Page 46 of The Pairing

Kit laughs, and I think,fuck it. There’s no good place for this conversation. Might as well have it in a cursed mermaid-nipple dimension.

I take a breath and say, “Kit.”

He twists in his seat to face me like he’s expecting another joke. I can see the moment he registers the serious look on my face, and the quarter second after, when he calculates how rarely I look serious about anything.

“Oh.” He pushes a piece of hair behind his ear. “Are we. . .?”

We are.

“I know I said I didn’t want to talk about what happened,” I say. “And I honestly don’t see the point of getting into what we said on the plane, or the Paris thing, because I haven’t changed my mind, and you obviously haven’t either.” I pause. He doesn’t contradict me. “But I do have to talk about what came after, if we’re going to be friends.”

Kit absorbs that.

“Okay,” he says, nodding thoughtfully. “After. What do you mean? Heathrow?”

My face flashes hot. I’m already irritated on reflex.

“Yeah, Kit,” I say, making an effort to keep my voice polite, “weirdly enough, I would like to know why you left me at an international airport with my dick in my hand.”

A pause.

“Theo, you flew back to America without me.”

“It wouldn’t have been without you if you had shown up.”

“What are you talking—?” Kit pinches the bridge of his nose, like he’s thinking very hard. “Hold on. What do you think happened that day?”

“What do Ithink? I know what happened.”

“I thought I did too,” he says slowly, “but now I’m not so sure.”

I suck in another deep breath and recite the sequence of events, even though I’d prefer to do almost anything else.

“We fought,” I say. “We said a lot of stuff there’s no coming back from. By the time we got through passport control, I didn’t even want to go on the tour anymore, and you said you didn’t either. I said I wanted to go home, and you said you did too. And then you said you needed some space to think, and you walked away.”

Kit says, “And then I came back.”

My mouth opens automatically, but whatever I was going to say disappears into the damp cave air.

For four years, my life has been directed by the simple fact that he walked away. He turned around and never came back. That was the one-line answer when anyone asked, the simple truth.

“You came back?”

“I came back,” he says again, “and you were gone.”

“That was—” I shake my head. “That was because I had already gotten our tickets home, and I had to check our bag.”

Now Kit’s staring at me, the way I was just staring at him.

“Ourtickets?” he says. “You got one for me?”

“Of course I did, Kit. I checked us both in, and I texted you your ticket, and then I waited at the gate until the very last call, but you never came.”

Kit closes his eyes and says, “Theo, you sent meyourticket.”

“What? No, I didn’t.” I distinctly remember how my fingers shook as I checked into our combined reservation, pulled up both of our boarding passes, and sent him a screenshot of his.

“Yes, you did.”

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