Page 20 of The Pairing

We both know that my twenty-fourth was a month after we broke up, so he can probably guess how this one happened. Late night, empty apartment, twenty-four-hour tattoo shop with a flash sheet of cactuses in the window.

Kit looks at me with something like sympathy, then pulls up his own sleeve on the opposite arm.

“I got my first in the same spot, kind of.”

The tattoo on the outside of his upper arm is a woman’s hand holding three violets. He doesn’t explain, and I don’t need him to. Kit is the middle child of three. His mom was named Violette.

“Oh, Kit,” I say. I have to stop myself from reaching out to touch it. “I love it.”

“I think she’d like it,” he says with quiet satisfaction. He tugs his sleeve down. “Where’s your third one?

“Oh, uh.” Abrupt pivot. “I’d have to take off my pants to show you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” I say. A thought solidifies behind his eyes. “It’s not an ass tattoo.”

“I didn’t think it was an ass tattoo.”

“Really?”

“Okay, I thought it might be an ass tattoo.”

I roll my eyes. “Come on, it’s on mythigh.Where’syourother one?”

“Under my shirt.”

Under his shirt. Where his body is, of course.

“Hmm.” I take another sip. I don’t think about his body. “This is like the scene inJawswhere they compare scars.”

“Does that make me Quint or Hooper?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m clearly the deranged shark man. You’re the fancy research boy.”

“Well,” Kit says, raising his glass, “I’ll drink to your leg.”

“I’ll drink toyourleg,” I quote back.

Is this—Kit and me, sitting on a bed, clinking glasses—how peacefully coexisting exes should feel?

It took so long to stop wanting him in my life. That feels like such an important, hard-won thing, and I don’t know how to protect it from this moment. But I also don’t know anyone else in the world who could have had those last ten minutes of conversation with me.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” Kit says back.

“Bonsoir, kiddies,” says a third voice, and we look up to see Maxine, dressed in black silk and holding a chambord martini.

“Maxine!” Kit says, standing so fast to greet her that I almost tip over again. He kisses her on each cheek, then turns to me, smiling wide. “I told Maxine where we were going and she wanted to come say hi.”

“That’s awesome,” I say, trying to mean it. “Hi, Maxine.”

Maxine kisses my cheek and sits down between us. Kit mutters something to her in French, and I catch a few of the words I know from growing up around his family—thank youandthe best.She does an inscrutable hand gesture and hooks her ankle around his.

I like Maxine. I do. But now I’m wondering if the point of this whole outing was to remind me that Kit is with someone else now.

“The bartender is hot,” Maxine declares matter-of-factly. “Did you see how hot the bartender is?”

---