The Pairing(63)

I leave the terrace as quickly and discreetly as I can, praying nothing happens until I’m out of sight. Through the dining room, down the stairs, out to the street—I don’t stop until I’m on the gravel, where no one but an old man sitting by the road in a kitchen chair will see if my nose starts to bleed.

Most of the time I find it romantic and even somewhat sexy that, ever since that water taxi in Venice, my nose sometimes bleeds when I feel an especially powerful emotion. It’s like being the victim of a curse in a Greek tragedy or Satine in Moulin Rouge. But Theo isn’t stupid, and if this keeps happening, I’m going to give myself away even more than I already have.

I tip my head forward and lean against a garden wall, waiting for the feeling to subside. It works: When I swipe my thumb over my upper lip a few minutes later, it’s dry.

I release a sigh and contemplate calling Maxine, or even Paloma, just to tell someone what I can’t tell Theo.

There was a moment, a month after Theo and I settled into our apartment in Palm Springs, when things began to shift. I glanced up from my morning reading and I caught her staring at me with a private sort of tenderness in her eyes, and for the first time in a long time, I wondered if she loved me the way I loved her. If this was how she always looked at me when she didn’t think I could see.

For all my regret, I felt that bud of hope last night too. It was only a breath, a quiet swish in through her nose and then a softening of her mouth, as if she might have pulled me deeper if I hadn’t already been staggering away. But I’d be a fool to hold on to that after how she talked at the table just now, as if it was all a joke to her, as if—

The door behind me flies open.

“Kit!”

Theo charges out into the street, hair wild and amber in the windy dusk.

Her boots pound against the stones, and my first thought is, good. Theo should always walk with heavy footsteps. She should leave deep tracks wherever she goes so everyone can know she was there, like a historical event. Archaeologists should put tape around her footprints and study them with brushes.

She draws close and demands, “What are you doing out here?”

“Nothing,” I tell her. “I just—I needed some air.”

“We have an outdoor table,” Theo points out.

“Different air.”

“Why?”

Every day of this trip, I’ve wanted to tell her. And every day, I’ve told myself no. But I’ve been so close to her, and everything has been so beautiful, and I’ve swallowed so many words already. I’ve made meals of my heart. If she keeps pushing, I’m afraid I won’t last.

“Theo, I know I fucked up last night, and you have every right to be angry,” I say, closing my eyes, “but was that necessary? In front of the Calums?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind,” Theo says, “since you said it didn’t mean anything to you.”

And I hear myself say, “I meant it.”

Rilke wrote, Who hasn’t sat trembling before his heart’s curtain?

“I meant it,” I say again. “I’m sorry I did it, and I wish I could take it back, because I have loved being your friend again, but I have been going out of my mind trying to hide this from you, and then on the yacht, when I thought we might—when we almost—it was too much, Theo. And for one moment, I couldn’t keep pretending that I haven’t wanted to kiss you since you walked onto that bus in London.” I take a breath. “But I will never do it again if you don’t want me to.”

Theo stares at me, lips parted, chest falling and rising. The trees above us shiver in the wind.

“I knew it,” she says at last. I was braced for that, but not for the furious triumph in her voice. “You feel it too.”

My heart thumps hard in my chest. She can’t mean—

“Theo,” I say, “what do you feel?”

“This—this—thing between us,” Theo says. “This problem.”

Ah.

Theo continues, beginning to pace.

“We’ve had sex in the past,” she says, “and now we’re not having sex anymore, but we’re talking about sex all the time, and thinking about sex, and thinking about each other having sex with other people, and I thought that would help, but it’s doing the opposite. Not fucking each other is making us both stupid. And I think we have to do something about it. Like, get it out of the way.”

I put my hands on Theo’s shoulders, stopping her pacing. A cloud of dust settles around her boots. Her face is inches from mine, eyes bright.

“What are you saying?” I ask her. “That we should have sex?”

“No, that would be too much like getting back together, and we’re not getting back together,” Theo says plainly. “That’s out of the question. Right?”

“I—” I remove my hands. “I do see how having sex would feel like getting back together.”

“Yeah,” Theo says, nodding hard. “But we have to do something because—” She sucks in a breath and pins me under her steady gaze. “Because I do very much still want to fuck you. So, do you want to fuck me?”

“Theo,” I say. “Worse than you can possibly imagine.”

“Great,” Theo says. Color bursts high in her cheeks, her breath short like she’s about to take off running. I love her. “Then, I think—I think we should have sex, just . . . without actually having sex.”