The Pairing(105)

The third time, the words stick in my molars like candied orange peel.

Secreted away in the monastery behind the Chiesa di Santa Caterina is a tiny dolcería selling sweets made from the nuns’ recipes. I learned in Venice that most of Italy’s famous sweets originated in monastery kitchens, crafted by monks and nuns with no indulgences but sugar and flour. These nuns make Fabrizio’s favorite cannoli in Palermo.

In the piazza between the church and the monastero everyone still buzzes with Blond Calum’s heroism. Theo’s helping Montana fix a broken dress strap with safety pins and keeps glancing from Montana to the Calums to Dakota and back, observing everything.

Our eyes meet.

I’m gathering valuable intel, go get cannoli and I’ll tell you what I find.

Inside the dolcería, every confection suggests the simplicity of a kitchen with only a handful of ingredients and the obsession of a thoroughly cloistered nun. Almond paste molded into clamshells and stuffed with cream and apricot jam, or sculpted and painted to make glossy, lifelike figs and pears and peaches. A few extravagant cakes are topped with piped curls of white icing and piles of sugared fruit—a sign declares these TRIONFO DI GOLA—TRIUMPH OF GLUTTONY. God, if I could title my memoir.

I order cannoli for two, Theo’s with extra pistachio bits and candied orange. Outside, under the fountain of San Domenico, Theo can’t believe the size of them.

“Jesus, it’s like a burrito.” They take their cannolo without having to ask which one is theirs, then notice the plate in my other hand. “What’s that?”

“I got you something else,” I say, showing them a small, domed cake coated in white icing and topped with a candied cherry.

Theo tilts their head. “Is it supposed to look like—” They glance up at the saint in the fountain, then whisper, “—a titty?”

“Yes, they’re called St. Agatha’s Breasts,” I say. “I saw them and knew you had to see it too.”

“I extremely do,” Theo says, taking it from me happily. “Oh, that reminds me . . .”

They report the status of the Calums-Dakota-Montana sex polygon, which is that every side has now been consummated except for Calum-on-Calum, but the sudden exhibition of Blond’s livesaving skills may be reigniting a nostalgic flame in Ginger. Montana and Dakota are doing their best to encourage this, because Montana is a completist. I listen with my mouth full of thick, sugary mascarpone and find myself rooting harder than ever for the Calums. Seems like a waste to never have sex with the person who pulled you from the mouth of a shark.

Over Theo’s shoulder, Ginger Calum swipes a bit of mascarpone from Blond’s chin with his thumb. I wonder if he’s spent his life the same way I have, finding small ways to look after the person who saved us when we were young. I hope he gets as much joy from it as I do.

“Incredible cannoli, by the way,” Theo says, chewing a bit of orange. “You’re so good at ordering for me.”

My eyes meet Theo’s. They must see the softness on my face, how sweet it tastes to be told I’ve taken good care of them. Pink blooms on their cheeks. This has always been the part they’ve been least willing to see, how caring for them is something I want to do and something they can allow themself to have.

They don’t turn away now. They lift their chin and hold my gaze. The moment falls over us like a net in the sea.

I’m going to say it as soon as I find the right words. I’m in love with you. I love every part of loving you, even the parts you don’t think you deserve. You are the love of my life.

I begin to say, “I—”

Theo’s phone rings. It’s Sloane, and they’ve just started speaking to each other again, so Theo needs to take it.

“Of course,” I say. “Of course.”


The fourth time I almost tell Theo I love them, we’re under a vault of stars.

The Martorana is nearly a thousand years old, and it looks like a place out of time. It’s a physical record of the island’s history, with its Spanish Baroque facade and Romanesque bell tower grafted over the original Byzantine dome and radiating Islamic niches. Inside the basilica, golden Greek mosaics glitter from the floor to the vaulted ceilings.

I remember the night Theo drove us out into the desert and held me under the blackberry swirl of the Milky Way. They kissed me as deep as the sky, every point of skin contact as sharp and hot as a star. They showed me the galaxy, then made me feel it. That’s one of Theo’s natural gifts, the way beauty moves through them like stained glass. It illuminates them, and they transform it in kind.

They stand in this luminous church and look at the ceiling of the nave, which arcs upward into a heaven of deep blue tiles and blazing gold stars. Another galaxy for Theo.

What I want to say is, Do you know that you refract light? But I love you could be close if I said it right, hushed in reverence beneath a mosaic sky.

I step toward them.

A bell rings; the church is closing for the day.


The fifth time, we’ve just eaten one of the most interesting meals of our lives.

The first restaurant in Palermo with a Michelin star sits within the stone archways of what was once Antonello Gagini’s Renaissance sculpting studio. In a way, it’s still an artist’s workshop. Blood orange–glazed veal sweetbread with fennel confit, sea anemone with salted ricotta and sauce Choron—what was all that, if not art?