The Pairing

by Casey McQuiston

“I’ll have you know I’ve become very spontaneous. You know how they say to do one thing every day that scares you?” “You do that?” “Well, I’m working my way up. Right now I’m at one a week.”

“May the best slut win.”

Kit should have to sit quietly and let me make the first run at anyone who speaks French, or at least take a disadvantage. Maybe an ugly hat.

At first I suspect competitive sabotage, until I realize he’s checking on me. He’s making sure I’m okay in an unfamiliar place. It holds the comfort of before, when we’d lock eyes across a party and know that whatever happened, we’d get each other home.

It’s all so easy for him. Leaving me for a shiny new life, kissing sexy fishmongers and abandoning me to be cockblocked by my own unresolved feelings.

They ask us so many questions that I’m half expecting a Christmas card from Sweden this holiday season.

Here, now, under a shower of sparks, he looks just like the person who would have missed me, the one who wouldn’t have left. The truth is, I never stopped loving that person. I only stopped believing he existed.

“I have references.” “And I have doubts.”

He gets this satisfied little smile when he’s solved someone’s problem, and I want to watch it tug at his mouth.

“Really? Are you sure?” No. “Yeah, fuck it.”

me making any life choice

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

“One of us spent the entire camping trip in Joshua Tree bitching about how hard the ground was, and it wasn’t me. You just let me know if you find a pea under there, okay?”

The sass Thoe brings is unmatched & I love it for them

If I don’t ask out loud, I’m not responsible for whatever happens next.

He’s looking at my body in the way only Kit can look at something, like he could eat the world up with his eyes. It’s not just that I want him. It’s that he taught me what wanting was. Anyone would have a weakness for that.

When I look up, Kit is biting back a smile. “What?” “Nothing. Just, you said it wasn’t an ass tattoo.” “What—it’s not!” “It kind of is.” “It is an upper thigh tattoo! It’s on my—my—my haunch!” The laugh he lets out is so delicious I want to swallow it whole. “Your haunch? Are you a pony?”

Kit startles awake with a shout that could be a mixture of English and French or just a bunch of affrighted vowels.

“You should have to march your happy ass down to the shops and crank up the bean grinder, baby.”

Kit’s smile blooms even brighter, color splashing into his cheeks. He’s always loved when I get belligerent for his entertainment.

“Do you churn your own butter too? Do you have a chic little Parisian butter churn? Does it have a holder for chic little Parisian unfiltered cigarettes?”

He looks like he might scream, half frustration and half delight, all Theo-and-Kit.

“Yes, Theo, I rode my bike down to the village sheep farm, and I made sweet, tender love to the farmer’s wife all night long so she would let me milk the sheep, and then I carried the pail home and made the ricotta.”

“Then I’ll take the salty tears of the sheep farmer whose wife leaves him for the village hole—” Kit gasps theatrically. “Hole?” “—and use them to make ...

“Ah, yes. The one where the wife dies.” “Isn’t that all of them?” “Sure, but in this one she comes back as a ghost, which he’s only done two other times.”

“You remember my friend Theo,” Kit says, and really, after all the work I’ve put in, it shouldn’t sting to be called that.

His eyes shine with the eager determination of Kit on a mission. I forgot how thrilling it is to be on the receiving end of that look.

“This is just like Ratatouille.” “Good fucking God, Theo.”

You’re not ripping the curtain back on any secrets here, Theo.”

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.

And she’s looking at me while I’m touching someone else, and we’re sleeping in the same bed, and I’m thinking of her every time I sink into another person’s body, and she’s sighing into my palm on the deck of a yacht. I have no room left in myself to hold it all. It has to overflow. And so, I kiss her. I kiss Theo because I’m in love with her. I always have been. I always will be.

A month ago I’d have sworn I could never want anyone more than the Theo I knew. Then I saw this new Theo, and suddenly want wasn’t big enough. This is more like need.

They exude a certain harmlessness, the earnest and beefy benevolence of Channing Tatum, or a cow. Theo loves them, of course, because Theo was a frat daddy in a past life.

Theo should always walk with heavy footsteps. She should leave deep tracks wherever she goes so everyone can know she was there, like a historical event. Archaeologists should put tape around her footprints and study them with brushes.

This man is deeply in love with them and I adore it

“You’re not too cool to do tourist things, you know.” Theo lowers her sunglasses. “I could say the same to you.” “Oh, you think I can’t be uncool? Because I can.” “Won’t they revoke your French passport?” “Let’s find out.”

They made it into a whole thing. Diversity win! Child wears clothes.

I remember how it felt to be eighteen and falling in love with a history of art course catalog.

“‘His life revolved around food, drink, and partying.’ I’ve slept with this Italian boy before.”

What a wonder, what a miracle: somehow, more of her.

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.

“Theo, you’re—do you know how big you are?” “Yes, I’m five-ten.” “Don’t ruin it, I’m being sincere,”

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.

Dakota licks a streak of chocolate off Blond Calum’s hand, and I have to hold my applause. Sluts forever.

“Francesco Medici commissioned this one.” “No way, Bianca Cappello’s slutty boyfriend?” Theo says. “The original nepo baby?” “The very slut,” I say, laughing. “Come on.”

“It’s really about sex.” “Even when it’s about Jesus?” “Especially when it’s about Jesus.

Sex is in every beautiful thing that’s ever happened, and every beautiful thing can become sex.”

I want to take care, to touch them how they deserve to be touched.

I may have also tearfully confided in her how much I still love Theo while Great-Uncle Mikel made me a cup of tea.

It’s as if some baronet and his family took the horses out to visit the next village over and will be back any minute with hot gossip about wheat prices.

Having spent my childhood traipsing naked through the French countryside and my adulthood either studying artistic nudes or living in Paris, nudity doesn’t faze me. I have, however, become an Edwardian gentleman for Theo and Theo only.

They look strong, lean, gorgeously purposeful and beautifully ambiguous, like Caravaggio’s Bacchus.

“He wanted to fuck Michelangelo so bad, it’s embarrassing,”