The Pairing

by Casey McQuiston

Kit turns a page. If he’s fine, I’m fine.

“AB positive,” Kit says. My blood type. “O negative,” I say back. His. “Baa,” says the sheep.

but he has always loved committing to a bit. He’s probably all juiced up to play tourist. Tasting everything like it’s the first time, falling in love all over again, aesthetically jerking himself off.

In fact, I decide I’d be more concerned if Kit wasn’t dating anyone. He’s so good at it, it would be a waste for him to stay single forever, like Meryl Streep quitting movies.

I, personally, am single by choice, not lack of opportunity. I get plenty of opportunities.

“Oh, really? Is that the local tongue?” “No, the local tongue is what you get when you go in.”

I’d tried so hard to get over him, but I missed him like tea misses honey, boring without him.

and it turns out I’m great at learning things I actually want to know.

The problem is, we’ve only ever been everything or nothing to each other. I don’t know how to start being something to him.

It’s like the dough wants to be touched by him.

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

And every time we hold our glasses together, every time the lip of his glass almost touches the lip of mine, I try not to think, This is the closest we’ll ever come to kissing again.

“I’m gonna be honest,” I say. “I love a menu that’s just a list of nouns.”

This has always been the difference between us. I look at a mountain and think, What a nice view. Kit looks at a mountain and thinks, I wonder if I could climb that.

Shout-out to Fruit Wife.

“May the best slut win.”

I should be bringing her my A game, but Kit’s presence—the scent of salt water on his skin, the faint stain of cherry juice on his lips—is disrupting my process.

It’s not just that I want him. It’s that he taught me what wanting was. Anyone would have a weakness for that.

If there’s a lesson to take from the aftermath of us, it’s that. Not here, not now, but maybe during one of our nights alone in a dimly lit bar, I could put my hand on his and ask if he could ever love me again. And if he said no, at least it would be an answer.

Then came Theodora. The first time I ever saw her, she was the brightest thing in the classroom. The only spot of full saturation I’d seen since we got to the desert. Brassy orange-blond, rose flush and cinnamon-dust freckles, her lip bitten angry red by the bumpy edges of new teeth.

Love took root in me before I even knew its name. Theo was a superbloom. The petals stayed.

Jack of all trades, master of cunt, she once said.

I look at her and miss her twice, once as a lover and once as the friend I had yesterday.

Archaeologists should put tape around her footprints and study them with brushes.

To me, Theo is the eternal foreground. I put them at the center of every room. It’s gratifying when the room agrees.

“Hey,” Theo says quietly. “You okay? You look like you’re worried you forgot something.” Yes, my heart in California and my cock in a fifth-story apartment in Rome.

Love took root in me before I learned its name, and I’ve sat in its shade for so long now without eating its fruit. This feels as if I’ve finally taken a piece into my hands and split it open. It’s so sweet inside. Sour too, slightly underripe—but so, so sweet.