The Pairing

by Casey McQuiston

I love knowing what I’m capable of.

This isn’t a meet-cute. Is this a meet-cute? I’m not into beards. I hope it’s not a meet-cute.

“How do all of theirs look like penises?” Kit puts his hands on his hips. “Sometimes baking is about what’s in your heart.”

It started with Del Taco.

Every day I wake up in the town I grew up in, and I put on my boots and roll up my sleeves and work so hard to be pretty good at a few things, because I know I’d fuck up anything bigger.

The problem is, I can’t promise I won’t repeat the same mistakes. I can’t know if this will end, or when, or how, and I don’t know if we could come back from it again if it did. If there’s a chance that one day I’ll never see them again, and I could change that fate now by never taking the chance, then I’ll stop here. I’ll make the bargain.

I can tell them I was wrong. That I was afraid, but I don’t want to be anymore. That being with them is worth anything. Everything. Whatever it costs, however it ends. The only thing I’d regret more than losing them is never getting to love them the way I could love them now.