What a wonder, what a miracle: somehow, more of her.
We have tickets to the top of the tower, but we’re too heat-drowsy to climb the stairs. Instead, we buy gelato from one of the shops fringing the piazza and admire the tower from the cathedral steps below.
Theo tips her head to see all the way to the top of the campanile, all the repeating Romanesque arches making a pattern of half-moons like rows of pastries from this angle. She spoons amarena gelato into her mouth and hums.
“I feel better than I expected to, about last night,” she says casually.
My spoon stops in my cup of fior di latte. I wasn’t expecting us to talk about it. My mouth slips sideways into what I hope is gentle interest and not obvious, profound relief.
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought I’d be angrier?” She exhales a laugh. “At myself, that I did it, or at you, for making me want to. But I feel. . .good. Relieved, even. I think I’m glad we did it.”
“That’s good. That’s really good, because I. ..” I should hold back. I shouldn’t ask for more. But I think I might die if that was the last time she touched me. “I would love to keep doing it.”
A pause. Theo stabs her spoon into the lump of gelato.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, fuck it, why not?” She looks off into the distance where gold hills meet a big blue sky, a dangerous, punch-drunk edge to her voice that makes my heart pound. “It’s like. . .nothing in this life matters except what you want, and what feels good. Right? Taste everything, fuck how you like, nothing else matters. You know what I mean?”
“Of course,” I say. “I’m French. We invented that.”
“Exactly,” Theo says. She angles her face toward me. “But there’s one thing I should tell you if we’re going to be hooking up.”
I brace for a catch, a caveat. “I’m listening.”
“So,” Theo begins, “I don’t know about you, but after we broke up, I sort of wasn’t sure who I was anymore.”
I think of my own first year after Theo, drowning myself inpoetry and pastry, pouring all my love into person after person and still waking up full afterward, wondering if the problem had always been me.
I say, “Sure.”
Theo nods. “So, I went back to the beginning of me. Like, square one. And I started going through everything and figuring out what went where. And one of the main things I found is that—” A pause, a pinch of contemplation between the brows. “I think gender has always been more complicated for me than I wanted to admit.”
Oh.Oh.
“I don’t necessarily see myself as any particular, static thing,” Theo goes on, “but if I have to pick, nonbinary is the closest. I just know I’m a lot of stuff, but one thing I’m not is a woman. Does that make sense?”
Truthfully, it wouldn’t matter if it made sense. I would accept anything about Theo even if it didn’t agree with any laws of this world or the next. But more importantly, itdoes.It’s not so much a revelation as an explanation of something I’ve never been able to put into words about Theo, like the day I learned what a superbloom was.
“That might make more sense than anything you’ve ever said to me,” I say. Theo laughs like I might be joking, but I don’t break eye contact. “Really. Of course that’s you. That’s been you forever.”
Theo blinks. “You think so?”
“Theo, you’re—do you know how big you are?”
“Yes, I’m five-ten.”
“Don’t ruin it, I’m being sincere,” I tease, bumping my knuckles against Theo’s shoulder. “You’re. . .expansive. You take up space. You make the world bigger to fit you. So, no, I’m not surprised you can’t fit inside one idea of gender.”
“That’s—that’s really fucking kind of you to say,” Theo says, voice soft but fierce, knees pulled up to chin level. “But—yeah,I don’t always tell everyone I hook up with, but if it’s going to be a regular thing, it feels important that you know. And also, I just wanted to tell you.”
A regular thing.
“I’m happy to know,” I say, meaning it. Then I voice the worry that’s been at the back of my mind for a minute now. “Can I ask—have I been using the wrong pronouns?”