The Pairing(66)

Whatever that means, Orla does have one. Theo rigs it up, Orla climbs aboard to turn over the engine, and after a minute of clunking and scowling at some kind of meter, Theo shouts, “I was right! The head bolts are loose!”

Apparently this is an easy fix, because Orla is jolly as she pulls out her toolbox. I watch, feeling wobbly and iridescent as Theo digs through it with the offhanded confidence of a self-taught mechanic. How long has she known how to do this?

“Kit!” she calls out. “Can you give me a hand?”

“You’re up, love,” Orla says, slapping my hand to tag herself out. She sits beside Fabrizio and gives me an indiscrete wink, and I regret telling her how I feel about Theo when we were strolling those lavender fields in Sault.

Theo smiles as I approach, glistening with sweat and flushing vigorously under her freckles. I try not to remember her weight in my lap.

“Do you have a sketchbook on you?”

We need to tighten all twelve head bolts on the cylinder, she tells me, which I’m sure means something. This has to be done in a very specific sequence, one Theo has memorized from having the same problem with her own Volkswagen bus but can’t explain without drawing a labeled diagram. We’re going to take turns tightening the bolts and reading the sequence out loud, to make sure she doesn’t skip any steps.

“Oh, and it’s gonna get greasy,” Theo says, eyeing my linen. “You might want to, you know.”

To finish her sentence, she peels her shirt off and tucks it into the back pocket of her jeans, safe from stains. All the powerful inches of her swimmer’s build are now concealed by only a skintight undershirt.

“Oh, sure,” I say, going out of my mind.

I strip my shirt off and throw it to Orla, who waves it over her head like a scarf at a football match. Fabrizio applauds. I happen to know that Theo and I are both nice to look at topless, and I’m pleased to feel Theo’s gaze settle on my shoulders.

“I do love these Tuscan views, don’t you, Fabs?” Orla says to Fabrizio.

“Sì,” Fabrizio says, eyeing us with drowsy delight.

With Fabrizio and Orla’s encouragement—half sincere cheering and half suggestive wolf calls—we fix the engine. Theo explains the torque wrench to me and guides my hands on it, showing me the precise amount of muscle to apply. It’s hard, and it’s sweltering, and Theo’s skin is so close to mine, and this new, resolute, commanding side of her is making me lightheaded, but it also feels natural, somehow. After last night, I was afraid she might pull away, but there’s an ease here. She trusts me to help her. I trust her to let me.

When we’re done and Orla cranks the engine, a cheer goes up inside the bus. Theo stomps her feet and slaps a victorious hand against my chest. If everything else was different, this is when I would kiss her.

Instead, I put my hand over hers and lift it away gently, squeezing once before I let go.

We roll on to Pisa.


French buttercream is a very particular color. Italian and Swiss buttercreams have that pure gloss of egg-white meringue, but French buttercream doesn’t begin with egg whites. It begins with yolks, beaten until ribbon smooth, then whisked with hot sugar syrup to make pate à bombe before the butter goes in. When it’s finished, it should look richer than its sisters, a shade of white-gold that means it was one degree more difficult.

I’d describe the Tower of Pisa’s color in afternoon light as French buttercream. In pictures it seems to stand alone, but in real life, it’s in a green square with a matching cathedral, baptistery, and camposanto. They make a neat set. Fabrizio says this is called the Piazza dei Miracoli—the Square of Miracles.

Before the group splits, Fabrizio lines us up so he can take the classic Leaning Tower photo for each of us. I hang back with Theo to watch. Lars poses as if he’s holding the campanile in a gelato cone; both Calums pretend to fuck it.

“Don’t you want one?” I ask Theo.

“Nah.”

For someone so certain of her hotness, Theo has historically been camera shy. I see the way she’s watching, though, and I realize that at all these sights we’ve visited, I’ve never once seen her take a photo of herself.

“You’re not too cool to do tourist things, you know.”

Theo lowers her sunglasses. “I could say the same to you.”

“Oh, you think I can’t be uncool? Because I can.”

“Won’t they revoke your French passport?”

“Let’s find out.”

I jump up onto one of the stone stanchions keeping visitors off the lawn and do all the most cliché, embarrassing tower-tourist poses—holding it up, kicking it over, back-to-back lean—until Theo stops taking pictures and starts begging me to stop, screaming with mortified laughter. It works, though. When I tell her she has to do one now, she laughs and sighs and says, “Fine.”

I line up the shot: Theo with grease-smudged hands in front of an 850-year-old tower, both of them tall and gorgeous and beaming.

“Oh, wow,” she says when I show her the photo. “I actually really like this one.”

“Yeah?”

She touches the back of my hand as she passes the phone back. “Yeah.”

Theo’s been like this about photos since we were eleven, when she still went to premieres for her sisters’ projects. It was the big one, the Willem Dafoe movie that both Sloane and Este were in, and Theo wore a blue suit with a flower-print tie. Flowers for Flowerday, she said.