barcelona

I turn the bombone over on my tongue.

The chocolate is dark and rich, almost peppery. The wet warmth of my mouth melts it down to the caramel and citrus-kissed cream at the center. I focus on how it coats the flat of my tongue, the body of it, the nuttiness.

A bead of sweat rolls down my spine and into the crack of my ass, breaking the last bit of my concentration.

We're standing in the arched doorway of a chocolatería on La Rambla, the wide, busy, tree-fringed walk that runs from central Barcelona to the Mediterranean Sea. The buildings here are a strange mix of new and old, incongruent pieces of a long-lived city keeping up with its people. A sixteenth-century church across from a shop serving dick-shaped waffles, a McDonald's wedged between saints. A dog lies panting in the alley nearby, stealing shade from the big market, La Boqueria. Old women in booths sell fresh flowers and cups of sliced fruit, young men zip by on electric scooters, and the sun scorches every cobble and brick.

Magical, vibrant Barcelona has welcomed us with a heat wave. It's thirty-six degrees Celsius, which means nothing to me but made Kit go "Holy God" when he saw it on his phone. I've been covered in a sticky layer of sweat since I stepped out of the hostel.

"Barcelona," says our local chocolate guide, a thin Catalan woman with dyed red-orange hair, "is the city that brought chocolate to Europe."

This is the first stop on our afternoon chocolate crawl: a confectioner built in the shell of a historic pasta shop, jade and gold mosaic glass glittering on its facade. Inside, wooden filing drawers and glass shelves of chocolates cover the back wall, and the long case holds elaborate cheesecakes the size of my palm. Our guide sent around boxes of bombones—bonbons—for us to try, and I've picked a gem-shaped chocolate filled with crema catalana.

As our guide explains how crema catalana differs from crème br?lée, I reach into my pocket for my phone and find . . . nothing.

"Shit," I whisper. We had an hour of siesta between arrival and this tour, and I thought I was being so responsible by plugging my phone in to charge. "Shit."

Kit nudges me, brow raised in question.

"Left my phone at the hostel." I wipe my hand across my sweaty forehead, which doesn't help since my hand is also sweaty. "I was gonna take notes—Fabrizio said the tour is ten stops, I'll never remember it all."

I shouldn't be surprised, not after the last twenty hours. My hookup from the bar couldn't get me off, and then I had to pass six hours on a bus next to Kit, fresh off whatever beachside orgy he must have had. I may have created an untenable situation. My blood is not spending a lot of time near my brain.

Kit takes out his pocket sketchbook and his fountain pen.

"I'll take notes for you."

I stare. "You want me to—dictate?"

"Yeah, I'd like to experience your sommelier process. Tell me what to write. Tastes like the spirit of a wild stallion, or something."

I know he'd let me take the pen and do it myself. But this is the kind of thing Kit likes to do for his friends. He gets this satisfied little smile when he's solved someone's problem, and I want to watch it tug at his mouth.

His mouth. Last night, at the club. Apple and spice. I want him.

"Make sure you write down the filling," I say, resolving to smother the memory in chocolate. "And there are notes of black pepper, can you put that?"

The tour takes us across La Rambla and into the Gothic Quarter, the oldest part of the city, where mosaic sunflowers and stone flourishes burst out of shops between displays of souvenir magnets. The roads are so narrow that the apartment balconies on either side can't be more than a few feet apart, flags and laundry and tendrils of green plants strung from their iron railings like a hanging village, a thin strip of blue sky visible only when you look straight up.

We wander into a glossy shop that specializes in turrón—Spanish almond nougat—where we taste soft turrón topped with burnt egg yolk and creamy marzipan striped with candied squash. We crunch into chocolate-dipped churros and chew chocolate-coated slices of blood orange, rind and all. At the oldest chocolatería in the city, a handsome young chocolatero gives us cava bombones made with the shop's two-hundred-year-old grinding wheel. These are so incredible, I can only watch in mute bliss as Kit uses his charm to get two more just for us.

By the time we reach the ruins of the city's Roman wall, half of the group is going slightly wild from the heat and the sugar. Stig looks on slackly while Montana slips a morsel of chocolate between Dakota's lips with her fingers. One of the Calums is singing Spanish love songs. Birgitte and Lars might want to get a room, though I can't tell if they need a nap or a quickie.

Kit stays close so I can describe flavors and textures into his ear, his pen gliding over the page, his presence as suffocating as the humidity. Everything is overwhelming. The thick air, the richness melting on my tongue, the radiating warmth of bodies around us, licks of damp hair at Kit's temples when he sweeps it up off his neck. My words go sluggish and slurred, and Kit puts his lips to my ear to ask me to repeat myself, which only makes me dizzier. My body wants to sink into his voice like a fever dream.

The chocolate crawl rolls directly into a tapas crawl near the water, this one led by Fabrizio, whose eyes are already dark and glazed before the first round of drinks. Somewhere on a sidewalk embossed with a pattern of almond blossoms, I find myself briefly in Montana's orbit, watching her watch Dakota and the Calums ahead.

"You know what's funny?" she muses. "How sometimes you look at a man and it's like, Oh, yeah, that. And then you look at a woman and it's like, Ooh, yes, this."

I nod, mostly knowing what she means. For me, it's more that I like different genders from within different parts of me. Like I turn to face the light from a different direction every time.

Kit illuminates me entirely. Today, I'm catching all that light. I'm catching so much, I'm nearly cooking.

We drift from back rooms to basements in a haze. Crispy patatas bravas in red-brown salsa, hunks of fried dogfish, blood sausage, Manchego with fig jelly, heaps of paella, one million varieties of ham. Blond Calum passes me my first glass of Spanish vermouth, dark brown over ice like Coca-Cola. Its flavor is almost too deep and fragrant to describe to Kit, a heady mix of marjoram and coriander and sage and a hundred other things. I immediately order another.

I think distantly of Paloma's guide to Barcelona, but I can't recall any of it now. I only remember Kit's thumb on the hinge of her jaw. I see her pulling Kit into her bedroom that night after the beach, tasting the salt left by our swim, covering his mouth so he won't wake her family. I can almost hear his muffled moan like I'm listening from the next room, and—

Fuck.

I'm not listening. The door is closed. The way is shut, I think, so delirious that one of Kit's Tolkienisms bobs to the surface.

And it is delirium. The soft-focus overfullness of decadence. I'm not the only one losing my mind—the atmosphere inside our last stop, a century-old restaurant called El Sortidor, is palpably erotic. Dusk filters through the stained glass windows, bringing out everyone's finest features. Have the Calums always been so ruggedly handsome? Did I never notice how well Montana wears a sundress? Fabrizio could be Apollo as he demonstrates the technique for pan con tomate, rubbing garlic and a freshly split tomato over oily bread. I watch Kit's fingers move, always so good at following instructions, applying pressure until the tomato is nothing but juice and pulp.

As I'm staring at a chunk of potato to get ahold of myself, Kit tucks his face into the side of my neck.

"Do you think," he says in a low voice, "the Calums have ever explored each other's bodies?"

This too is unbearably horny, even as a joke. Down the table, the Calums are absorbed in a conversation so intense they're speaking almost directly into each other's mouths.

I laugh and gulp down humid air, turning to Kit. He's wearing the shirt with the embroidered flowers from our second night in Paris, and it makes me think of him braced over me on the bed in the back of that bar. I can still feel his breath cooling the sweat on my nape.

I keep my voice steady as I say, "All the best friendships get there sooner or later."

I don't have it in me to find a hookup for tonight. I'm too full, and the day was too long. I'm overdosing on Barcelona. It's like being too tired to sleep. Too horny to fuck.

Instead, I return to my room and unlock my phone to fourteen emails and six missed calls from Schnauzer Bride. Her custom schnauzer tiki mugs have fallen off a shipping barge.

I scroll as I wash my hair, one arm out of the shower to keep my phone dry. My single room is so tight that I'm dripping on the nightstand from the en suite bathroom. I feel around my soup pot of a brain for something coherent to say.

A text from Kit pops up.

is the air conditioning in your room working?

I frown.

yeah why

hm. second question: how good is your spanish?

"What's going on?" I ask when Kit picks up.

"My aircon doesn't work," Kit says. I hear him climbing onto his bed, whuffs of breath and rustling linens.

"Oh, shit."

"Can't say I'm shocked," he says. "I was honestly more surprised they have air conditioning at all."

"How bad is it?"

"Well, the room is about sixty square feet and was facing the sun for the last eight hours; I'd say it's . . . not ideal." More sounds, like he's poking at the air conditioner. "I opened a window but it isn't doing much."

"What are you gonna do?"

"I might see if they have any other rooms? That's why I asked about your Spanish."

My Spanish is significantly better than my French thanks to four years in high school and a lifetime in Southern California, but even I can't help. Earlier, I overheard the front desk guy telling a couple of backpackers they're full for the night.

The only other option is such a bad idea that I shouldn't even consider it. Before Kit texted, I was planning to slide my freshly clean body under the crisp top sheet and get myself off until the fog of horniness dissipated. I don't know how I'll survive without some sort of release. But I feel bad for him.

"Do you wanna crash in my room?" I offer before I can talk myself out of it.

"Your— Oh." The rustling on his end stops. "Really? Are you sure?"

No. "Yeah, fuck it."

"That's— Thank you, Theo," he says. "I'll be down in five."

He hangs up, and I stand there in my matchbox of a room, staring at the black glass of my phone screen.

"Okay," I say out loud. "Okay. That's fine."

I throw my phone at the bed and do a lap, pulling on sweatpants and the first shirt I can reach, toweling my hair, sweeping lip balm tubes and pomade into my dopp kit, shoving clothing into my pack so Kit will think I've stopped leaving my laundry wherever it falls. By the time he knocks, my room looks like it belongs to a real adult.

I open the door to Kit in a rumpled T-shirt and soft cotton joggers. His hair is half wet. He smells like lavender and the same soap he used to keep in our shower.

"Hi," he says, smiling apologetically.

"Hi."

"Thanks, again. I hope this isn't too weird."

"No, of course not," I say, even though it feels a little like my head is floating away from my shoulders. I step aside to let him in. "We're friends, right?"

"Yeah, we are."

"So, no biggie." I shrug. "It's a sleepover. We've had a million of those."

"Yeah." He doesn't look at me, busy stepping out of his shoes. "Of course."

The room suddenly feels too small, too hot from the lingering shower steam. I pace over to the window and open it.

"I don't know if it's much better than your room."

"Trust me, it is." He hovers near the en suite, holding his shaving kit. "Do you mind if I . . . ?"

"Yeah, knock yourself out."

"Amazing, thank you." He steps toward the sink, pauses, then turns back. "Oh, I forgot to give this to you earlier." He reaches into the pocket of his joggers and hands me his flimsy little sketchbook. "Keep it."

"You don't have to—I can just copy the pages down or take some pictures."

"Theo, I packed twelve of those. I don't mind."

I run my fingers over the blue stripes on the sketchbook's brown paper cover, the neat letters spelling CALEPINO. I imagine him picking it out at a stationery store in Paris, stuffing a whole bundle of them into his pack, his face shining with anticipation. The first few pages are loose sketches of streetlamps and stray dogs, then notes from that first chocolatería. And—

"Kit. What is this?"

I flip forward—the rest of the pages are the same. For every stop, he's transcribed my notes in his slanting script, and on the opposite page, sketched a simple illustration.

"Yeah, I, ah, I thought it might help to have visual references?" He leans out of the en suite with his toothbrush in his mouth, toothpaste foaming along his bottom lip. "I mean, you always hated books without pictures, didn't you?"

"Fuck off." I go back through the pages—the crescent of a dipped orange slice, the churro's rough ridges. He even did a cross section of my first bombone to show the layers of caramel and cream filling. "Kit, this is . . . really cool."

"I'm glad you like it."

I wish I could see the look on his face, but he's spitting toothpaste into the sink.

It's strange and strangely calming to stand next to the bed and look at Kit's drawings while he does his skincare routine. I listen to the soft clicks of bottle caps and splashes of water, sounds I used to hear every night. I could close my eyes and be in our old apartment. I could smell his plants. I could feel the weight of his head on my chest.

I reach the last page and stop. There, an unfamiliar hand has written a series of digits, smudged like the writer was in a rush.

"Whose phone number is this?"

The water shuts off, and Kit releases the short oh of someone caught in the act.

"That would be the, ah," Kit says, appearing in the doorway, "the number of that chocolatero who gave us extra chocolates. I meant to tear that page out."

Ah. Of course. Almost forgot I was dealing with the Sex God of école Desjardins.

"Kit Fairfield, you dog." I rip out the page and hold it out, showing him all my teeth when I grin. "You gonna use it? Ask him on a hot date tomorrow?"

Kit folds the page up and zips it into his shaving kit without looking at it.

"I don't know. Do you think I should?"

"Well, what's the score?"

He sits at the foot of the bed, right on the edge. He's never been so cautious with a bed of mine before. Even when we were friends, he'd pour himself across the whole thing. I want to push him onto his back for the sake of consistency. Instead, I sit down next to him.

"One for each of us from Paris," he says. "Florian, that makes two for you. And Juliette for you in Saint-Jean-de-Luz."

I let him think it's true. "And Paloma for you."

"Mm. And with last night . . . God, was that only last night?"

"I know."

"That makes four for you, three for me. So I guess, if I want to catch up, I could message him."

I stand up and pull a pillow off the bed.

"Sure, I mean, why not?"

"Yeah, why not." He sounds distracted, watching me open the tiny closet to dig out an extra blanket. "What are you doing?"

"I'm sleeping on the floor."

Kit's eyes go wide in horror. "No, you're not."

"Come on, Kit. The bed is barely a twin."

"It's your room, Theo, let me take the floor."

"One of us spent the entire camping trip in Joshua Tree bitching about how hard the ground was, and it wasn't me. You just let me know if you find a pea under there, okay?" I drop the blanket at my feet.

"Theo Flowerday," Kit says, serious as the grave, "if you lie down on that disgusting carpet, I'm going back to my room."

His sincere face is on. I sigh.

"Okay, fine. But I don't want you sleeping down there either. So, what?"

We look at the bed. Again, there is an unthinkable solution, and there's me, and there's Kit, and I still don't have it in me to do what I ought.

"Should we . . . ?" I say. Not a question. If I don't ask out loud, I'm not responsible for whatever happens next.

Kit says, "We're friends." Not an answer either.

"Yeah, okay," I say. "But . . ."

"But what?"

"Remember how, if I get too sweaty in my sleep, I'm really cranky the next day?"

"Yes, vividly."

"So," I say, "I was gonna sleep in my underwear tonight."

Kit nods several times in rapid succession. "Yeah, that's—of course that's fine. We're friends. It's your room, you should be comfortable."

"Cool," I say, also nodding. Just two friends with a normal dynamic, nodding and nodding. "And you too, of course, if you want to."

"Yeah, it's—it'll be warm, with both of us."

"Okay. So, I'm gonna . . ."

"Sure, me too."

I turn around and tug my sweats off, trying not to listen to the creak of the mattress when he shifts, the whisper of his clothes coming off. I leave my tank on, but from the waist down, I'm only wearing a pair of soft boy shorts.

I feel an unspoken agreement settle between us. This time won't be like the breakwater in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. This time, we're going to look.

Ninety-nine days out of a hundred, I love my body. I like my long legs and strong thighs, the bands of muscle in my back and shoulders, the hint of what could be abs, if I tried. I know what I look like in my underwear, and I enjoy watching people experience it for the first time. Kit has seen me so much more naked than this.

Still, when I turn to face him, my heart is thrumming.

His shirt and joggers are folded neatly on the nightstand. He sits on the same spot at the edge of the mattress, wearing only a very small pair of black boxer briefs. The lamplight touches the highest points of his shoulders and chest, the tops of his spread thighs, the dimples of his knees. Shadow pools in the dips of his hip bones. Every bit of him. That elegant, graceful body I knew.

He's looking at my body in the way only Kit can look at something, like he could eat the world up with his eyes. It's not just that I want him. It's that he taught me what wanting was. Anyone would have a weakness for that.

It occurs to me that if I want to have sex with Kit—if I have sex with Kit—it doesn't mean I love him. Sex doesn't have to contain love. Those things don't even need to be in the same room.

"Hey," Kit says, "there's your third tattoo."

I blink a few times.

"Oh!" My hand moves automatically to the spot on my left side. Part of it is still hidden by my underwear, but my third and biggest tattoo runs from my hip down the outside of my upper thigh. "Yeah. It's sick, isn't it?"

He peers through the low light. "Is it a snake?"

"It's a rattlesnake." I move closer so he can see the details of a western diamondback coiled around a coupe glass. "And look, his cocktail has a little orange slice for garnish." When I look up, Kit is biting back a smile. "What?"

"Nothing. Just, you said it wasn't an ass tattoo."

"What—it's not!"

"It kind of is."

"It is an upper thigh tattoo! It's on my—my—my haunch!"

The laugh he lets out is so delicious I want to swallow it whole. "Your haunch? Are you a pony?"

Maybe it's the heat, or all the skin, or his laugh, or his attentive pen strokes and the ink stains on his knuckles, but in this moment, I want to find out what he'll do. If he's as close to the edge as I am. If he'll back away from it.

I take his hand and place it right over the ink.

"Does this feel like my ass to you?"

His laugh subsides.

"No," he says. "No, I guess not."

He doesn't take his hand away, but he doesn't move it either. It just stays, his palm flush and warm against my skin, the tip of his thumb nearly brushing the elastic of my underwear. His eyes hold on to mine. I imagine him pulling me into his lap and parting his lips, think of his fingers and oil and the wet, red flesh of a cleaved tomato. Spit pools in my mouth.

He does nothing.

I shove his shoulder hard enough to play the whole thing off as a joke.

"Move over," I say. "And stay on your side."

He makes a sound in his throat and rolls off toward the wall as I climb into bed.

"That's the plan," he murmurs.

I switch off the light and crawl under the sheet, hooking my leg over the side of the mattress to anchor myself as far from him as possible. Behind me, Kit settles in. I wish my body didn't still recognize the exact pitch of the mattress sagging under his weight.

"Good night, Kit," I say, instead of screaming into my pillow.

A long moment goes by before Kit says, "Good night, Theo."

I'm in the desert.

We're on a blanket in the back of my car with the seats folded down, the hatch open, our boots lined up in the dust by the back tire. These deep summer days in the valley are so long, but Kit wanted to wait up for the Milky Way. He once said it was like a huge butter knife had spread the galaxy across the sky, swirls of stars like blackberry jam.

He tips his head back to moan. I see stars in the shine of sweat on his throat.

His legs are around me. I'm gripping his waist with one hand while the other works him, my hips against the backs of his thighs, his mouth already open when I bend to kiss it. He's so pretty like this, coming apart. His body follows mine like a disciple.

Sometimes when I'm on top of Kit, when I'm making him sigh and shiver and beg—when I'm fucking him like this—I feel more present in my skin than I ever have. All the pieces in their right places. I wonder if anyone else in the whole blackberry-jam galaxy has ever loved someone so much that it made their soul feel fixed in their body.

Then, in a heartbeat, I'm not in the desert anymore.

I'm with Kit, but we're inside a restaurant with stained glass windows. I'm atop a wooden table at the center of a feast, surrounded by overflowing dishes of melting chocolate and ripe tomatoes and fruit in spiced syrup. Kit sits on a chair between my parted legs, devouring an apricot, nectar glistening on his lips and chin.

He throws away the pit and brings me to his mouth, and I—

I wake up to a yell on the street.

Fuck.

I'm—where, again? Spain. Barcelona. A hostel near La Rambla. In a single bed, next to Kit.

Only, I'm not next to Kit. I'm wrapped around him, my face on his chest, my arm thrown over his waist, his arm around my shoulders. And I suspect, from the way one of his thighs is pinned between mine, I've been grinding against him in my sleep.

Fuck. Fuck.

Sunlight presses on my eyelids, but I'm too afraid to lift them. This is what I get for going to sleep horny—and for bringing up our camping trips, which were mostly an excuse to have sex in creative new locations. One of our memories got out of the vault, and now I'm having wet dreams.

Kit's breathing is deep and slow, so at least he's still asleep. If I can manage not to wake him up, he never needs to know.

Carefully, gradually, incrementally, I disentangle myself and roll away toward the other side of the bed.

Just when I think I've made it, Kit lets out an unhappy grumble and turns onto his side, pulling me back into his chest.

When Kit and I were together, his body became so familiar that I stopped sensing it as separate from my own. Every inch came as naturally as the slice of my hand through water. Now, I can feel all the subtle changes: his longer hair brushing my skin in new places, the impression of a new scar on his knee. All those hours kneading dough and throwing around sacks of flour—and poets, I guess—have added a layer of lithe muscle to his chest and shoulders.

His hips shift against me. My heartbeat skips as I realize: He's hard.

He is not, I tell myself, hard for me. It's a bodily response, like goose bumps, or a sneeze. But if he was hard for me, if he woke up right now and pressed himself against me and scraped his teeth over my pulse, I know I wouldn't stop him. I'd welcome it. I would send this creaky, too-small bed to the big Ikea store in the sky.

I have to get the fuck out.

I try wriggling away, but with every inch I gain, his body instinctively closes the gap. He's making unconscious sounds of frustration, whimpers that do absolutely nothing to strengthen my resolve. Every time I feel him hard and heavy through our thin layers of fabric, I have to concentrate on how mortified he would be if he knew what he was doing. I'm saving both our dignities here.

Or at least that's what I'm trying to do when we tip over the side of the mattress and crash to the floor.

Kit startles awake with a shout that could be a mixture of English and French or just a bunch of affrighted vowels. His arms momentarily tighten around me, and then he goes absolutely still.

"Theo?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Oh, no. Oh God, did I—?"

"No, nothing happened, you're fine," I say as Kit releases me and scrambles backward.

He looks like he wishes he had been born a slug, which is obviously how you want a person to look after they've spooned you. I think I might start laughing. "It's not a big deal. It's, like, muscle memory, and I think I started it anyway."

"I'm sorry," he says miserably. "I didn't mean to."

"It's okay!" I am laughing now, hysterical, insuppressible hiccups.

"Why are you laughing! I'm embarrassed! This is embarrassing!"

"Sorry!" I gasp. "I'm sorry, I'm just—I'm so glad it's not me."

"Theo."

"Who were you dreaming about? Was it the chocolatero?"

"I—" Kit begins, but he's cut off by the blaring jingle of his phone alarm. I take it from the nightstand and toss it to him, wiping a tear from my eye as he shuts it off.

"I guess we're awake," he says.

"I guess so."

"Can we please," he says, "pretend this never happened?"

I look at him, wide-eyed and crumpled against the wall in his underwear, his hair mussed from sleep and falling into his beautiful face. I want to smooth it away with my hands. I want to keep laughing forever. I want to pretend nothing happened, but only because he does.

"Yeah," I say. "Of course, Kit. Of course."

He fixes me with a plaintive look. "You mean it?"

"Kit. Come on. It's us."

At last, he smiles weakly.

"It's us."

He gets dressed to head upstairs, already talking about Sagrada Familia, how he's read an entire book about it but pictures can't do it justice. Once he's gone, I walk over and slide the window shut. My reflection is full of color, my eyes dilated like I've had too much to drink. On the street below, two people are kissing.

There aren't words for Sagrada Familia.

Maybe, if you could fold everything a person can see and know and experience in on itself, every face, every feeling, if you could max out all the bars on how much a thing can exist, it would be this five-hundred-foot-tall church. Millions of stone details on its facade. Figures and foliage and symbols and painstaking wrinkles of cloth. And somehow, inside, there's more.

Every last inch has a complex, deliberate geometry, no straight line or unadorned surface. Groves of columns spiral up, transforming from squares to octagons to sixteen-sided shapes to circles, splitting into a canopy of bursting stars. Immense stained glass panes pour rainbows of light through the naves, fiery reds and oranges to one side and drowning blues and greens to the other, tunnels of color deep enough to swim through. Every feature is one detail on top of another and another, strange curves and jagged edges and joining corners that seem impossible.

We're led around with little transmitter boxes on lanyards, Fabrizio filtering out through tinny earbuds, voice sweet as ever. But I listen instead to the echoing murmurs of hundreds of voices in a hundred languages, the slaps of sandals against marble.

Kit lags behind, and I let myself fall to his side. His earbuds are loose around his neck. The look on his face is pure, slack, sparkling wonder.

I think of the museum in Bordeaux, the painting of the woman on the rubble. How I told myself he'd answer if I asked about the painting.

"Hey," I say, quiet as the group moves on without us. "Tell me what you read about this place."

Kit smiles.

In a low, gentle voice, he tells me everything. How the columns and their branching vaults are meant to evoke the feeling of walking through a forest, their double-twisted design inspired by oleander branches. He talks about Gaudí, the artist and architect who devoted forty-three years of his life to building this church, the only love of his life and his great unfinished project, how he lived on the grounds and is buried in the crypt below to be with her forever.

There's no pretense in his voice, no arrogance, only naked joy and generosity. Happiness to open up a world and share it with me. I turn away so he won't see me blink the sudden wetness from my eyes. I left that room in Bordeaux specifically to avoid this: the terrible, undeniable, shattering fact of his goodness.

When the rest crumbles—the worst angles, the meanest versions of events, the lies I told myself—what's left is only Kit. Only the great unfinished love of my life, and a floor I'm still lying under.

"You can't use a whole dish as an ingredient!" Kit says, gesturing so expansively that his vermouth almost spills. "That's cheating!"

"Not even if I buy it prepared and incorporate it?"

"That's against the spirit of the exercise. On the Fly is for raw materials."

"Then you shouldn't be allowed to use chocolate," I counter. "You should have to march your happy ass down to the shops and crank up the bean grinder, baby."

Kit's smile blooms even brighter, color splashing into his cheeks. He's always loved when I get belligerent for his entertainment.

"You know that's not the same—"

"Do you churn your own butter too? Do you have a chic little Parisian butter churn? Does it have a holder for chic little Parisian unfiltered cigarettes?"

"Okay!" Kit says, showing me his hands. "Okay, you can use crema catalana to make a milk punch! And I'll take the only the orange zest from it—"

"Boooo."

"—and I'll mix it with ricotta to fill cannoli, and—" He sees the look on my face. "What?"

"Did you make the ricotta, Kit?"

He looks like he might scream, half frustration and half delight, all Theo-and-Kit.

"Yes, Theo, I rode my bike down to the village sheep farm, and I made sweet, tender love to the farmer's wife all night long so she would let me milk the sheep, and then I carried the pail home and made the ricotta."

"Then I'll take the salty tears of the sheep farmer whose wife leaves him for the village hole—"

Kit gasps theatrically. "Hole?"

"—and use them to make a salted Negroni, with a tangerine twist."

"Campari tangelo marmalade," Kit says instantly. "Glazing a tangelo-and-five-spice pound cake."

"I'll take the Chinese five-spice and steep it in rum and then use the rum to make a Cable Car."

Kit sets his glass down, still smiling.

"Cable Car. That was . . . that was what we drank that time we drove to San Francisco for your birthday, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, at that dive in North Beach," I say. "It was cash only, and we were out of cash."

"And I pretended to propose so they'd comp our drinks."

We were only twenty-three then, and we always joked about getting married, like it was so obvious that it wasn't worth taking seriously. I laughed when he did it. But after, he told me he'd marry me that night if I wanted. That he'd have married me the night we first kissed.

"I'm definitely not beating that one, then," Kit says. He tips his chin up at me, and I want to press my thumb to the center of it. "You win. I'll drink the absinthe."

"Discúlpeme, se?or!" I call to the bartender. "Una absenta, por favor!"

We're in Bar Marsella, the oldest bar in Barcelona, allegedly a haunt of Picasso and Hemingway. Humid night clings to wood-paneled walls and peels away brown paint, steaming cabinets of antique bottles and mirrors mounted behind wobbly tables. A chandelier blinks dustily above as the soles of my sandals stick to the mosaic floor. The bartender drops off a crystal glass of pale green absinthe, a bottle of chilled water, and a paper-wrapped sugar cube, and Kit sets about expertly melting the sugar into the glass.

Down the bar, an older man sits alone with a glass of pale beer and the kind of book you'd pick up at an airport. His khaki shorts and polo scream American tourist. When I check the cover, I do a double take.

"Check it out," I say. "Three seats down. That's one of Craig's, isn't it?"

Kit spots the glossy paperback. The House on the Lake, a John Garrison novel.

"Ah, yes. The one where the wife dies."

"Isn't that all of them?"

"Sure, but in this one she comes back as a ghost, which he's only done two other times."

I laugh. "How is your dad?"

"He's alright. Moved into a nice town house in the Village. Still ghostwriting, clearly. His last one was on the list for forty-seven weeks. The Anchorite of Venus."

"Oh my God, that was him?"

"The most prolific author no one's ever heard of," Kit says. He's looking down into his absinthe, the cloud of sugar slowly clearing. "Truthfully, I haven't spoken to him in about . . . six months?"

I don't say anything. I don't have to. We both know how out of character that is for him. I swill my sangria and wait.

"Remember that book he was working on when my mom died?"

I think back to that awful summer before eighth grade, climbing into Kit's bed five nights a week and reading The Silmarillion out loud so he could fall asleep. Ollie had a fresh license, so he did the grocery shopping, and Kit baked a cake once a week in whatever flavor Cora asked. And every day, his dad stayed in his office with a manuscript that couldn't be delayed.

"It was supposed to be his first book under his own name, right? But his editor hated it, or something?"

"Yeah, that was the story," Kit says with a grim smile. "So, you know how Ollie works for Dad's publishing house now? A year ago, he had lunch with Dad's editor and asked him what he really thought of that book, and the editor had no idea what he was talking about. And so Ollie asked Dad, and it turns out the manuscript never actually existed."

I frown. "What do you mean?"

"He never wrote it. He never wrote anything that summer. He only pretended to."

I think of Kit, age thirteen, braiding Cora's hair for her.

"Holy shit," I say.

He's still wearing his small, grim smile when he continues.

"After that, I started thinking about everything," he says. "I always trusted there was some design to the choices he made for us. Moving across the world because he got bored, moving across the country when he didn't want to be in the old house. He was always so impressive to me, this romantic genius who might take us anywhere. Every second of his attention was so shiny and important."

He takes a sip of absinthe, grimacing at the burn.

"But it was always just whatever he wanted," Kit finishes. "And he wasn't there that summer because he didn't want to be."

I swear earnestly. "So you haven't spoken since Ollie told you about the manuscript?"

"Actually, I tried to talk to him when he was in Paris a few months ago," Kit says. "About all of it. He kind of blew it off, said a lot of words about how much he loves me, which is not at all what the problem has ever been. Afterwards, I had to put him away on a shelf until I can, I don't know. Process. Figure out what kind of relationship I want with him as an adult."

"Well, fuck," I say after a long pause. I feel like bare-knuckle fighting Kit's dad right now. "Kit, that's . . . that must be a lot. I'm really fucking sorry."

"Thank you," Kit says, giving me a small, tender smile.

His gaze shifts to the door behind me, and he suddenly swears in French.

"What?"

"I kind of—I forgot that I invited Santiago to meet up tonight."

"Who?"

"The—"

"?Hola!" says a smooth voice, and I recognize the chocolatero just as he swoops in to kiss the air beside Kit's cheek. Kit looks at me with wide, apologetic eyes.

There's no reason I should be disappointed. I'm the one who told him to call the guy. I put on my most easygoing smile.

"Sorry," Kit murmurs, "I—"

"Nothing to apologize for," I say. The chocolatero turns to me, a handsome, dark-skinned man in simple beige and gold linens, and I let him air-kiss me too. "?Hola, Santiago, qué bueno verte!"

"You remember my friend Theo," Kit says, and really, after all the work I've put in, it shouldn't sting to be called that.

"?Sí!" Santiago says warmly. "And this is my neighbor, Caterina."

A woman appears beside him, tall and graceful and smiling. She pushes her wild hair behind her ear with a paint-smudged hand.

"Caterina," I say. I glance toward Kit and find him watching me. "Can I buy you a drink?"

Caterina is a painter. She smells like almond blossoms and turpentine and just broke up with a Dutch girl who captains sunset sails out of the main port. She lives in a skinny apartment building in the Gothic Quarter, one so old its door still has a bronze knocker shaped like a hand holding a persimmon. At the top of the stairs, as she unlocks her flat, I kiss her behind her silver earrings.

Her apartment is a magpie's nest. Dried flowers hang from the chandelier, strings of translucent citrus slices in every window. Half-finished paintings lean against velvet armchairs and side tables heaving with books. It's as hot here as it is outside, so she brings out a pitcher of cold water and pours two glasses.

When she presses one into my hand and guides me onto a kitchen chair, I think: I'm not even thinking about Kit right now.

I'm not seeing him and Santiago ahead of us on the walk from Bar Marsella, or the way he glanced at me when Santiago pulled him into the apartment building across from Caterina's. I'm not even thinking of the way he looked last night on the edge of my bed, or the heat of his hand against my tattoo.

There's so much to like about Caterina. I like how she floats around the apartment, emptying the rest of the pitcher into her houseplants. I like the paint stains on her hands.

She asks, "What do you want?"

I spread my legs wide, feet planted on either side of my chair. All my unsatisfied need rises to the surface, thick in the sweat on my skin. God, it'll be good to finally get it out.

"Take off whatever's under that dress, and come here."

Caterina does as she's told, straddles my lap, and kisses me. I kiss her back, hard, her tongue swiping into my mouth, her hands cradling my jaw. I guide her hips with both hands until I can feel her slick and needy against my thigh before I've even touched her, which is extremely fucking hot.

Everything is extremely fucking hot, actually. Suddenly, urgently, the heat between our bodies is nearly suffocating. My shirt sticks to my back. Sweat beads in the hollow of my throat. I break off to catch my breath.

"Okay?" Caterina asks, wiping my brow with the back of her wrist. "Do you need air?"

"Sorry, yeah." The unsteadiness in my voice surprises me. "Could we open a window?"

"I have even better."

She crosses to a tall, street-facing window and parts the gauzy curtains to reveal a set of narrow French doors.

"Come, look."

When I join her, we're on one of the Gothic balconies I admired yesterday. It barely fits us with all the flowers and plants crowded along the railings. Every building on the street has rows of tiny balconies like hers, pressed right up against one another like you could pass a cigarette to the person next door. The balcony across is so close, I can almost touch the curtains drifting from the open door.

As I pull Caterina's body to mine, I hear it. A voice, close but slightly muted, shockingly familiar. A soft, open moan.

"Uh, does—does Santiago live in that apartment across from you?"

"Hm?" Caterina slips her hand up my shirt. "Oh, yes. Why?"

Another sound, a second voice saying something too low to decipher. Kits voice is rough when he answers, but this time I can make out "yes" and "please."

Fuck.

Caterina laughs, her nose bumping my shoulder.

"Santiago does this all the time," she says. "Estoy acostumbrado a eso. Is it bad for you?"

There are about one million reasons why it's bad for me, but right now, all I can feel is thrumming need, and all I can see is the pitying look Juliette gave me on that beach.

"No," I say, and I crush my mouth into Caterina's.

I don't waste any more time. I press her to the leafy railing and kiss her, my hand slipping under her dress to palm the wet heat between her thighs. She grinds against the heel of my hand.

Someone swears into the night, and I'm pleased with myself until I realize it's not Caterina but Kit. His is the only voice behind the wafting curtains now, and I can imagine what's happening. Kit, laid out on his back, lost in Santiago's mouth.

"Fuck," I murmur out loud this time, feeling insane. I drop to my knees.

This will work. Going down on an attractive woman always does it for me. Watching the pleasure dawn on her face, feeling her knees start to shake, burying myself in her taste. I shove Caterina's dress up with one hand and push the other past my waistband.

I narrow my focus to my mouth on her, my own fingers, the hot blood rushing in my ears, her gasps and sighs, the roll of her hips. I give her everything I've got until she finishes, hands fisted in my hair, and I start her over again.

I want to—need to get off so fucking badly. Needed it for days, especially since last night, but I—can't. Can't get close enough. Can't chase down the mind-numbing, maddening horizon, the touch of someone who's not here.

I hear Kit again, whining through clenched teeth, and I know, I know what it fucking means when he sounds like that.

There's not a sound inside of Kit that I haven't worked loose. I know the low, imperious tone that means he wants control, the filthy mid-register drawl he uses when he's feeling indulgent, the huffy swears when he's pushed to the brink of his patience. When he sounds raw and wrecked like he does right now, it means he wants to take it.

It's heartbreaking how gorgeous he is like this. Pliant and glassy-eyed, head thrown back. Spreading himself out, offering himself to be pushed down and swallowed up, teased and twisted until he's begging, gasping, nearly weeping for it.

A shudder courses through me, and I close my eyes and see Kit's face, the look when he kissed Paloma on that beach, like he wanted me to watch.

I let myself listen. I open the vault.

There he is. There we are. Light spills across our skin. My hand grasps for his, and everything unfolds at once.

On the next swipe of my tongue, I hear three simultaneous gasps: Caterina with her knee hooked over my shoulder, Kit across the alley being sucked off by another man, and Kit bent over our old kitchen counter with my spit sliding down his thighs.

My hand quickens to match my mouth, to match the rhythm of Kit's breathing. To match the beat of my heart one summer night on a beach blanket in Santa Barbara when I sank down onto him. The click-click of the hazards while he ate me out in my back seat. The kick drum through the speakers as he snuck his hand down my jeans in the middle of a crowd. Caterina's pulse on my tongue, Kit's pulse against mine. I push two fingers into her, and his push into me, and mine push into him.

When Kit comes, I hear him, and I see him in our bed, wrists pinned, bright tears in his eyes. I lean my forehead against Caterina's hip—against Kit's shoulder—and finish with a rough, punched-out cry.

In the quiet after, I'm left with the part of the memory that tipped me over. It wasn't how Kit begged me that night, or how he couldn't walk straight in the morning.

It was in between, when he told me how much he loved me.

That's exactly what I was afraid it would be.

I don't sleep in Caterina's bed.

It's not a long walk back to the hostel, but by the time I pass the spires of Cathedral La Seu, I'm running. I sprint all the way up La Rambla, through the huge wheel of Pla?a de Catalunya and all its bosomy statues, up four flights of stairs to the room where I woke up tangled in Kit.

When the door is locked behind me, I take out my phone.

I might be falling back in love with kit

Sloane texts back within a minute.

Would that be such a bad thing?