The Pairing(37)

“I was a fool the first time we met,” Lars says. “Proud, crude, always one woman after another.”

“And I was married!” Birgitte adds. “It was the wrong time. But he was the right man.”

Lars wraps his hand around hers. “Still, I wonder what life would be if I had asked her to run away with me that day at Jezero Kozjak.” He looks at us intently. “Learn from an old man. Take care of good love when you find it.”

Kit glances at me with something soft in his eyes, like we could still be those kids in California.

The Somm once told me how he came to love wine. Everyone has that one bottle, he said. His was a red that sat in his mother’s kitchen window for twenty-seven years, until one day he looked up the vintage on the sun-bleached label and discovered it could have been worth forty thousand dollars if stored properly. Instead, it’s a window decoration, a precious thing that spoiled because nobody thought to take care of it.

I do, despite everything, want to take care of this. There’s never been another person who could fill Kit’s place, and I know there never will be. I’ve been living around that gap, never looking at it, always feeling the draft it lets in. Yesterday was so warm, though.

I want to be his friend—not because it’ll make the trip easier, but because I want to. But I can’t do it like this. If I’m going to do it right, there are things I have to say.


The green peak of Monte Igueldo towers over San Sebastián, and a little amusement park sits on top. In the packed crowd of Semana Grande tourists, I feel my first moment of gratitude for our navigational beacon of butt-fucky Pinocchio puppet. At least when it’s time to regroup in an hour, I’ll only have to look up.

Before Kit can be swept away, I grab the strap of his sling bag. I point to a sign advertising a children’s boat ride with once-in-a-lifetime views.

“Wanna be my co-captain?”

“Yeah,” he says, smiling. “Yeah, let’s go.”

At the front of the line, a teenaged ride operator waves us into a miniature boat and pushes us off down the long, winding flume. Greenish water carries us forward, alone together, Kit in the front seat, me in the back.

At the first big curve, the trees fringing the flume give way to open air, and the view spreads into panoramic widescreen. It’s as spectacular as promised: water glistening for miles into the horizon of the Atlantic, the distinctive seashell-shaped bay of La Concha, small white sailboat triangles, jutting green islets, lush mountains cupping the city and fading off into distant blue-gray shadows.

The boat rounds another corner and floats into a rocky cave, and then, as if to wake us up from a dream, our boat bangs into the one in front of us.

The river is stuffed bumper-to-bumper as far as I can see, each boat full of confused tourists and cranky children. Another boat collides with ours, and when I turn to check, it’s Stig waving at me apologetically.

“Hey buddy,” I say.

“Hall?,” Stig replies. His boat is sitting dangerously low in the water.

“I think we’re stuck,” Kit says.

We wait, sitting in silence except for the rush of water and the conversation of the Portuguese tourists in the next boat. Stig hums to himself. I study the inside of the cave.

It appears to have been decorated to appeal to children sometime in the late ’90s, but not in any way that makes sense. In the recesses of the cavern, someone has propped up plywood cutouts of a random assortment of Disney characters—Peter Pan, Quasimodo, Hercules flexing his biceps, all looking conspicuously un-trademarked. Between them are a few topless mermaids, a stuffed stork, and a plaster crocodile with glowing red eyes.

“Interesting decor,” I comment, eyeing a mannequin dressed as a pirate and a hauntingly out-of-place skeleton.

“Sort of Disneyland meets Willy Wonka’s nightmare tunnel,” Kit replies.

“‘It’s a Small World’ on ayahuasca.”

Kit laughs, and I think, fuck it. There’s no good place for this conversation. Might as well have it in a cursed mermaid-nipple dimension.

I take a breath and say, “Kit.”

He twists in his seat to face me like he’s expecting another joke. I can see the moment he registers the serious look on my face, and the quarter second after, when he calculates how rarely I look serious about anything.

“Oh.” He pushes a piece of hair behind his ear. “Are we . . . ?”

We are.

“I know I said I didn’t want to talk about what happened,” I say. “And I honestly don’t see the point of getting into what we said on the plane, or the Paris thing, because I haven’t changed my mind, and you obviously haven’t either.” I pause. He doesn’t contradict me. “But I do have to talk about what came after, if we’re going to be friends.”

Kit absorbs that.

“Okay,” he says, nodding thoughtfully. “After. What do you mean? Heathrow?”

My face flashes hot. I’m already irritated on reflex.

“Yeah, Kit,” I say, making an effort to keep my voice polite, “weirdly enough, I would like to know why you left me at an international airport with my dick in my hand.”

A pause.

“Theo, you flew back to America without me.”

“It wouldn’t have been without you if you had shown up.”