to-skin contact from the waist down either.”

I nod, feeling my pulse in my fingertips. In other places. I can do this. Iwantto. If this is the most I can have of her, I’ll gladly take it. And if this is all she wants from me, it’s easy to give.

“Anything else?”

“I don’t think we should do it in our rooms,” she adds. “That’s—that seems like a slippery slope.”

“Sure,” I say, as if I wouldn’t love to slip. “Are we allowed to make each other come?”

“It would be fucking encouraged.”

“Then yes. Absolutely yes. When?”

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