The Pairing, page 27
And Theo said, Do not fucking tell me this is how you’re proposing.
“What were you thinking?” Theo asks. “How could you design a whole life for me without even asking if I wanted it?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to trap all the frustration and grief there. They asked me the same question four years ago, and my answer ruined everything. But it hasn’t changed.
“You weren’t happy, Theo,” I say. “And I was afraid that if you kept doing the same things, you never would be.”
What gives you the fucking right, Theo said back then, to decide that for me?
I genuinely thought Theo would love the idea of no more rent to pay, no more double shifts or getting cursed out in the kitchen, no more rotating through the only five restaurants we actually liked, no ex-hookups to avoid, no credit scores to repair or worry about where they’d get insurance when they turned twenty-six. A limitless life in the most beautiful city in the world, where nobody had to know their family name. And us, together. We could do anything together.
They weren’t happy. They hadn’t been since they’d lost swim and dropped out. Timo worked them hard and nasty, made them earn every inch from busser to barback to bartender to bar manager with sweat and blisters and long nights that only made their shoulder worse. They were tired all the time. They picked up new passions and burnt them out in a week. And sometimes, there was a strange, brittle disconnect behind their eyes, like something was living inside them without being tended, something so essential it might permanently empty them if it died of neglect.
And the thing was, they never said I was wrong about that. But they were possessed of a fierce, stubborn conviction that it was their right to be miserable.
I told them, I can’t keep watching you give up on yourself. I said, I can help you. I said, I worry that sometimes you get in your own way. And Theo said, Do you hear how you keep talking about my life in the first person?
“It wasn’t a life I liked,” Theo says now, “but it was mine.”
Then, Theo had more questions: How long had I been planning this? At any point did I wonder if telling them to abandon their life, move to a different continent where they didn’t know the language, and live in my family’s pied-à-terre was actually romantic or just controlling? Did I care that Theo hates surprises? And I thought, Did I know Theo hates surprises?
I reminded them of Fairflower, all the menus we’d thought of, all our dreams, and Theo said that’s all it ever was to them: a dream. Something nice to think about, nothing more. I hadn’t known, and Theo wasn’t surprised. They told me that I always think I know better and never leave them room to correct their own mistakes, that I live in fantasies and hear whatever I want to hear. I hadn’t known that either.
We went round and round for hours in those cramped airplane seats, through dinner service and tepid plastic trays of lasagna, letting loose everything we’d ever held back. We’d fought once or twice as kids, but we’d never figured out how to fight as adults in a relationship. We didn’t know when to stop. I told them how many times I’d bitten my tongue and let them make the worst choices, and they told me they’d be embarrassed to let their parents pay for their life the way I let mine. They said I only cared about my own ideas of meaning and success, and I said at least I wasn’t afraid to try for them. I was so sure I could see their exact, direct path to being happier, and they refused to take it.
Sometimes I wonder if that fight would have ended us if we’d had it at home. If we could have aired everything, taken a night to settle, and met in the kitchen the next morning, maybe we would have stayed together. But we had it on a plane to London with nothing to do but implode. The last two hours to Heathrow were silent, and I couldn’t think of anything honest that would convince Theo not to leave me. I wasn’t surprised when it seemed like they did.
“You didn’t know what you wanted to do,” I say now. “And I thought that I could help you figure it out, and I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.”
“You wanted to go to Paris,” Theo counters. “You wanted the life you wanted—the life you have now, actually, which seems like proof I never even needed to be there. I was a plus-one.”
I feel like putting my head in my hands.
“Theo,” I say, sounding tired even to myself, “I don’t know how else to say it. You were my life. You were always the whole point of it.”
“Well, I shouldn’t have been,” Theo snaps. “Nobody should be that to anyone, Kit, that’s how a person becomes a thing. That’s how you forgot to ask if Paris was what I wanted.”
And I take a breath and say, “I know.”
The Patty Pravo cassette runs out, fading into thin white noise over the truck radio. Signora Lucia switches the dial off.
It’s quiet inside the truck when Theo says, “What?”
“I know. You’re right. So, please, do we—do we have to keep reciting the whole fight? It was painful enough before I knew I was wrong, so I really can’t stomach it now.”
“You … you think I’m right?”
It’s strange to realize I haven’t told them. It’s such big piece of cargo, I forget not everyone can tell I’m carrying it.
“Theo,” I say, “the Paris thing is the greatest regret of my life.”
Theo looks at me, their eyes so intent on searching mine that I can’t read anything else in them. Then they say, “Say more,” which is such a Theo answer to a moment of quiet vulnerability that I have to try not to smile.
“You were right,” I say. “I have a dream, and get so obsessively swept up in it that I can’t see anything else. I didn’t see you. I was treating your life as a problem to be solved, planning for the version of you in my head who wanted what I thought was best, and I was so sure I was right, I forgot I’d never even met that person. That’s the fucked-up part. I never loved the Theo who would have gone along for the ride. I’ve only ever loved you.”
I’ve done it again, forgotten to use the past tense when I say I love them. I wonder if Theo will notice this time.
“Yeah, that…” Theo says, their gaze far away. For a moment, I think I’ve been caught out, but then they say through a small, sad laugh, “That is fucked up.”
I laugh too, can’t help it. It comes out a sigh.
“If I haven’t said it,” I say, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done anything without you.”
Theo doesn’t say anything, but it’s a soft silence. They nod and turn their eyes back to the windshield, which gradually reveals the distant outskirts of Rome. Squat roadside bars, stucco apartments, pointy cypress trees. I watch them roll by, a strange feeling within my chest like the moment a bubbling pan of sugar resolves into caramel. Like relief, like a turning.
After half an hour, Theo lays their hand on mine. Half an hour after that, when we’ve made it to the city, they finally speak.
“I should have checked the bus schedule again this morning,” they say. “My bad.”
The bus is so far from my mind, this surprises a full-throated laugh out of me.
“I could have checked too,” I say.
Theo squeezes my hand.
“And to be fair,” they say as the truck trundles between Flaminio’s leafy pink and yellow houses, “there were days I wished I could just magically disappear all my problems and restart.”
“I think everyone probably wants that sometimes.”
“Now and then I still do,” they say. “But if I start life over, I want it to be mine.”
I nod. “I know.”
Signora Lucia brings us to a bus stop on the edge of a piazza, across from the market where the tour group should be having lunch. We tell her “Grazie mille, grazie mille” over and over until she waves us off, and then we’re running.
When we were young, Theo would get so angry when we raced each other. We’re both fast, and Theo has always had power and defiance on their side, but I have longer strides and better reflexes. They were always one step behind.
Now, as we run across the piazza, I fall back. Theo advances at a thunderous clip, as if they could be unsheathing a sword instead of pulling their phone from their hip pack, hot Roman sun flashing off their hair like laurels on a gladiator. They’re so gorgeous from this new angle.
They glance over their shoulder to find me one step behind them, and something blooms on their face. They turn away before I can name it.
* * *
Fabrizio scoops us up in breathless relief outside Antico Forno Roscioli as the group finishes lunch. The blessed Calums have saved us a few squares of crusty pizza topped with dollops of pesto and half of a sour cherry crostata, which we eat in big, messy bites washed down with the dregs of Stig’s lukewarm Peroni. It was close, but we made it.
Six at a time, we’re divided into groups, passed off to a grinning driver with a shiny helmet dangling from their fingers, and led away from the market to join our Vespa fleets. Theo and I are among the last to be assigned, but no driver appears. Instead, Fabrizio gives us a vigorous smile and says, “Amici, you come with me!”
Around the corner, we’re awaited by a group of drivers and a line of vintage Vespas in a rainbow of pastels like a box of assorted Parisian macarons. A handsome middle-aged man wearing fingerless riding gloves shouts a joyous greeting to Fabrizio and kisses him hard on the side of his golden face. I’m beginning to suspect there’s someone in love with Fabrizio in every city on this tour.
“This is Angelo!” Fabrizio tells us. “When I first come to Roma, he gave me my first job driving on this Vespa tour when I was only eighteen. I learn everything I know from him.” He turns to Angelo. “And I was your favorite driver, no?”
“Sì,” Angelo says. “All the girls want to take the tour when they see you. Very good for business.”
“And now,” Fabrizio says, “when my tours visit Roma, I bring them to you. And as a special treat, you let me drive like the old days, sì?”
Each rider pairs with a driver—two honeymooners with two sturdy older men almost identical to Lars, Stig with a tiny woman who wears a lot of nose rings and has to stand on her seat to jam the helmet onto his head, Dakota with Angelo. I count the scooters and come up one short. All that remains for Theo and me is a single canary-yellow Vespa with a matching sidecar.
“Fabrizio, no,” Theo says as they realize what’s about to happen.
“Fabrizio, sì!” Fabrizio replies, holding out a helmet for each of us. “One of you will ride in the sidecar, and one of you will sit behind me. Like this!”
He points to Dakota straddling the Vespa seat behind Angelo, her thighs pressed against his and her arms around his middle. One of us will be doing that with Fabrizio while the other squats in the sidecar like a picture-book dog with goggles on.
Theo plonks their helmet onto their head and turns to me. “Should we flip a coin?”
“We could take turns? Swap at the stops?” I suggest. I sweep my hair back and put my helmet on, and Theo instantly starts laughing. I frown. “What?”
“Look at you!” They pull out their phone to take a picture and show me the screen, my frowning confusion and the tufts of hair that stick out from the bottom of my helmet. “God, it’s perfect.”
“I look chic,” I say. “I look like I ride motorcycles on the Amalfi Coast.”
“You look like they shoot you out of a cannon at a circus for gay people.”
“Even better.”
“I know,” Theo says, like they’re surprised by how much they mean it.
I wink and tighten my chin strap, gesturing toward Fabrizio already seated behind the handlebars. “You go first. Keep him warm for me.”
And, with a two-finger salute, Theo kicks a leg over.
The sidecar isn’t as cramped as it looks, and once I get my legs situated it’s almost comfortable. Theo, who continues to think this is the funniest thing that’s ever happened, snaps a dozen more photos, and then Fabrizio cranks up the throttle and pushes off.
The other drivers fall into formation as we turn onto one of the wide main roads of Rome, Corso Vittorio according to a glimpse of a sign. Buildings rise up around us in stately blocks of ivory and cream, distinguished and lined with stone balustrades, propped up by Ionic columns with curling scrolls at their tops. The sky is a blistering blue, and the road bends west, toward the green rush of the Tiber. The engine purrs, and Fabrizio sings into the wind as he weaves through Roman traffic, and from my sidecar, I look at Theo.
They’re a desert baby, brought back to life by sun and heat. Their grin grows wider and wider, the morning disappearing into Fabrizio’s rearview. They lace their fingers together around Fabrizio’s waist and put their face into the wind, gazing at Rome with honest wonder.
I think after everything, now that we’ve said what we needed to say, we might come out okay.
We cruise over an arched bridge to the round drum of Castel Sant’Angelo, atop which legend says the Archangel Michael sheathed his sword to signal the end of Rome’s great plague. Honking cars race us to the travertine facade of the Palace of Justice and back over the Tiber and into winding nests of narrow cobbly streets, toward the Pantheon.
As we reach the temple, Fabrizio turns back to Theo and shouts over the engine.
“When we finish, come back here, down this street, and then the first left, and the first right after this into the alley, and you will find the hostel between the osterias at the end. Orla leaves your bags in your rooms at the top of the stairs.”
“Uh-huh,” Theo says. They’re gazing in awe at the Pantheon’s ancient columns, not hearing any of this.
“Grazie!” I shout, happy to leave Theo’s moment uninterrupted. I’ll remember for us.
We pull into an alley with an ancient faucet spouting crisp, clear water. I’ve read about these—nasoni, public faucets fed in part by the original Roman aqueducts—but I almost couldn’t believe it until now. We catch water in our cupped hands, take turns pressing our fingers to the spouts to make them spray upward like a drinking fountain. Fabrizio tips his whole head sideways and puts his mouth under the stream, and I catch Theo looking when I follow his example, taking cool water into my open mouth until it spills down my chin.
After, it’s my turn to ride with Fabrizio. I wrap my arms around his firm waist, press my thighs against his, our shorts riding up high enough for our sweat to mingle. He compliments the softness of my skin as he cranks the engine, and I thank him with my most flirtatious smile. Theo watches with open, curious hunger from the sidecar below. Two things that endure the passage of time: Roman antiquities, and the thrill Theo gets from seeing me with a man between my legs.
The tour goes on through a blur of stone and ivy, the ruins of the square where Julius Caesar was murdered, the grassy stretch of Circus Maximus once pounded by racing hooves and chariot wheels, temples to Hercules and Portunus so well-preserved a Roman farmer might amble through with a cow to sell at the Forum Boarium. We finish at the Arch of Constantine, barely changed from how it looked when victorious emperors paraded through seventeen hundred years ago, still proud and imposing on the backdrop of the looming Colosseum.
We tour the Colosseum on foot, our shoes on the same stones as thousands of ancient sandals. Fabrizio’s voice is hoarse from use as he recites story after story, reenacts battle after battle. Then we go back out through the archways, past the ruins of the fountain where gladiators washed their wounds, to the top of the Palatine Hill and its wide overhead view of the Roman Forum.
On a long tour, days have a way of stretching impossibly beyond their edges. So many things spread out over such short hours, one after another, until it seems unimaginable that the day could have begun in a different place at all. Like there has only ever been here, and then here, this fountain and that drink and this sparkling pane of glass, each trapped in an instant happening in the memory forever, each instantly replaced with the thing after that. Perpetual fleeting everything, worn-out body and blissed-out brain. That’s how this day goes on.
Fabrizio cuts us loose to explore the Roman Forum. Theo and I wander down the same main street where senators schemed and merchants traded goods and women practiced the oldest profession, everyone working or praying or gambling or spreading rumors, and past what still stands of the triumphal arches.
I imagine Theo and me in their world. I’d be the baker, baking loaves of sourdough under smoldering ash, olive leaves in my hair and flour on my tunic. Theo would be the roguish young charioteer who buys bread from me every morning and flusters the vestal virgins. We’d steal glances but never touch until we were alone, pressing each other into secret corners of temples, and when they bound their chest with leather to race, my name would be carved inside the straps.
“So crazy how two thousand years ago, they were feeling all the same things we feel,” Theo muses. “They wanted to be loved, and eat good food, and make art, and fuck.”
“The human condition,” I agree.
We pause at the most impressive temple, one with ten thick columns still holding up the frieze over its portico. A sign says this was originally built as a temple to Faustina the Elder, the empress. Her husband, Antoninus, was so heartbroken when she died that he had her deified and her likeness cast into gold statues, pressed into coins, and enshrined in this temple. He wanted the whole empire to worship her the way he did, and the cult of Faustina spread.
“Kind of romantic to love your wife so much you start a cult,” I say.
“I don’t know,” Theo says, an ironic lilt to their lips. “Did anyone ever ask Faustina if she wanted to be a god?”
I laugh, perfectly willing to take a nudge to the ribs if it means we can joke about this now.
“You’re right,” I say. “Very presumptuous of Antoninus.”
On our way out of the forum, we realize neither of us ate enough lunch, and we still have four hours until group dinner. Hungry and overheated, we choose the first pizzeria we see, partially because the waiter is attractive and partially for the sheer volume of mist piping into the outdoor seating area. Everything from the chairs to the silverware is slightly damp, sparkling with tiny, cooling water droplets. When the hot waiter takes our menus away, there are two dry rectangles left in their place on the brown paper tablecloth.
