The Pairing(69)

A regular thing.

“I’m happy to know,” I say, meaning it. Then I voice the worry that’s been at the back of my mind for a minute now. “Can I ask—have I been using the wrong pronouns?”

“Ugh.” Theo sighs, forehead to knees. “Not exactly? I guess I’m still sort of soft launching. I’ve been they to all my friends for three years, but I haven’t fully retired she yet, because sometimes I can’t avoid it. It doesn’t feel like something I want to explain to my parents, and I’d rather die than see some stupid headline about Sloane Flowerday’s Sister, Nonbinary Queen! I don’t want to have to correct every stranger who calls me a lady or mademoiselle or se?orita. And at work, it would just be—I mean, hopeless. So it’s like, if I keep she on the table for now, those things don’t feel so shitty. I can frame it in my head in a way that doesn’t hurt. Like pitching a really wonderful, complex, grippy Nebbiolo to a table and watching them order the house red because it’s familiar and they don’t have to think about it. It’s not technically wrong, but . . .”

“You wish they would have tried.”

“I just think it’d give them a richer experience,” Theo says, smirking a little. “But, anyway, the people who know me best say, ‘That’s Theo, they’re my friend.’ And I’d like that to include you.”

My hand drifts reflexively to my chest, over my heart.

“That’s Theo. They’re my friend,” I try. “Yeah, it feels so much better that way. Meaty.”

They begin to grimace, but they can’t hide their laugh.

“Are you giving notes? On the mouthfeel of my pronouns?”

“Sure, yeah,” I say, laughing too. “Very nice vintage. Strong finish. Notes of dressing up as Indiana Jones for Halloween in fifth grade.”

“At least people knew what I was supposed to be. Everyone thought you were Abraham Lincoln in a dress.”

“How could I know that nobody would recognize Gustav Klimt? I was eleven!”

“Where did your mom even find a child-sized druid gown?”

“She sewed it herself,” I say, still laughing. “God, sometimes I worry she was too supportive.”

“She would have loved our Sonny and Cher.”

“Yeah,” I agree, softening. “That was a good night.”

A tour group streams out of the tower and passes us in a swish of sundress skirts and Bermuda shorts. We watch them in comfortable silence, listening to their guide recite the history of the campanile in Mandarin until they’re absorbed into the rest of the tourists filing through the square.

“I kind of love that we were both in drag the first time we slept together,” Theo says, returning to me. “Sex is better when the person you’re with really understands you, and understands how to look at you.”

I consider that.

“For what it’s worth . . .” I search for the right way to phrase it. “You know how attraction to men feels different from attraction to women? It has a different flavor, or comes from a different place.”

Theo nods; we’ve talked about this many times before. “Yeah.”

“Being . . . attracted to you,” I say, putting it mildly, “that has always come from another place completely. Or, maybe everywhere at the same time. But it’s never been like one or the other.”

“I like that,” they say.

Sun flashes off the gold in Theo’s eyes. The moment settles.

“So . . .” I say. “A regular thing?”

Theo grins. They reach out and briefly tangle our grease-smudged fingers, then jump to their feet. It’s almost time to meet Fabrizio.

“Yeah,” Theo says. “But I did the work last time.”

“Oh, the work?”

“Your turn to make a move.” They take two steps backward, still grinning, bouncing on their heels. “I’ll be waiting.”





There is perhaps nothing as true, as enduring, as fitting a tribute to the Renaissance as being so horny you could die on the streets of Florence.

Filippo Lippi was a Carmelite monk when he fell for the nun who sat for his paintings of the Madonna. Botticelli yearned so passionately for his muse, Simonetta, that he painted her as Venus ten years after her death. Donatello was almost certainly unlacing his doppietto for Brunelleschi. Da Vinci wanted to hate-fuck Michelangelo, while Michelangelo was so obsessed with the young Tommaso Cavalieri that he sculpted himself in submission between the nude lord’s legs and called it Victory. Raphael essentially died of exhaustion from too much painting and fucking.

And I, I am standing on the black stones outside a caffetteria, watching Theo eat pastry.

They’re wearing those tan work pants, the ones that make them look like they spend all day working a steam-powered letterpress. Their shirt tugs at the broadest points of their shoulders and nips in at the waist. As they bite off the corner of a cornetto, their brows go down and then up, from investigative to pleased.

We’re traveling with a third now: the mutual understanding that sex will happen again. That I get to choose when, and how. Every moment is syrup-sticky with intent and anticipation, sitting heavy on my palate, tasting like the moment.

I have a plan, though. I was up late in my little Florentine hostel bed designing the right moment, picking the right place, and we won’t reach it for another two hours, so I have to wait. Theo deserves it.