The Pairing

by Casey McQuiston

“Oh, poets are easy,” Kit says, breath warm against my cheek, all apples and spice. “They just want to be thrown around.”

“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,”

these places are real and belong to people we’ll rarely meet while passing through, that Florence will forget us even if we remember it for the rest of our lives. I find it terribly romantic, the evanescence.

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.

Sometimes I think the only way to keep something forever is to lose it and let it haunt you.