The Pairing(44)

“Yeah.” He doesn’t look at me, busy stepping out of his shoes. “Of course.”

The room suddenly feels too small, too hot from the lingering shower steam. I pace over to the window and open it.

“I don’t know if it’s much better than your room.”

“Trust me, it is.” He hovers near the en suite, holding his shaving kit. “Do you mind if I . . . ?”

“Yeah, knock yourself out.”

“Amazing, thank you.” He steps toward the sink, pauses, then turns back. “Oh, I forgot to give this to you earlier.” He reaches into the pocket of his joggers and hands me his flimsy little sketchbook. “Keep it.”

“You don’t have to—I can just copy the pages down or take some pictures.”

“Theo, I packed twelve of those. I don’t mind.”

I run my fingers over the blue stripes on the sketchbook’s brown paper cover, the neat letters spelling CALEPINO. I imagine him picking it out at a stationery store in Paris, stuffing a whole bundle of them into his pack, his face shining with anticipation. The first few pages are loose sketches of streetlamps and stray dogs, then notes from that first chocolatería. And—

“Kit. What is this?”

I flip forward—the rest of the pages are the same. For every stop, he’s transcribed my notes in his slanting script, and on the opposite page, sketched a simple illustration.

“Yeah, I, ah, I thought it might help to have visual references?” He leans out of the en suite with his toothbrush in his mouth, toothpaste foaming along his bottom lip. “I mean, you always hated books without pictures, didn’t you?”

“Fuck off.” I go back through the pages—the crescent of a dipped orange slice, the churro’s rough ridges. He even did a cross section of my first bombone to show the layers of caramel and cream filling. “Kit, this is . . . really cool.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

I wish I could see the look on his face, but he’s spitting toothpaste into the sink.

It’s strange and strangely calming to stand next to the bed and look at Kit’s drawings while he does his skincare routine. I listen to the soft clicks of bottle caps and splashes of water, sounds I used to hear every night. I could close my eyes and be in our old apartment. I could smell his plants. I could feel the weight of his head on my chest.

I reach the last page and stop. There, an unfamiliar hand has written a series of digits, smudged like the writer was in a rush.

“Whose phone number is this?”

The water shuts off, and Kit releases the short oh of someone caught in the act.

“That would be the, ah,” Kit says, appearing in the doorway, “the number of that chocolatero who gave us extra chocolates. I meant to tear that page out.”

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

“Kit Fairfield, you dog.” I rip out the page and hold it out, showing him all my teeth when I grin. “You gonna use it? Ask him on a hot date tomorrow?”

Kit folds the page up and zips it into his shaving kit without looking at it.

“I don’t know. Do you think I should?”

“Well, what’s the score?”

He sits at the foot of the bed, right on the edge. He’s never been so cautious with a bed of mine before. Even when we were friends, he’d pour himself across the whole thing. I want to push him onto his back for the sake of consistency. Instead, I sit down next to him.

“One for each of us from Paris,” he says. “Florian, that makes two for you. And Juliette for you in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.”

I let him think it’s true. “And Paloma for you.”

“Mm. And with last night . . . God, was that only last night?”

“I know.”

“That makes four for you, three for me. So I guess, if I want to catch up, I could message him.”

I stand up and pull a pillow off the bed.

“Sure, I mean, why not?”

“Yeah, why not.” He sounds distracted, watching me open the tiny closet to dig out an extra blanket. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sleeping on the floor.”

Kit’s eyes go wide in horror. “No, you’re not.”

“Come on, Kit. The bed is barely a twin.”

“It’s your room, Theo, let me take the floor.”

“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?” I drop the blanket at my feet.

“Theo Flowerday,” Kit says, serious as the grave, “if you lie down on that disgusting carpet, I’m going back to my room.”

His sincere face is on. I sigh.

“Okay, fine. But I don’t want you sleeping down there either. So, what?”

We look at the bed. Again, there is an unthinkable solution, and there’s me, and there’s Kit, and I still don’t have it in me to do what I ought.

“Should we . . . ?” I say. Not a question. If I don’t ask out loud, I’m not responsible for whatever happens next.

Kit says, “We’re friends.” Not an answer either.

“Yeah, okay,” I say. “But . . .”