The Pairing, page 17
I won’t ask anyone for help. And I sure as shit won’t ask Kit for love.
MONACOPAIRS WELL WITH:
Stolen champagne, a very ripe peach
I’m the wrong Flowerday for Monaco, but today, I’ll be good at it.
Everything about this place, from the marble palace to the luxury cars, screams Este. The Princess Grace of it all, the pink glow of family money. My baby sister would swan into Monte Carlo and giggle over Dom Pérignon until someone invited her back to the VIP suite. She’d pick out the archduke of whatever made-up principality by clocking his Loro Piana cashmere baseball cap and be on a yacht by lunch, sun shining on that Flowerday strawberry blond hair.
Fuck it. I could do that for a day.
I slept like shit and woke up feeling like I do riding my longboard home after a long day of inventory: delirious, clammy, careening too fast, head swimming in languages I can’t speak. On the bus, I pulled my bucket hat down low so Kit wouldn’t try to talk to me for the thirty minutes between Nice and Monaco for today’s day trip, and now I’m sitting at our four-course champagne brunch, pretending not to listen as Kit explains our dessert to Dakota and Montana.
I watch the cream sploosh out of the strawberry mille-feuille under my fork and think it looks like me, like how there’s barely room left for me in my body. I’m a splat on the plate of life. If I’m nothing, I could be anything. I could be the car crash I’m always trying not to be. I could be one more renegade nepo baby in Monaco.
When Kit glances across the table at me, I smile, all teeth. I finish my champagne in one go and let the buzz take over.
After lunch, Kit magics up a paper bag of fried pastries and follows me down to the harbor. He’s wearing a miniscule pair of tight mustard swim trunks and an insane spindrift-blue silk shirt with a trim of yellow and blue waves and a nude woman riding a dolphin over the pockets. His hair is loose, caught up in the breeze off the water, and I’d like to either put my legs around him or push him off a pier.
“Nice shirt,” I say. “You look like you suck dick at Caesars Palace.”
“Thank you,” he says, adjusting his sunglasses. “I’ve been saving it for Monaco.”
My own shirt is an afterthought, all-purpose oversized linen open over a black two-piece swimsuit. Part laziness, part need for Kit to look at my body.
Falling back in love doesn’t mean I forgive him, and not forgiving him doesn’t mean I stopped wanting him to want me. It might even be more delicious if he wanted me now. I feel equally likely to reject him or fuck him to destroy myself, and today, unpredictability tastes good. A bright tang of possibility.
I hop up on a pier railing and bite into one of the half-moon pastries. Inside its flaky crust, it’s stuffed with swiss chard and ricotta.
“They’re the local thing,” Kit says. “Barbagiuan.”
“I guess every culture really does have their own dumpling.”
Kit chews and swallows, watching me teeter on the railing.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“I’m great.” I stretch my arms wide like Kit did in the lavender fields, as if my fingertips could graze the Alps if I reach far enough. “Monaco is fucking beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is,” he says, not looking at the mountains. “Listen, about what you saw yesterday—”
“Oh, right, we need to update our numbers. With Santiago and Apolline, you’re at five now, right?”
“Well—”
“And then I’ve got Caterina and my guy from last night.”
The paper bag crunches in Kit’s hands. “Last night?”
“Didn’t catch his name. That’s six to five.”
“Six to four.”
“Six to…” I drop my arms, counting again. “No, it’s five.”
Kit sighs and tosses the last bite of his barbagiuan into the water. Fish bubble up to finish it.
“Nothing happened with Apolline. She got—I don’t know, caught up in the moment, and she kissed me, but that was all. After you left, I helped her close up and got dinner on my own. What you saw didn’t mean anything.”
The look on his face isn’t unlike the one he gave me in that cave in San Sebastián, but I don’t know why he’d care so much about being believed now. He certainly hasn’t minded any of the other times I’ve seen him with someone else.
Unless I was right about what kind of friends they were.
“So, that was the first time you kissed?”
His beat of hesitation confirms it before he does. I have to laugh.
“There was— Yes, we did hook up years ago, but it was only once, and I wasn’t—”
I hop down. “Kit, I don’t care.”
“You don’t?”
“Of course not. Except for, you know, prior history would have disqualified her from the competition anyway, for the record. But, no, why would I care? Does it seem like I care?”
“… No?”
“Exactly. Anyway, what do you want to do today? Can’t really go to Monte Carlo in that slutty little swimsuit.”
He looks down at himself, at the trunks that end just below the crease of his thigh. “It’s not slutty. It’s European.”
“For you, that’s the same thing.”
I can’t see the look in his eyes when his chin tips up, but faint color gathers in his cheeks. Do you like that? I wonder.
“Okay, then, what do you want to do with me in my slutty little swimsuit?”
Oh, he likes it.
“I want…” I say, savoring those two syllables. I could be anything. I could be a tease. I could be a Flowerday who does Molly on boats with Formula 1 drivers. “I want to be on a yacht.”
“A yacht?” Kit repeats, bemused. “Okay. Should only be about a quarter million to charter one.”
“I don’t need to pay,” I say, gesturing at all the rich men milling about their fancy boats. “Look at these guys. It’s like a Tom Wambsgans casting call. I could convince any of them to let us on.”
I scan the harbor for what Este would notice. She wouldn’t waste time with any yacht small enough to fit in a slip. I narrow in on the 150-foot behemoth at the very end of the pier.
“That one,” I declare, hopping down from the rail.
“Theo, what are you doing?” Kit asks, eyebrows high over his sunglasses, but I’m already walking backward away from him.
“I just told you.”
“No, I mean … what are you doing?”
“I’m taking risks! Aren’t you happy?”
Beside the slipway up to the megayacht, a man speaks animated French to a passing caterer, a bottle of wine in each hand. I can tell it’s his yacht by the weight of his flax linen shirt and his Cartier watch, but what really convinces me is the label on the wine: Pétrus, the only winery on the Pomerol plateau situated entirely on a blue clay deposit. Every somm I know would shiv their mom for one taste of that wine, and he’s waving it around like it’s Franzia.
“What’s the vintage?”
The man turns at the sound of my voice. Sunlight flashes on a thin gold chain against sandy chest hair.
I’m pleasantly surprised to see he’s strikingly good-looking, in a Cary Grant or Marlon Brando kind of way, old Hollywood with a palpable air of bisexuality. Angular jaw, full lips, dirty blond hair, eyes the same clear blue as the harbor. The crinkled corners of his eyes and salt-and-paper stubble place him around forty.
“2005,” he says, a curious tilt to his smile. “Have we met?”
“I’m Theo. Theo Flowerday, of the Ted and Gloria Flowerdays. Do you know of my parents? Eleven combined Academy Awards? If you’ve ever been to Cannes, I’m sure you’ve seen them around.”
In case none of this is enough, I point toward Kit, who is helpfully bending over to tighten his sandals.
“He’s with me.”
* * *
Émile has an utterly unplaceable accent. It’s part Greek, part Swiss German, part Ivy League American, and a secret fourth thing, a sumptuous quality that brings to mind silk ties and dessert wine. He reminds us to take off our shoes before we step on the teak, then tours us around his enormous yacht, stopping in the chef’s kitchen to taste a sprig of lemongrass for the canapés and give us each a flute of champagne. Then he takes us out onto the main deck, where the party is well and truly raging.
Models lounge on chaises, drinking vodka on the rocks and rubbing coconut oil onto their skin. Grand Prix drivers throw down euros over a poker game. Some people swim in the pool on the deck, while others jump from the back of the boat into the sea. Waiters bring around trays of high-concept hors d’oeuvres and glasses of pink champagne. Music throbs over the speakers, clouds of vapor and cigar smoke waft from laughing mouths, and everyone is so goddamn hot.
“Enjoy yourselves,” Émile tells us, his hand skimming Kit’s waist. Something between possessiveness and arousal buzzes in my veins.
When he leaves, Kit turns to me in disbelief.
“You got us onto a yacht,” he says. “What now?”
I suck down my champagne and grab another from a passing waiter.
“Unbutton your shirt,” I say, already taking mine off and throwing it over the nearest chair.
“Why?”
“I want to see if I can get someone to do a shot out of your belly button.”
“Oh, sure,” Kit says reasonably, complying.
We drink, and we dance, and we swim, and I find, to my slight annoyance and much greater pleasure, that being a renegade Flowerday is actually pretty fun. The daughter of the Belgian ambassador shows me how to take bumps of caviar off the back of my hand. Kit takes to yacht partying like a fish to water, swanning around in his little yellow swim trunks, flirting outrageously with anything that moves. He’s from another world. I want to bite him.
At some point, Émile rejoins the party, and he seems to gravitate back toward Kit or me every time someone pulls his attention away. Kit notices too, giving me a significant look when Émile puts his hand on my thigh during a card game. By now, I’ve had at least a bottle of champagne and a few hits off someone’s designer blunt, so I let myself enjoy Kit watching someone want me. I enjoy watching someone want Kit too.
When Kit and I were together, we were known to take someone home with us every so often. We weren’t open, but we did sometimes enjoy watching each other receive pleasure from a third-person perspective, or competing to see who could get someone off first, or—well, there were a lot of things we liked doing.
I’m kind of starting to think we might like doing Émile, a suspicion confirmed by the tone of Kit’s voice when he leans into my ear and says, “We’ve just been invited up to the private deck.”
I gaze at Kit, trying to read his vibe, except for how I’m mostly staring at his nipples.
“Should we go?” I ask.
“That depends,” Kit says. “He’s definitely trying to have a three-way with us.”
“I mean,” I say. “It’s not like it would be our first.”
“Those were different,” Kit says with a significant look. We were also having sex with each other separately at the time.
“I’m not worried about it,” I say airily. “Are you?”
Kit tosses a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Oh, you know me. Daddy issues. Try anything once. We’re firmly in my wheelhouse.”
“How far are you willing to go?”
He looks at me for a long moment. Just looks at me.
“As far as you want,” he says. And then, “If it’s just me, will you watch?”
I imagine sitting in a hot tub while Kit and Émile tangle up on a chaise nearby, Kit’s competent fingers undoing Émile’s belt. Heat licks lazily at the base of my spine.
“As long as you do the same,” I say. I feel something here, something dangerous. I wonder if Kit feels it too.
“And if he wants us both?” Kit asks.
Well … then I guess I’m having sex with Kit today.
“We’ll do thumbs,” I say, meaning the system we used when we were fooling around somewhere too quiet or too loud for verbal check-ins. Thumb on the chin for green light, thumb on the earlobe for red. Kit nods.
“Okay. How do we keep score?”
“Well, if we all have sex together, I think it cancels out,” I say. “PEMDAS.”
“Sure, no points, then,” Kit says, charitably allowing this reasoning. “But if it’s just one of us, there should be a bonus. Double points.”
“I’ll take that action,” I say.
* * *
Up on the private deck, Émile uncorks a bottle of two-thousand-euro champagne, and we discover that he’s surprisingly good company. He’s interesting in the way only a very wealthy man can be, full of stories of impossible views and spiritual yurt retreats and five-digit tasting menus on private islands accessible only by boat. For a long time, we just talk—about art and wine and travel, about Malibu, about the horse ranch in the Dolomites he built with his own hands.
To me, he gets sexier by the second. I’ve been around plenty of rich fucks, and few of them take the pride Émile does in doing things for himself. He can filet a fish and sear a steak, saddle a horse and mix a mean old-fashioned. I catch Kit’s eye and think he’s fallen under the spell too. In a way, Émile almost reminds me of an older Kit, a collector of the finest things and richest experiences.
Actually, now that I’m considering it, I see an older me in him, too.
“What is the point of having everything,” Émile asks us, luxuriantly sweeping his gaze over us, “if you’re not open to everything?”
There it is. The reason we’re really here.
We glide easily through the preamble, the feeling each other out, the flirting. It’s nobody’s first time, and all three of us are loose-limbed and quick to confidence. Then Émile calls us a beautiful couple, and Kit says, “Oh, we’re not together.”
I shoot him a glare, and he quickly recovers.
“I mean, we’re not exclusively together.”
“I am glad to hear that,” Émile says. “I wonder if you would let me watch.”
Of all the scenarios discussed, I didn’t consider the possibility of Émile simply wanting to watch us together. I glance at Kit, wondering if he’ll back down, but he looks calm, so I decide to be calm. I reach down to the platter of fruit laid on the table between the canvas-cushioned daybed where Kit and I sit and Émile’s deep leather chair.
“What would you like to see?” Kit asks.
The grape I’m grasping nearly slips out of my fingers.
Émile shifts the ice in his cocktail glass. He turns his gaze to me.
“Does he know how to show you pleasure?”
What a fucking question.
I look at Kit as I answer, daring him to keep his composure. “Yes.”
“Will you show me?” Émile asks Kit.
Kit’s eyes search my face. He’s deferring to me, letting me decide what happens next. If this is a game of chicken, I won’t lose. But I also won’t beg.
“I’d rather him teach you,” I say to Émile.
I watch as Émile climbs to his feet and takes off his shirt, revealing sculpted, tanned muscles, including what could undeniably be described as cum gutters. He tosses the fine linen over his chair and turns to me with his hand offered, his manicure pristine but his palms meaty with a working man’s muscle.
I’m tracking Kit’s reaction as I let Émile pull me to my feet. I see the way he leans forward, how he sucks on the rim of his champagne flute.
When Émile presses his lips to mine, I taste custom leather interiors and syrup-soaked fruit. He kisses with the directness of a man who has fucked more people than I’ve ever met and the thoroughness of a lover who still cares about making it good. I find myself looking forward to when he’s kissed Kit and we can compare notes.
Kit watches it all.
He parts his thighs at an instruction from Émile, and I have to stop my reflex to praise him for how well he takes directions. Like this, his little gold swim trunks leave nothing to the imagination, and I can see just how much he’s into this. My eyes skim over his taut stomach, up the graceful planes of his chest and the gentle curves of his biceps and shoulders, to his mouth, slack with anticipation, and his dark eyes, which are fixed on my face.
I touch my chin with my thumb. Kit does it back. Green light.
“Good,” Émile says, unaware of this little conversation. He guides me down between Kit’s splayed legs on the daybed, my back to Kit’s bare chest, my legs falling open against the sun-warmed insides of Kit’s thighs. While my senses are overwhelmed with all of that, he leans in and kisses Kit.
It’s happening inches from my face, so close that I can feel the vibration of Kit’s moan in my own chest and see the pink flash of Kit’s tongue as it slips into Émile’s mouth. I’m so thankful for champagne, for reckless spite and the rush of salt water, because watching them doesn’t sting like it might have yesterday. It makes me wet.
They break apart and Émile returns to the platter of fruit, all of it ripened to softness by the evening sun. I stare down at my open legs between Kit’s, wondering what comes next, wanting whatever it is. Kit’s heart is pounding fast against me, but his hands rest at his sides, not touching me at all. What happened to the Kit who was unable to keep his hands off me, who couldn’t go three days without going down on me? What kind of Sex God has this much restraint? What do I have to do to get him to fucking touch me?
Experimentally, I tip my head back and let it rest on his shoulder, my face tilted toward his. I watch his pupils dilate, his lashes flutter as his gaze drops to my mouth, my exposed throat. Still, his hands stay where they are.
Émile kneels between our outstretched legs, the gold around his neck and the saltiest bits of his stubble catching the sun as he edges forward on his knees. He holds half a peach, its flesh wet and golden, a raw opening at the center where the pit must have been, and tells Kit to use it. To show him what I like.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Kit takes the fruit, examining its contours, palming its velvety skin. I begin to wonder if he’s stalling, if he’s forgotten how I like to be touched. But then he slowly traces the pad of his thumb around the rim of the peach’s red center, making a loose, messy circle, pressing harder when he reaches the darkest flesh at the crest. I swear to every god, I feel the touch between my legs.
