Page 107 of The Pairing

“We could take turns? Swap at the stops?” I suggest. I sweep my hair back and put my helmet on, and Theo instantly starts laughing. I frown. “What?”

“Look at you!” They pull out their phone to take a picture and show me the screen, my frowning confusion and the tufts of hair that stick out from the bottom of my helmet. “God, it’s perfect.”

“I look chic,” I say. “I look like I ride motorcycles on the Amalfi Coast.”

“You look like they shoot you out of a cannon at a circus for gay people.”

“Even better.”

“I know,” Theo says, like they’re surprised by how much they mean it.

I wink and tighten my chin strap, gesturing toward Fabrizio already seated behind the handlebars. “You go first. Keep him warm for me.”

And, with a two-finger salute, Theo kicks a leg over.

The sidecar isn’t as cramped as it looks, and once I get my legssituated it’s almost comfortable. Theo, who continues to think this is the funniest thing that’s ever happened, snaps a dozen more photos, and then Fabrizio cranks up the throttle and pushes off.

The other drivers fall into formation as we turn onto one of the wide main roads of Rome, Corso Vittorio according to a glimpse of a sign. Buildings rise up around us in stately blocks of ivory and cream, distinguished and lined with stone balustrades, propped up by Ionic columns with curling scrolls at their tops. The sky is a blistering blue, and the road bends west, toward the green rush of the Tiber. The engine purrs, and Fabrizio sings into the wind as he weaves through Roman traffic, and from my sidecar, I look at Theo.

They’re a desert baby, brought back to life by sun and heat. Their grin grows wider and wider, the morning disappearing into Fabrizio’s rearview. They lace their fingers together around Fabrizio’s waist and put their face into the wind, gazing at Rome with honest wonder.

I think after everything, now that we’ve said what we needed to say, we might come out okay.

We cruise over an arched bridge to the round drum of Castel Sant’Angelo, atop which legend says the Archangel Michael sheathed his sword to signal the end of Rome’s great plague. Honking cars race us to the travertine facade of the Palace of Justice and back over the Tiber and into winding nests of narrow cobbly streets, toward the Pantheon.

As we reach the temple, Fabrizio turns back to Theo and shouts over the engine.

“When we finish, come back here, down this street, and then the first left, and the first right after this into the alley, and you will find the hostel between the osterias at the end. Orla leaves your bags in your rooms at the top of the stairs.”

“Uh-huh,” Theo says. They’re gazing in awe at the Pantheon’s ancient columns, not hearing any of this.

“Grazie!” I shout, happy to leave Theo’s moment uninterrupted. I’ll remember for us.

We pull into an alley with an ancient faucet spouting crisp, clear water. I’ve read about these—nasoni, public faucets fed in part by the original Roman aqueducts—but I almost couldn’t believe it until now. We catch water in our cupped hands, take turns pressing our fingers to the spouts to make them spray upward like a drinking fountain. Fabrizio tips his whole head sideways and puts his mouth under the stream, and I catch Theo looking when I follow his example, taking cool water into my open mouth until it spills down my chin.

After, it’s my turn to ride with Fabrizio. I wrap my arms around his firm waist, press my thighs against his, our shorts riding up high enough for our sweat to mingle. He compliments the softness of my skin as he cranks the engine, and I thank him with my most flirtatious smile. Theo watches with open, curious hunger from the sidecar below. Two things that endure the passage of time: Roman antiquities, and the thrill Theo gets from seeing me with a man between my legs.

The tour goes on through a blur of stone and ivy, the ruins of the square where Julius Caesar was murdered, the grassy stretch of Circus Maximus once pounded by racing hooves and chariot wheels, temples to Hercules and Portunus so well-preserved a Roman farmer might amble through with a cow to sell at the Forum Boarium. We finish at the Arch of Constantine, barely changed from how it looked when victorious emperors paraded through seventeen hundred years ago, still proud and imposing on the backdrop of the looming Colosseum.

We tour the Colosseum on foot, our shoes on the same stones as thousands of ancient sandals. Fabrizio’s voice is hoarse from use as he recites story after story, reenacts battle after battle. Then we go back out through the archways, past the ruins of the fountain where gladiators washed their wounds, to the top of the Palatine Hill and its wide overhead view of the Roman Forum.

On a long tour, days have a way of stretching impossiblybeyond their edges. So many things spread out over such short hours, one after another, until it seems unimaginable that the day could have begun in a different place at all. Like there has only ever been here, and then here, this fountain and that drink and this sparkling pane of glass, each trapped in an instant happening in the memory forever, each instantly replaced with the thing after that. Perpetual fleeting everything, worn-out body and blissed-out brain. That’s how this day goes on.

Fabrizio cuts us loose to explore the Roman Forum. Theo and I wander down the same main street where senators schemed and merchants traded goods and women practiced the oldest profession, everyone working or praying or gambling or spreading rumors, and past what still stands of the triumphal arches.

I imagine Theo and me in their world. I’d be the baker, baking loaves of sourdough under smoldering ash, olive leaves in my hair and flour on my tunic. Theo would be the roguish young charioteer who buys bread from me every morning and flusters the vestal virgins. We’d steal glances but never touch until we were alone, pressing each other into secret corners of temples, and when they bound their chest with leather to race, my name would be carved inside the straps.

“So crazy how two thousand years ago, they were feeling all the same things we feel,” Theo muses. “They wanted to be loved, and eat good food, and make art, and fuck.”

“The human condition,” I agree.

We pause at the most impressive temple, one with ten thick columns still holding up the frieze over its portico. A sign says this was originally built as a temple to Faustina the Elder, the empress. Her husband, Antoninus, was so heartbroken when she died that he had her deified and her likeness cast into gold statues, pressed into coins, and enshrined in this temple. He wanted the whole empire to worship her the way he did, and the cult of Faustina spread.

“Kind of romantic to love your wife so much you start a cult,”I say.

“I don’t know,” Theo says, an ironic lilt to their lips. “Did anyone ever ask Faustina if shewantedto be a god?”

I laugh, perfectly willing to take a nudge to the ribs if it means we can joke about this now.

---