Page 54 of The Pairing

“Okay,” I say out loud. “Okay. That’s fine.”

I throw my phone at the bed and do a lap, pulling on sweatpants and the first shirt I can reach, toweling my hair, sweeping lip balm tubes and pomade into my dopp kit, shoving clothing into my pack so Kit will think I’ve stopped leaving my laundry wherever it falls. By the time he knocks, my room looks like it belongs to a real adult.

I open the door to Kit in a rumpled T-shirt and soft cotton joggers. His hair is half wet. He smells like lavender and the same soap he used to keep in our shower.

“Hi,” he says, smiling apologetically.

“Hi.”

“Thanks, again. I hope this isn’t too weird.”

“No, of course not,” I say, even though it feels a little like my head is floating away from my shoulders. I step aside to let him in. “We’re friends, right?”

“Yeah, we are.”

“So, no biggie.” I shrug. “It’s a sleepover. We’ve had a million of those.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t look at me, busy stepping out of his shoes. “Of course.”

The room suddenly feels too small, too hot from the lingering shower steam. I pace over to the window and open it.

“I don’t know if it’s much better than your room.”

“Trust me, it is.” He hovers near the en suite, holding his shaving kit. “Do you mind if I. . .?”

“Yeah, knock yourself out.”

“Amazing, thank you.” He steps toward the sink, pauses, then turns back. “Oh, I forgot to give this to you earlier.” He reaches into the pocket of his joggers and hands me his flimsy little sketchbook. “Keep it.”

“You don’t have to—I can just copy the pages down or takesome pictures.”

“Theo, I packed twelve of those. I don’t mind.”

I run my fingers over the blue stripes on the sketchbook’s brown paper cover, the neat letters spellingCALEPINO. I imagine him picking it out at a stationery store in Paris, stuffing a whole bundle of them into his pack, his face shining with anticipation. The first few pages are loose sketches of streetlamps and stray dogs, then notes from that first chocolatería. And—

“Kit. What is this?”

I flip forward—the rest of the pages are the same. For every stop, he’s transcribed my notes in his slanting script, and on the opposite page, sketched a simple illustration.

“Yeah, I, ah, I thought it might help to have visual references?” He leans out of the en suite with his toothbrush in his mouth, toothpaste foaming along his bottom lip. “I mean, you always hated books without pictures, didn’t you?”

“Fuckoff.” I go back through the pages—the crescent of a dipped orange slice, the churro’s rough ridges. He even did a cross section of my first bombone to show the layers of caramel and cream filling. “Kit, this is. . .really cool.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

I wish I could see the look on his face, but he’s spitting toothpaste into the sink.

It’s strange and strangely calming to stand next to the bed and look at Kit’s drawings while he does his skincare routine. I listen to the soft clicks of bottle caps and splashes of water, sounds I used to hear every night. I could close my eyes and be in our old apartment. I could smell his plants. I could feel the weight of his head on my chest.

I reach the last page and stop. There, an unfamiliar hand has written a series of digits, smudged like the writer was in a rush.

“Whose phone number is this?”

The water shuts off, and Kit releases the shortohof someone caught in the act.

“That would be the, ah,” Kit says, appearing in the doorway, “the number of that chocolatero who gave us extra chocolates. I meant to tear that page out.”

Ah. Of course. Almost forgot I was dealing with the Sex God of École Desjardins.

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