Page 98 of The Pairing

We crunch the gravel path back to the villa’s dining room, where a long antique buffet painted with vines and rosebuds heaves with food: marbled prosciutto, mozzarella on wheels ofeggplant, huge garlic-simmered beans, figs and persimmons picked from the garden and sliced open so their flesh shines in the sunlight from the open windows. We fill our plates and carry them out to the biggest terrazzo.

As we eat, I catch Fabrizio watching us from two tables over, clearly noting the practiced ease with which Theo shoves panzanella onto my plate. I point this out to Theo, who instantly has that devious gleam in their eye. They make sure Fabrizio is still looking, and then they slide their hand into my lap.

This time, there’s no tablecloth to hide anything. Just us in our striped chairs before the green backdrop of the garden, Theo’s palm on the inside of my thigh where anyone can see. The tip of their middle finger grazes the stretchy hem of my swim trunks.

Part of wants to move their touch higher, but I think of earlier, how they hid the bottle of wine in the wardrobe, how they turned pink when I read the card from Sloane. I wonder what they’re trying to conceal behind this.

Gently, I lift their hand up and press a kiss to the center of their palm. I lace my fingers through theirs, resting our hands on the table between us.

They don’t pull away, and they don’t laugh. They peer into my eyes for a long moment, daring me to act like this too is a bit. When I don’t, they put their sunglasses on and return one-handed to their plate as if nothing has changed, but they’re pink under their freckles.

After lunch, we borrow bikes and ride into the hills; they blur green-bronze as we take our feet off the pedals and coast. Out here the sun hangs as wonderfully fat in the sky as it did in Florence, but it doesn’t scorch. It soaks into the hills like oil into thick, well-risen bread, and we spread ourselves across them like happy little figs.

It’s nearly time for aperitivo when we return. We take our amaro behind the villa, to the grove where a gardener tends to young, bright green olives. He plucks two straight off the branchfor us to taste and laughs mischievously when we choke on their bitterness. Theo jokes that it’s our truest Italian aperitivo yet.

Dinner is served at a long table between the grove and the villa, covered by arching trellises of ivy and twinkling lights. We pass around heavy platters of wild boar ragù and pillowy gnocchi with greens and blistered tomatoes. The food here is rich and hearty, like it’s meant to prepare the body to harvest crops instead of luxuriating with carafes of fine wine beneath a crepuscular sky.

Theo sits across from me, sun-kissed and windswept, wearing that lovely black linen thing from our second night in Paris. Fairy lights dapple their skin through the leaves. I want to touch them so badly. I imagine running my fingertip down the center of their chest to the point of their neckline’s vee.

I let them catch me looking. I tip the last of my wine past my lips and show them the contours of my jaw, how my throat moves when I swallow. They bite their lip.

Soon, the villa’s sweet, muddling magic sweeps us from one moment to the next, and we’re retiring to a dark, warm sitting room. Signora Lucia brings out trays of crunchy, almond-flecked cantucci, and Fabrizio pours viscous vin santo into little crystal cups so we can dip the cookies before we eat them, as is the Tuscan way.

It seems it’s also the Tuscan way to drape ourselves over antique couches and tell long stories in loud voices, because that’s how we spend the rest of the night. I ask Blond Calum for his best emergency medicine stories, knowing I’ll hate the answer as much as Theo will love it. The one he decides to share is about his first, long before he began to study.

He and Calum were thirteen, best friends who never paddled out to surf without each other, which was how he was able to act so quickly when Ginger went under in a cloud of red. A white pointer—a great white—had torn a hunk from his shoulder, and he would have bled out if Blond hadn’t pulled him onto his board, paddled them both to shore, and pressed a towel to thewound until help arrived. Theo and I listen with our hands over our mouths.

“Cheers to that bloody shark,” Blond says, raising his vin santo, “the reason I do what I do.”

“Here, here,” Ginger agrees, lifting his own glass. “Remarkable creature. Can’t hold it against him, can ya?”

“I’ll drink to that,” Theo says. “Hey, how do you feel aboutJaws?”

Eventually, the Calums drift off to their rooms with suspiciously similar timing to Montana and Dakota, and Theo draws me lazily to their side, letting out a long breath when I lean my head on their shoulder. I listen as they tell the Swedes a story about a bottle of wine the Somm’s mother left in a window, and then as Lars asks how one bottle could possibly have been worth so much, Theo takes out their phone and dials the Somm on speakerphone.

“Hello, stranger,” says the Somm’s gruff voice on the third ring.

“Hey!” Theo says, leaning in. “Listen, I’m here in Chianti with a couple of Swedes, and I just told them about your mom’s Romanée-Conti. They don’t believe that it was worth forty-two grand. Can you back me up here?”

“It would have been, yes.”

Lars shakes his head, smiling incredulously. “Unbelievable.”

“Thank you!” Theo says. “That’s—”

“But, Theo,” the Somm interrupts, “you’re forgetting the end of the story.”

“I am?”

“We opened it, my brother and I, and we drank it,” he goes on, “and it was the best goddamn wine I ever tasted.”

A slight collapse happens around Theo’s brow, as if this information has somehow injured them.

“I did forget that part.”

“Hey, why’d you leave me hanging on that Scottsdale distributor thing?” the Somm asks. “Are you studying in Chianti? Have you been tasting? You remember, it was the Chianti subregions that got you on the written exam—”

“I know, I know,” Theo says, eyes suddenly wide, “I have them now—”

---