The Pairing(84)

They zip the kit up, climb to their feet, and drop it on the bedside table. Then they sit on the edge of the mattress and draw their knees up to their chin, looking absolutely furious with themself.

I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Why . . . why would you lie to me about all of that?”

“Because I wanted you to think I had my shit together!” Theo says miserably. “I wanted you to think I’d grown. I wanted you to see me for the first time in four years and be amazed.”

“That would have happened no matter what.”

They roll their eyes spectacularly. “Whatever. I couldn’t have you pity me, and I still can’t, so just—please don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you think I could do better,” Theo says. “That’s how Sloane looked at me too.”

“Sloane? Did she—is that why she sent the wine?”

“I tried to talk to her about it, and she sort of laid into me about, you know. My nepo-baby complex.”

I frown. “Your . . . ?”

“She tried to give me money. Called it an investment, like it’s not charity. And when I said no, she went off about how I make my life harder on purpose just to prove a point.”

“Ah. And when was this?”

“In Nice. After I left you with Apolline.”

The pieces of the past few days begin to rearrange themselves.

“So, when we got to Monaco, you were . . . ?”

“In full self-destruct, yeah.”

I pull myself off the floor and sit on the foot of the bed. Is that all this has been to them, with me? Self-destruction?

I don’t know what difference it would make if it was. Does it matter if Theo is fucking me to destroy themself, if I’m destroying myself to fuck Theo?

I push my fingers through my hair and concentrate.

“How do you feel now?”

Theo answers after a long pause, their voice quiet but firm.

“I cannot build a life on being a Flowerday. I want to build a life on being Theo.”

“Then don’t use the family name,” I say. “Or the connections, or the favors—you never needed any of that to be great.” I choose my next words carefully. “But, Theo . . . maybe you should consider taking the money.”

Theo fixes me with a hard look. “You’d take it, wouldn’t you?”

“I would. And then I’d make it mean something.”

“That’s the problem,” Theo insists. “I won’t do anything great with it. I’d take Sloane’s money and blow it, and that would always be between us. I can’t risk that. She’s my best friend, and I can’t—I can’t—”

The unfinished sentence hangs in the air between us: I can’t lose another best friend.

“You don’t know that’s what would happen, Theo.”

“Precedent says otherwise,” Theo replies. “I want to do all these things on my own, and I—I just can’t. It was stupid to think I could.”

“Then use the money to hire someone to help you.”

“What, and waste someone else’s time too? I’m wasting enough on my own.”

I put my head in my hands, nearing the purlieu of my patience.

“God, Theo, sometimes you just—”

They round on me, eyes wet.

“What, frustrate you? Well, we have that in fucking common. Don’t you think I would fucking love to be different than this?”

“You don’t need to!” The words burst out like bitter olive in a press, crushed beyond the limits of my skin. “Je te jure, Theo, I have never met another person with more to offer the world and less faith in themself. You are brilliant, and magnetic, and strong, and impressive and—and vital, and I cannot keep listening to you talk about someone I love like this, so please, for God’s sake, stop.”

Theo is silent, eyes wide, lips parted in surprise. My heart fills my throat. I realize too late what I’ve done: I’ve said I love them. I go on before they realize it too.

“You have it backward,” I say. “It’s the rest that needs to be solved, not you. Will you hear me, please? You were good enough to get this far. You are good enough to fix it. You are good enough for anything you want, but you have to believe it.”

Theo doesn’t answer. In the dark room, we sit quietly on opposite ends of the bed, contending with our own hearts.

Slowly, Theo begins to unfold their body. They lie back on the bed with their face to the ceiling and extend an arm toward me, palm open. I ease myself backward, shifting my shoulders until our heads are bent toward each other. I lay my hand over theirs, and they twine our fingers together.

“I don’t know where to start,” they say.

I tell them, “Anywhere.”

We lie on our backs with our arms and legs spread as if we’re floating together on a wide sea. Theo takes slow breaths, in and out, until one comes out as a low, rueful laugh.

Gradually, we begin to shift closer. Theo’s ankle hooks over mine. My fingers slip to the tender point of their pulse. When I turn my head, I find them already bent toward me, their eyes deep with desire, with some other enormous thing that doesn’t look destructive at all. It looks like roots, like something that lives and grows.