# Read the first page of The Pairing by Casey McQuiston Read the opening of The Pairing by Casey McQuiston free, no signup. Two exes on the same European food tour start a hookup contest. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-pairing-casey-mcquiston - Genre: Romance - Year: 2024 - ISBN: 9781250864055 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781250864055&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781250864055 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781250864055 ## The opening The first time I kiss Kit, he tastes like jalapeños and apricots. We’re drunk enough to be brave. Some guys from the restaurant have thrown a Halloween party at their rental house in Cathedral City, and there is a trash can full of mystery punch, and we’re twenty-two, the age at which trash-can punch sounds genius instead of evil. I did add a few glugs of apricot brandy from the liquor shelf to take the edge off, at least. For the last four months since Kit moved to Palm Springs and in with me, we’ve been talking Halloween costumes. Slutty M&M’s. Ralph Macchio and the bully from The Karate Kid. Kit came up with Sonny and Cher—he’s Cher, I’m Sonny. He found the perfect slinky silk shift on consignment in LA, even made me lace him into a waist corset before he slipped the dress on, because he’s never met a bit he couldn’t commit to. Not even trash punch could erase the texture of his skin from my fingertips. After, when we’re eating delivery pizza off our coffee table, Kit decides it’s time to finally talk about it. We’ve never addressed it, not since he returned to California for college and we slipped into each other’s pockets like we’d never been apart, right to the synced, steady heartbeat of us. Theo-and-Kit, Theo-and-Kit, Theo-and-Kit. It was so easy to find the pulse, we didn’t talk about where it had gone, or why. Kit looks at me over a stuffed crust with extra jalapeños and asks, “Why didn’t you ever want to go to Oklahoma City?” Because it’s Oklahoma City, I almost say. But the place was never what mattered; it was the promise. When we were fourteen, a year after Kit’s mom died, his dad decided to move the whole family to New York. Kit and I got out a map and found the midpoint between Rancho Mirage and Brooklyn. Oklahoma City. We promised to meet there every summer, but I always found excuses not to go, and they were never that good. His brown eyes are so sparkly in the lamplight, framed by his stupid Cher wig, that I tell him the truth, partly: When he left, I realized I’d fallen in love with my best friend when I wasn’t looking. And then he was five hundred miles too far for it to matter, telling me about first dates over the phone, and it hurt too much. Oklahoma City would have broken my heart. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “It was shitty of me. I was shitty to you.” “Oh” is all he says. “I’m totally over it now,” I say, which is a lie. I’ve never been more under it. I thought living with Kit would be great exposure therapy, that nobody could stay in love with their best friend after watching them scratch their ass through sweatpants. If anything, I love Kit more now. “So you don’t have to worry. I’m not gonna make it weird.” Kit sets down his slice and studies me, my stick-on mustache, hair braided back to fit under my bowl-cut wig. He bites out a smile, tucks Cher’s hair behind his ear, and says, “I was in love with you too.” “You—what?” “Back then, I mean.” I nod, trying to keep my voice steady. “Right. Back then.” And he laughs, so I laugh, and I put on Sonny & Cher to cover up how weird mine sounds. We dance around the living room with grease-slicked lips to “I Got You Babe” until my hand brushes Kit’s cinched waist. I catch the ends of shiny, synthetic hair between my thumb and finger, touch him without touching him. He reaches up and peels off my mustache. “What if we tried it?” he asks softly. “Just once, to see what it would be like?” And then I’m in my best friend’s bed, kissing him dizzy. Just to see what it’s like. At the bottom of my belly, I know this will change me in a permanent way. Maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s completely fucked up to let him do this when I know how I feel and how he doesn’t, but it’s Kit. Kit loves to make people feel good, and when he buries his face between my legs, I feel good. I feel so good it’s awful. He’ll laugh about it tomorrow, and every person I take to bed from now on will be fighting his ghost for my attention. In the morning, the kitchen smells like cinnamon and butter and yeast, and Kit’s at the sink, doing dishes. He’s wearing the apron I bought him when we road-tripped up to the Santa Maria Valley to find out if the barbecue was worth the hype. It says, THIS GUY RUBS HIS OWN MEAT. The table is set with two plates, steam curling and icing dripping from golden-brown dough. Kit bakes from scratch every weekend, and he’s been in pursuit of the perfect cinnamon roll recipe for years. I made a lot of promises to myself when I was falling asleep next to him. I would be cool. It was nothing but a laugh. Two old friends hooking up for old times’ sake, pouring one out for the lovestruck kids we used to be. He smiles at me from the sink, still wearing the bruise I bit into his neck, and I say, “I lied. I never got over it.” Kit lets out a long breath. He turns off the water. And then he says the most incredible thing he could possibly say. He says, “Neither did I.” There’s a dildo on the luggage carousel. It’s not my dildo. Not that I didn’t bring one, but Kit would never pack ours so carelessly that it could just flop out of my suitcase and go tumbling through baggage claim. There are rules for these things. I’m alone in London Heathrow, watching the dildo go round and round. It’s purple, shortish but a perfectly respectable girth. On its fourth rotation, I finally step forward and pull my bag off the belt, but I don’t move toward the exit. I don’t know where Kit is. Seven, eight, nine, ten times the dildo goes around before a straight-faced airport employee snaps on some gloves and takes it away in a plastic baggie. I check the time: thirty-five minutes since Kit walked away. I’m too angry to cry, but I have about half an hour until I come completely, spectacularly unglued. I’ll email the tour company later to explain why we never made it, see if I can get a refund. Right now, I just want to go home. From the British Airways ticketing line, I watch a nervous young couple approach the lost and found to collect their wayward dildo. They’re in the kind of love worth getting humiliated at baggage claim. They leave together, pink-faced and laughing into each other’s shoulders. How fucking sweet. I ask the agent behind the counter, “What time is the next nonstop to Los Angeles?” ## Books with a similar feel - [The Name Game by Beth O'Leary](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-name-game-beth-oleary.md) - [The Good, the Bad, and the Dumped by Jenny Colgan](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-good-the-bad-and-the-dumped-jenny-colgan.md) - [9-Nov by Colleen Hoover](https://uncovered.ink/read/9-nov-colleen-hoover.md) - [Remain by Nicholas Sparks](https://uncovered.ink/read/remain-nicholas-sparks.md) - [Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert](https://uncovered.ink/read/act-your-age-eve-brown-talia-hibbert.md) - [Too Hard to Forget by Tessa Bailey](https://uncovered.ink/read/too-hard-to-forget-tessa-bailey.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.