palermo（day two）

When we arrived in Sicily, Fabrizio told us the myth of its creation. How three nymphs danced across the earth, gathering the best of everything, the most fertile soil and the most fragrant flora, the ripest fruit and the smoothest stones. They met at the bluest part of the Mediterranean, where the heavens overhead were brightest, and they danced there, casting their treasures into the sea, and so the island was formed.

As I walk with Theo to Palermo Centrale in the light of a warm Sicilian morning, sharing granita di caffè with one spoon, I think it must be true.

It's the final day of the tour, and we're finishing with a day trip to Favignana, one of the tiny islands off Sicily's northwest coast. We meet the group outside the train station, clutching tickets to the port in Trapani, where we'll catch a boat to the islet. Montana waves when she sees us, sunglasses flashing glamorously in the sun.

"Hey, we lost you guys last night!" she says. "Where'd you go?"

Theo and I glance at each other, failing to hide our laughter. Montana's gaze skims down to our hands, fingers laced together.

"Oh my God, no way!" she gasps. "Oh, wow, I'm so happy for you!"

Theo arches a surprised brow. "You are?"

"Duh, everyone knows you're, like, butt-crazy in love with each other."

"They—they do?"

"Yeah, Calum and Calum are always talking about how they hope you figure it out," she says, as if this is common knowledge. "Ko, come see!"

Dakota drifts over, looks at our hands, and says flatly, "Slay."

By the time our train arrives at Trapani, it seems everyone else on the tour has heard that we're back together. We stand outside a gelateria across from the pier, eating bubbles of fresh brioche stuffed with gelato and bemusedly watching people pretend they're not watching us. The Swedes are gossiping in rapid Swedish. The honeymooners who gave Theo directions in Chianti are whispering. Even Stig seems invested in our saga.

"Are we . . . tour famous?" Theo asks me.

I shake my head, amazed. "I think we're their Calums."

"Let's give 'em a show, then."

I lean in and give Theo a solid, deep kiss. They taste of coffee and pistachio and sunscreen, like the love of my life.

Aboard the ferry, Theo and I find a spot at the stern of the boat and watch Trapani shrink in the distance as the blue waters grow vaster. We lean side to side, taking each other's weight, the wind whipping our hair into one swirl of brown and rose gold. The sun kisses the tops of our shoulders.

I close my eyes and drink in the sea air, as if it could carry this moment into my body forever.

"You brought yours, right?" Theo says.

I unzip my bag and show them what I promised to bring to Favignana with us: the envelope containing my unsent letter from four years ago, the one I planned to bury at sea on the last day of my solo trip.

In return, Theo opens their hip pack to let me see their own promised cargo: the little anniversary bottle of whiskey.

"Amici!" Fabrizio's voice is warm behind us. We turn to find him bursting through a thin crowd of passengers, arms held wide. "Is it true what I am hearing? You are together at last?"

Theo slips me a small, private smile, which is answer enough for Fabrizio. He scoops each of us up, pressing congratulatory kisses to our cheeks. He promises to order extra prosecco at tonight's dinner and prances away, alight with the joy of romance renewed.

Theo touches their cheek, still smiling.

"I just don't have the heart to tell him," they say.

"No," I say. "I don't think he has to know."

Last night, after we cleaned ourselves up and climbed back into bed together, we couldn't fall asleep. We were too high on each other, too restless with delayed touches and full of things we'd been meaning to say. Theo wanted to see my sketchbooks, so I took them out and flipped through while they sat behind me, peppering kisses across my naked back.

At the top of my shoulder, they paused. "Oh."

I didn't realize they'd reached my tattoo until they smoothed their finger across it.

"Surpasses all jewels," they said in a quiet voice. "I just remembered why I know that."

When I turned to them, I saw tears in their eyes.

And suddenly we were in a different bed. We weren't two adults reunited; we were two wide-eyed children in a bedroom with stars on the ceiling, during the worst summer of my life.

It happened in a way I think my mother would have loved. It was almost a fairy tale. A silent curse from an enchanted garden, an eternal slumber. For so long I held on to that idea to make her death seem less pointlessly cruel, but in the end, it was a single, stupid accident. She slipped and hit her head in the greenhouse, went to sleep certain she hadn't seriously injured herself, and never woke up. There was no sickness, no terrible event. One day she was there, and the next she wasn't, and life as I knew it went with her.

I was thirteen. Ollie was sixteen, and Cora was ten. None of us knew what to do, not even Dad—especially not Dad. But Theo, somehow, did.

They were close enough to our family to know what each of us needed, and removed enough to do the things none of us could. All summer, they skateboarded two miles each way from their house to mine. They asked us our favorite meals, wrote lists of ingredients, and assigned Ollie to grocery shopping. They knew I loved baking and Cora loved cakes, but that Maman's recipes were unusable for now, so they borrowed cookbooks from the library and shoplifted issues of Good Housekeeping from the drugstore. And, when I couldn't fall asleep for days at a time, they climbed into bed with me and read out loud from my favorite book, The Silmarillion.

"Maman read it to me when I was six," I told them.

"In French, right?" Theo asked in that simple, direct way of theirs. "Well, I'm reading it in English, so it's different."

By then, I had known for years that I loved Theo. But in my bed in the desert that unthinkable summer, I knew that no matter what happened between us when we were older, they would always be the person who did this for me. That would always matter more than anything.

I never could find words to tell them what it meant to me, but when Theo's thirteenth birthday came that autumn, I tried to put it in a card. On the back, I wrote a few lines from my favorite chapter of The Silmarillion: the story of the mortal man Beren and the elf princess Lúthien. Beren, after many long, hard years in the wilderness, saw Lúthien dancing on the glades of Doriath in the light of moonrise and fell in love.

For Theo, I wrote a line from Beren's speech to Luthien's father, the king: And here I have found what I sought not indeed, but finding I would possess for ever. For it is above all gold and silver, and surpasses all jewels.

I never told Theo, but I thought about getting a tattoo of those last three words for years. I finally did it a year after our breakup. I still wanted it. It still meant something to me. I'd had the gift of being loved to the center of my soul twice in my life, and even if both of those people were gone, the love had been there. It was still there, in the shape it had made me into.

When Theo touched the ink in the sea near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, I was sure they'd put it together. I couldn't decide if I was disappointed or relieved that they didn't. But last night, when they recognized it, when I was reminded of what it meant to me, I looked into their eyes and knew. I just knew.

"I love you more than anything," I said. "But I can't do this."

It was the last thing I wanted to say and the only thing I could. I lost Theo once by chasing a dream without considering its cost. I can't take that risk again, not even if the dream is them.

The problem is, I can't promise I won't repeat the same mistakes. I can't know if this will end, or when, or how, and I don't know if we could come back from it again if it did. If there's a chance that one day I'll never see them again, and I could change that fate now by never taking the chance, then I'll stop here. I'll make the bargain.

They were silent for a long time, their cheek against my shoulder blade.

Finally, they said, "Neither can I."

We live on different continents, they said. We have different lives.

One of the core truths of Theo is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they'll sacrifice what they want to protect what they have. Our friendship is a sure thing, and they would choose that sure thing over anything.

"But I still love you," they said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "I still love you."

We kissed, and we cried, and we told each other we were doing the right thing. That these are the kind of painful choices adults learn to make to keep something for life. One day it wouldn't hurt so much, and we'd be grateful we had done it.

Then Theo said, "What now?"

They looked so heartbreakingly gorgeous then, with their mussed hair and bruises on their collarbones and wet, pink-rimmed eyes. I had to let them go. But I thought a thing like this deserved a true goodbye.

"What if we're together for the last day," I said, "just to see what it's like?"

"You got us a boat?"

"I mean," Theo says, looking down at the thing from the pier, hands on their hips like a captain surveying his vessel, "technically, it's a dinghy."

I marvel at the little boat floating on the crystal clear water that surrounds Favignana. Its round, inflatable walls gleam pristine white like Italian meringue in the sun. It has two horizontal rows of benches and an adorably small motor on the back, and thanks to Theo, it's temporarily ours.

"You got us a boat."

Theo hops down onto the dinghy's deck with steady sea legs. The sandwiches in my hands are beginning to leak juices through their wax paper and down my wrists, but I barely notice.

"You said, ‘Go get us sandwiches, I'll find something to drink,' and you came back with a boat."

"Oh! I have drinks too!" They dig a shopping bag out from under a bench and show me a sweating bottle of white wine. "It's not that cold anymore, but it's a good one."

"Theo, how?"

"I made friends with a guy at the enoteca, don't worry about it," they say dismissively, as if charming a stranger into lending out a boat on a remote Mediterranean island is something anyone could do. "Come on, we only have it for two hours. Pass me the sandwiches and get in."

When I was sixteen in New York, I envied every person in the Valley who got to witness Theo's career as a house-party king. I wanted to see them like that, strutting cocksure around the room like a young James Dean, magically conjuring up the object of anyone's desire. I wasn't sure I'd ever see the return of that Theo, until now.

"James fucking Dean," I say faintly to myself, and I do as Theo says.

Every place we've stopped on this tour has been so singular, but Favignana truly is unlike anywhere else. The island is tumbled together from sun-bleached beige rock, so uniform in color that even the blocky houses lining its streets are the same shade of eggshell. The beaches are quiet here, natural pockets of white sand between jagged stone shores and the occasional tuft of scruffy yellow-green grass. And the water—the water is so brilliantly clear that boats seem to magically float on thin air.

Since the island is too small to get lost on, we have time to explore on our own. Theo and I have already wandered most of the dusty roads hand in hand, past homes with every window frame and door painted an identical shade of deep sea blue, past cactus-lined terrazzos where old women hang sheets on their lines and old men crack mussels. Eventually, we found our way back to the shoreline, where we split up to gather lunch.

I'll admit, I was a bit smug about the food. I found a yellow truck near a cove selling fresh-caught fish and ordered two overstuffed sandwiches of tuna kebab and tomato, dripping with onion agrodolce and spritzed with lemon between oily, herb-rubbed bread. They smell incredible, but they are undeniably not a boat. Theo takes this round.

Aboard, I ask them, "Do you know how to drive this thing?"

Theo shrugs, wrapping a confident hand around the throttle. "I'm sure I can figure it out. I'm the Crocodile Hunter."

"The what?" I ask, but it's drowned out by the crank of the engine.

As with almost anything Theo has ever put their mind to, it takes them only a few minutes of hands-on trial and error to get the hang of it. Soon, we're skipping like a stone across the turquoise bay, following the curve of the island.

I'm trying very hard not to think about how this time tomorrow, I'll be on my way to Paris, and we'll be apart, and I don't know when I'll see Theo again. Instead, I memorize every detail of this moment. The sunlight on the waves, the hum of the motor and the rush of wind, the silvery fish darting beneath us. Theo, with their dust storm of freckles, hair in the wind, smile radiant.

Theo steers into a secluded cove within steep, curving walls of rock and throws the anchor. There, we float, eating and taking turns drinking from the bottle.

"Fuck," Theo moans as they chew. "Why is this, like, the best sandwich I've ever had?"

"I have a theory about this," I say. "I call it the contextual sandwich."

"Contextual sandwich?"

"Yes," I say. "Sometimes, a perfect sandwich is not just about the sandwich itself, but about the setting. The experience of eating the sandwich. Context can elevate a great sandwich to a spiritual experience."

"I'm following," Theo says, nodding thoughtfully. "I think it's that and also the onion agrodolce."

"The onion agrodolce is everything," I agree. "I want to make a baby with it."

"Ooh." Theo sits up, inspired. "Onion agrodolce, on the fly."

"Well, I already said, I would take the onion agrodolce and make a baby."

"Something you can eat, Kit."

"Why not the baby? Like Saturn devouring his son."

"Kit devouring his onion baby," Theo imagines. "I can see the painting now."

"Art historians hate him."

"And they're right to."

"But actually . . ." I chew and swallow another bite, considering the question. "I think I'd keep it simple. Bake it into a nice focaccia. Let it do its sexy little thing."

"Hm. Focaccia has lots of olive oil, right?"

"Correct."

"Okay, I'll take the olive oil and emulsify that with an egg white," Theo says. "Add lemon juice, basil simple syrup, Gin Mare, bit of soda. Mediterranean gin fizz."

I imagine a bistro table somewhere close to the sea, set with both. A pillow of focaccia with sweet-and-sour onion on a chipped saucer, a juice glass with fizz and a single, fresh basil leaf shipped in from a farm in Cinque Terre. I find that I don't want to come up with the next dish; I want to sit here with this complementary pair.

"Do you ever think," I ask Theo, "about how amazing it is that a drink or a plate of food can be so good separately, but if you pair them together the right way, it becomes an experience?"

"Well, yes," Theo says with a swig of wine. "That is a sommelier's job."

"Huh. It is, isn't it? You're an experience maker."

"Yeah, I am," Theo says, preening slightly. I love to see it. "I think that's what I like most about everything I do, the bus or the somm stuff or anything. I like creating an experience. I like tasting and smelling and feeling things, and listening to what's meaningful to someone, and then trying to distill all of that into a glass."

"What did you think of the wine pairings at that first dinner in Paris?"

"Oh, fuck. Those were inspired. The Chateauneuf-du-Pape they paired with the gigot d'agneau?" They groan at the memory. "Honestly, that might have been my favorite meal of the whole trip."

"Really? We've had so many incredible ones since."

"I know. Maybe I just have a soft spot for French food."

"Oh, you do?" I say, smiling. "Any particular reason?"

I'm flirting, setting them up for an easy, dirty joke about how the French go down easier, but Theo says plainly, "Probably because I'm in love with you."

We said it so many times last night, but my heart still clenches.

"What about you?" Theo asks. "What was your favorite meal of the tour?"

I think about it. "Maybe dinner at Fabrizio's family's restaurant in Naples. That ragù, God."

"Ooh, that was a good one," Theo agrees. "My favorite drink, though—that might have been the Pomerol we had at the chateau in Bordeaux."

I smile fondly. "Oh, Florian."

"Oh, Florian," Theo echoes.

"Be honest—did he take it better than me?"

"Not better," Theo says fairly. "But like a champ."

"Maybe I'll go back to Bordeaux one day."

"Send me a video if you do."

"I'll ask him," I say, more intrigued by the thought of Theo wanting videos from me than the idea of topping God's perfect farmhand. "My favorite drink was the vin santo we had in Chianti, with the cantucci."

"You would pick the only drink that came with a cookie," Theo teases. "Favorite sight?"

"The Duomo in Florence," I say. "Definitely. You?"

"Roman Forum is up there. But I have to give it to the Sagrada Familia." They finish their sandwich and wrap the remains back up in the paper. "Can I tell you a secret?"

"All of them, always."

"I think," Theo says, "being in Sagrada Familia with you, listening to you tell me about it—that was when I started to realize I still loved you."

The tide laps quietly against the sides of the boat, swaying us from side to side.

"It was?"

Theo nods. "Yeah."

"An architecture lecture made you realize you loved me?"

"It was the Gaudí story, man," Theo says, laughing. "It got me."

"It's romantic, isn't it?"

"That man really loved that church." They've pushed their sunglasses up into their hair, and their gaze holds mine as they pass the bottle back. "It was also just . . . I knew I loved you when I listened to how you talk about something you love. I don't know if you know how beautiful it is, the way you give your whole heart to what moves you. You're always looking for reasons to love things, and when you do, it's never halfway. I've always loved that about you."

"Theo," I say softly. I set the bottle on the floor of the boat and take their hand. "I need to tell you something."

"Tell me."

I take a deep breath and say, "My nose is about to start bleeding."

"Your—?"

"My nose, yes."

"How— Oh, fuck, there it goes."

They pull their hand back, grimacing as wet warmth begins trickling into the dip above my upper lip. I'd be embarrassed if we had any reasons left to be. As it is, I have to tell myself not to laugh so it doesn't overflow into my mouth.

"Dude, are you okay?" Theo asks, handing me a paper napkin. "Does it always happen this often?"

"Before I saw you in London, it had been over a year," I say. "But since then—twice a week? Maybe three times?"

"Why?"

I smile, a bead of warmth rolling over my lip. It's just so ridiculous. Theo's brows shoot up.

"Because of me? They're—love nosebleeds?"

I nod. "Always were."

"That's disgusting," Theo says, lunging forward, sliding a hand into my hair.

They swipe their tongue across my lips and push it into my mouth, and we drink in the mingled flavors of us: the acidic burn of green grapes and vinegar, a heady combination of bitter orange and lavender, coppery blood turned sweet and ripe as a pomegranate in Proserpina's palm.

I pull them into my lap, and they push our swimsuits aside and take me right here, floating in our hidden blue cove under the Mediterranean sun. I spread my fingers to touch all of them I can reach, so that when they're gone, I won't have to imagine anything. I'll only have to close my eyes and relive this, their grinding hips, the smell of summer on their skin, their body living forever in my body's memory.

Rilke wrote, He makes a home in your familiar heart, takes root there and begins himself again.

After, we strip down to our bottoms, our chests unceremoniously bare, and jump in. I tread water while Theo swims laps around me, ripples of light sliding over them. I count their efficient strokes. They know exactly where they're going.

At a seaside restaurant near the busiest part of Favignana—that is, one of the streets not wandered by cattle—everyone seems reluctant to finish their last dinner of the tour. Even after all these days on a bus and nights in strange beds, all the blisters from long city walks and Florentine sunburns and daily translation failures, it always seems like home could wait one more day. I don't know if I'll ever be ready to take my final sip of wine wearing shoes that stood before a Botticelli only days ago. I can't imagine walking into my apartment and kicking them off into the pile with the rest.

Around tables laden with fresh-caught seafood, the strangers we met three weeks ago talk and laugh and feast in now-familiar ways. The honeymooners touch hands on the tablecloth. The Swedes finish all their vegetables first. Dakota and Montana photograph every dish from a dozen dynamic angles before they throw their phones down and dig in. The Calums laugh too loudly—although, tonight, they sit closer than usual. A conspicuous bruise on Blond's neck looks about the size of a man's mouth. When Theo catches Montana's eye, she gives them a thumbs-up, and Theo and I raise our glasses. Montana smiles victoriously, running her fingers through Dakota's blond hair.

Between primi and secondi, Fabrizio stands and makes a toast.

"For nine years now, I do this tour," Fabrizio says, holding his glass of prosecco aloft. "Since I was twenty-five years old. If I am honest, sometimes I cannot wait for this dinner. Sometimes the people are not so good, and the weather much worse, and I wish to be home soon as I can. And sometimes, this dinner breaks my heart, because the people are so kind, and the sky is so blue, and the wind is so warm, and the love in my heart for food and wine and history shines back to me from all of you, and I do not want to say goodbye. Tonight, amici, my heart is broken."

People sigh. My own heart aches. Beneath the table, Theo reaches for my hand.

"Grazie mille ragazzi," Fabrizio says with shimmering eyes, "thank you for coming along with me. I hope you will remember me well. Salute!"

"Salute!" the room calls back, and we drink to our dear, delicious, devastating Fabrizio.

Before the end of dinner, we sneak away to the smallest, emptiest beach we can find nearby. We stand before the setting sun and take out the whiskey, like we always said we would. Theo has another day and a half on their own before they fly home, but I leave first thing in the morning, so this is our last chance. Funnily enough, though, Theo has a layover in Paris.

As we drink, Theo asks, "Which city was your favorite?"

I consider my answer for a long time.

Finally, I admit, "I haven't been able to stop thinking about Saint-Jean-de-Luz."

"I was going to say that one too," Theo says. "All the others I felt like I was visiting, but Saint-Jean-de-Luz felt like a home, you know? Or—I guess Paris is home to you, so maybe not."

"No, I know what you mean," I say. "There was something about it, a sort of . . ."

"Peace," they finish for me.

I nod, letting the tide wash up to my ankles. Theo passes me the whiskey, and I savor its burn.

"I think these might have been the most important three weeks of my life," Theo says. "There were so many things I didn't even know I was capable of until I was doing them. And I never would've known if I hadn't come. And now, when I look at my life back home, I feel like I can see actually see it clearly from here."

"I know what you mean about clarity," I say. "You know I've been trying to read A Room with a View for two years now?"

Theo shakes their head. "Really? You?"

"I know. It's been like that with so many things. Baking for myself, or making up recipes, or painting, or drawing. I just haven't had it in me. I packed that book and all those sketchbooks because I was hoping that something here would bring it out. And now I feel like . . . like I'm starting to come back to life. Like I'm a plant and someone finally remembered to water me."

After a long moment of thought, Theo says, "You used to get this look on your face when you were baking—this smile, like you were exactly where you were supposed to be."

I consider this, the differences between now and then, when I was baking my own recipes in my own kitchen. I think I could feel that way again, under the right conditions.

"I might need a new job," I confess. Theo laughs quietly, and so do I. "What about you? What'll you do when you get home?"

"I think," Theo says, tipping their chin up with a declarative air, "I will try to figure out what the one thing I want to do is, and then really commit to that thing."

"That sounds like a good plan."

"And I think maybe, maybe, I will talk to Sloane about the money. And maybe I could even move out of the Valley, to somewhere new," they say. "I don't know. There's so much world out here."

"There is," I agree.

"Most of all," they say, "I want us to stay friends."

God, I didn't realize how badly I needed to hear them say that until they did. I touch their cheek with my fingertips, swimming in the clear-water blues and greens of their eyes.

"I want that too," I say. "I don't want you to ever not be in my life."

"Good," they say fiercely. "And I'll come visit you."

I raise my eyebrows, teasing. "Will you?"

"I will." They put their arms around my waist. "And you'll come visit me, and there could be . . . benefits."

"Benefits," I repeat. "I'll always want your benefits."

Theo laughs.

When we finish the whiskey, I take my unsent letter and roll it up as tightly as I can, then push it through the bottle's opening and screw on the cap.

Theo hooks their chin over my shoulder, pressing their cheek against the side of my neck. I imagine us in five, fifteen, thirty years. Best friends an ocean apart, reappearing once every couple of years to burn the bedroom down, then slipping back to our own lives. Always orbiting each other, never fully out of reach.

I could love that ongoing, extant Theo again. There's so much romance in that, so much beauty in learning how much my heart can endure. Sometimes I think the only way to keep something forever is to lose it and let it haunt you.

I reel my arm back, ready to throw our letter in a bottle to sea, but at the last moment, Theo stops me.

"I want to keep it," they say. "Maybe I'll want to read it, one day when I love you less."