The Pairing, page 21
What a wonder, what a miracle: somehow, more of her.
* * *
We have tickets to the top of the tower, but we’re too heat-drowsy to climb the stairs. Instead, we buy gelato from one of the shops fringing the piazza and admire the tower from the cathedral steps below.
Theo tips her head to see all the way to the top of the campanile, all the repeating Romanesque arches making a pattern of half-moons like rows of pastries from this angle. She spoons amarena gelato into her mouth and hums.
“I feel better than I expected to, about last night,” she says casually.
My spoon stops in my cup of fior di latte. I wasn’t expecting us to talk about it. My mouth slips sideways into what I hope is gentle interest and not obvious, profound relief.
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought I’d be angrier?” She exhales a laugh. “At myself, that I did it, or at you, for making me want to. But I feel … good. Relieved, even. I think I’m glad we did it.”
“That’s good. That’s really good, because I…” I should hold back. I shouldn’t ask for more. But I think I might die if that was the last time she touched me. “I would love to keep doing it.”
A pause. Theo stabs her spoon into the lump of gelato.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, fuck it, why not?” She looks off into the distance where gold hills meet a big blue sky, a dangerous, punch-drunk edge to her voice that makes my heart pound. “It’s like … nothing in this life matters except what you want, and what feels good. Right? Taste everything, fuck how you like, nothing else matters. You know what I mean?”
“Of course,” I say. “I’m French. We invented that.”
“Exactly,” Theo says. She angles her face toward me. “But there’s one thing I should tell you if we’re going to be hooking up.”
I brace for a catch, a caveat. “I’m listening.”
“So,” Theo begins, “I don’t know about you, but after we broke up, I sort of wasn’t sure who I was anymore.”
I think of my own first year after Theo, drowning myself in poetry and pastry, pouring all my love into person after person and still waking up full afterward, wondering if the problem had always been me.
I say, “Sure.”
Theo nods. “So, I went back to the beginning of me. Like, square one. And I started going through everything and figuring out what went where. And one of the main things I found is that—” A pause, a pinch of contemplation between the brows. “I think gender has always been more complicated for me than I wanted to admit.”
Oh. Oh.
“I don’t necessarily see myself as any particular, static thing,” Theo goes on, “but if I have to pick, nonbinary is the closest. I just know I’m a lot of stuff, but one thing I’m not is a woman. Does that make sense?”
Truthfully, it wouldn’t matter if it made sense. I would accept anything about Theo even if it didn’t agree with any laws of this world or the next. But more importantly, it does. It’s not so much a revelation as an explanation of something I’ve never been able to put into words about Theo, like the day I learned what a superbloom was.
“That might make more sense than anything you’ve ever said to me,” I say. Theo laughs like I might be joking, but I don’t break eye contact. “Really. Of course that’s you. That’s been you forever.”
Theo blinks. “You think so?”
“Theo, you’re—do you know how big you are?”
“Yes, I’m five-ten.”
“Don’t ruin it, I’m being sincere,” I tease, bumping my knuckles against Theo’s shoulder. “You’re … expansive. You take up space. You make the world bigger to fit you. So, no, I’m not surprised you can’t fit inside one idea of gender.”
“That’s—that’s really fucking kind of you to say,” Theo says, voice soft but fierce, knees pulled up to chin level. “But—yeah, I don’t always tell everyone I hook up with, but if it’s going to be a regular thing, it feels important that you know. And also, I just wanted to tell you.”
A regular thing.
“I’m happy to know,” I say, meaning it. Then I voice the worry that’s been at the back of my mind for a minute now. “Can I ask—have I been using the wrong pronouns?”
“Ugh.” Theo sighs, forehead to knees. “Not exactly? I guess I’m still sort of soft launching. I’ve been they to all my friends for three years, but I haven’t fully retired she yet, because sometimes I can’t avoid it. It doesn’t feel like something I want to explain to my parents, and I’d rather die than see some stupid headline about Sloane Flowerday’s Sister, Nonbinary Queen! I don’t want to have to correct every stranger who calls me a lady or mademoiselle or señorita. And at work, it would just be—I mean, hopeless. So it’s like, if I keep she on the table for now, those things don’t feel so shitty. I can frame it in my head in a way that doesn’t hurt. Like pitching a really wonderful, complex, grippy Nebbiolo to a table and watching them order the house red because it’s familiar and they don’t have to think about it. It’s not technically wrong, but…”
“You wish they would have tried.”
“I just think it’d give them a richer experience,” Theo says, smirking a little. “But, anyway, the people who know me best say, ‘That’s Theo, they’re my friend.’ And I’d like that to include you.”
My hand drifts reflexively to my chest, over my heart.
“That’s Theo. They’re my friend,” I try. “Yeah, it feels so much better that way. Meaty.”
They begin to grimace, but they can’t hide their laugh.
“Are you giving notes? On the mouthfeel of my pronouns?”
“Sure, yeah,” I say, laughing too. “Very nice vintage. Strong finish. Notes of dressing up as Indiana Jones for Halloween in fifth grade.”
“At least people knew what I was supposed to be. Everyone thought you were Abraham Lincoln in a dress.”
“How could I know that nobody would recognize Gustav Klimt? I was eleven!”
“Where did your mom even find a child-sized druid gown?”
“She sewed it herself,” I say, still laughing. “God, sometimes I worry she was too supportive.”
“She would have loved our Sonny and Cher.”
“Yeah,” I agree, softening. “That was a good night.”
A tour group streams out of the tower and passes us in a swish of sundress skirts and Bermuda shorts. We watch them in comfortable silence, listening to their guide recite the history of the campanile in Mandarin until they’re absorbed into the rest of the tourists filing through the square.
“I kind of love that we were both in drag the first time we slept together,” Theo says, returning to me. “Sex is better when the person you’re with really understands you, and understands how to look at you.”
I consider that.
“For what it’s worth…” I search for the right way to phrase it. “You know how attraction to men feels different from attraction to women? It has a different flavor, or comes from a different place.”
Theo nods; we’ve talked about this many times before. “Yeah.”
“Being … attracted to you,” I say, putting it mildly, “that has always come from another place completely. Or, maybe everywhere at the same time. But it’s never been like one or the other.”
“I like that,” they say.
Sun flashes off the gold in Theo’s eyes. The moment settles.
“So…” I say. “A regular thing?”
Theo grins. They reach out and briefly tangle our grease-smudged fingers, then jump to their feet. It’s almost time to meet Fabrizio.
“Yeah,” Theo says. “But I did the work last time.”
“Oh, the work?”
“Your turn to make a move.” They take two steps backward, still grinning, bouncing on their heels. “I’ll be waiting.”
FLORENCEPAIRS WELL WITH:
Campari spritz, cornetti alla marmellata di albicocche
There is perhaps nothing as true, as enduring, as fitting a tribute to the Renaissance as being so horny you could die on the streets of Florence.
Filippo Lippi was a Carmelite monk when he fell for the nun who sat for his paintings of the Madonna. Botticelli yearned so passionately for his muse, Simonetta, that he painted her as Venus ten years after her death. Donatello was almost certainly unlacing his doppietto for Brunelleschi. Da Vinci wanted to hate-fuck Michelangelo, while Michelangelo was so obsessed with the young Tommaso Cavalieri that he sculpted himself in submission between the nude lord’s legs and called it Victory. Raphael essentially died of exhaustion from too much painting and fucking.
And I, I am standing on the black stones outside a caffetteria, watching Theo eat pastry.
They’re wearing those tan work pants, the ones that make them look like they spend all day working a steam-powered letterpress. Their shirt tugs at the broadest points of their shoulders and nips in at the waist. As they bite off the corner of a cornetto, their brows go down and then up, from investigative to pleased.
We’re traveling with a third now: the mutual understanding that sex will happen again. That I get to choose when, and how. Every moment is syrup-sticky with intent and anticipation, sitting heavy on my palate, tasting like the moment.
I have a plan, though. I was up late in my little Florentine hostel bed designing the right moment, picking the right place, and we won’t reach it for another two hours, so I have to wait. Theo deserves it.
I force myself to stare at the paper cups of coffee Theo put in my hands. Both are dark, one black, the other a shade lighter. Theo finishes shoving euros into their hip pack and takes the darker coffee from me, cornetto flakes swirling through the hot morning air.
As we set off through a narrow alley toward the Duomo, I ask, “You take your coffee black now?”
“Ever since I started having coffee with my somm every day,” Theo says. “This is how he takes it. I have a theory it’s the source of all his power.”
“The Somm … is it still the same guy? The one with the ponytail and the tattoo of a rat smoking a cigar, and the—”
“The leather dusters, yeah.”
“Same pastry chef as well?” I ask. I liked the old one.
“Nah, there’s a new guy, but he’s not as good,” Theo says. “Your order’s still the same, right? Little cream big sugar?”
I smile. It’s an old joke, something I mumbled once when I was too tired for English, the kind of thing that sticks.
“Little cream big sugar,” I confirm. Theo’s mouth angles into a satisfied smirk. They take another bite of cornetto, revealing an orange jam at its buttery center. “What’s the filling?”
“Albicocca,” they say in a muffled Super Mario Italian accent. They swallow and translate, “Apricot.”
“Black coffee and they know Italian? Wow, the Bourdainification of Theo Flowerday,” I say, failing to pretend this doesn’t turn me on. I would fuck Anthony Bourdain at any stage of his life and we both know it.
“Yes, like Tony I’ve picked up all the food words and swears from working in fine dining. Vaffanculo!” A passing Italian teenager whips around. “Not you! Scusa!”
We turn onto another tight street, buildings with the same golden-brown walls and green shutters as the last one and the ones before that. Tourists and taxis and men on scooters crowd the road and the high, cobbly sidewalks, but what dominates the view is the massive structure looming ahead at the street’s opening, the side of a cathedral so broad and tall it eclipses the world beyond. A sliver of brick dome peeks out like a red crescent moon.
Theo holds up their pastry, matching its crescent shape to the dome.
“What’s the difference between this and a croissant?”
“A cornetto has eggs in the dough,” I say. “Croissant dough is all about the butter. That’s why croissants are flakier, and a cornetto’s texture is more like—”
“A brioche,” Theo notes.
“Right,” I say, smiling. Maxine did say they’d been un bon étudiant. “Can I try? I’ve heard apricots are sweeter in Italy.”
Theo passes the cornetto to me, and I taste, letting the compote touch every part of my tongue.
“They are sweeter,” I say. Theo’s looking at me with amusement. “What?”
They untuck their sunglasses from their shirt pocket and slide them on.
“You remember what you were doing in that dream I told you about?”
The dream about me eating them out on a restaurant table in Barcelona? I’d sooner forget how to make a baguette.
“Yes.”
“Well, in my dream, you ate an apricot too.”
Theo grins and takes off running toward the piazza.
When I’ve pulled myself together enough to catch up, they’re standing before the cathedral with their head craned back. Their grin has spread into the silent, incredulous laugh usually reserved for a particularly good stunt in a Fast & Furious movie.
“This might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” they say.
When you spend four years studying Renaissance art and architecture with a special focus on southern Europe, you inevitably find yourself in romantic love with the Duomo di Firenze—the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, the Florence Cathedral, the Duomo. I’ve dreamed of standing here. I knew, intellectually, that it would be nearly three times the height of Notre-Dame and one and a half times the size. I’ve read about every elaborate detail, from the architecture Brunelleschi invented to make the dome physically possible to the hundreds of thousands of intricate green, pink, and white marble panels placed by hand to adorn the exterior. And still, it shocks me.
It reminds me of a cake. Gum-paste details for the window tracery, sugar lace for the foliage over the portals, precise layers of vanilla and raspberry and pistachio joconde for the polychrome marble. Like the Tower of Pisa, I can only understand the Duomo in terms of dessert.
“I can’t believe people made this,” I exhale. “I can’t believe I get to see it.”
Theo turns to me.
“Haven’t you—I thought you’d already been to Italy?”
“Only Venice.”
“Oh. So, the rest of the places on the tour will be new to us both?”
I forgot they don’t know.
“They’ve all been new to me, except Paris, and I went to Nice once when I was five,” I say. “We were supposed to go to these places together. It felt wrong to go without you.”
Theo bites their lip, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. I think of the sudden hardness of their voice in Paris, when they said they could’ve gone without me. I believed them then, but now—je ne sais pas.
Finally, they say, “Do you wanna see something interesting?”
“Hard to imagine anything more interesting than what I’m looking at right now.”
“What about four people sharing one cone of gelato?”
I blink. “What?”
I follow their gaze to a gelato stand where the Calums, Dakota, and Montana are passing around a single runny cone of stracciatella.
“Ooh.” I frown approvingly as Ginger Calum tongues down the cone, then holds it out to Montana to give her a taste. “They’re in the Italian spirit.”
“I wouldn’t do that with someone unless I was fucking them,” Theo says. “The two girls they were talking about, the ones who had a threesome with Blond Calum … do you think they meant Dakota and Montana?”
Dakota licks a streak of chocolate off Blond Calum’s hand, and I have to hold my applause. Sluts forever. “Good for them, then. Looks like they’re figuring it out.”
“Maybe they settled the score,” Theo suggests. “Maybe we’re not the only ones who got some action in Cinque Terre.”
We find Fabrizio at our meeting point in the piazza, arguing with another guide in vehement Italian over the best spot in front of the cathedral. He finishes with fire in his eyes and a fuck off gesture of his hand under his chin, but he gets the spot he wanted, which instantly puts him back in a good mood.
“Buongiorno, amici!” he shouts, clapping his hands. “We will begin our walking tour of Firenze? Sì? I think today, because we have many lovers in our group”—I swear his eyes land mischievously on mine—“I want to take you on a special tour of the passion of Florentine history. The secret affairs, the betrayals, the great loves, the scandals. What do you think? Yes? Andiamo!”
We begin at the cathedral, Fabrizio’s voice smooth as he explains every intentional panel and detail, the contrasting stripes of red marble from Siena, green from Prato, white from Carrara. He points up to where a scorned stonemason secretly mounted a bull’s head with its horns pointing at a tailoring shop owned by his lover’s husband. Then he ushers us away to Palazzo Pazzi, a rugged palace once home to the powerful Pazzi family, who conspired to stab the even more powerful Medici princes to death at the altar of the Duomo in the middle of Easter Sunday mass. On its exterior is a small door around chest level, a wine window left over from the plague days, which Theo finds so delightful they stay behind to get a good photo for the Somm.
The next stop is—whoa.
The old alleys are so close and gnarled, Piazza della Signoria seems to open wide out of nowhere. It sprawls in a lake of black stone, clusters of tourists swirling like schools of fish. Directly ahead, water erupts from a majestic white marble fountain embellished with bronze figures of fauns and satyrs, a huge, powerful sculpture of a nude man borne on a shell-shaped chariot at its center.
“The Fountain of Neptune!” Fabrizio announces with a flourish.
I’ve beheld the cheeks of a thousand nude sculptures, and yet I swear this is an extraordinarily hot rendition of Neptune. Maybe it’s the ambient horniness, but the full, muscular ass on this Neptune is—
“Bodacious,” Theo pants, breathless from running to catch up. “That ass is bodacious.”
I turn to see Theo flushed with exertion, shadows of perspiration beginning to show through their shirt. Ambient horniness, buongiorno.
“Sì, very sexy!” Fabrizio says. “So sexy, the sculptor eventually denounces this Neptune and his other nude sculptures for leading people to sin.”
