Forty
W hat’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lie to Julian, even as many indicators give me away. My wobbly voice, the tears running down my face, the snot threatening to touch my top lip. I’m still reeling from my talk with Natalia, everything we shared, how unbelievably lonely I still feel. I suppose this is what happens when I bottle up all my bad emotions instead of letting myself feel them.
I feel them now, all right. If Natalia could see me at this very moment, she’d say something like, See? I told you I’m not helpful at all. It might not look like it right now, but she was. She opened up something in me I’ve spent nearly an entire year trying not to feel.
“Is it your hair?” If the question is meant to make me laugh, it works. Seeing as I’ve spent all day crying in bed, I can only imagine what my short hair looks like right now. I let out an unexpected chortle that has mocos raining down onto my bedspread. Julian’s face twists in disgust before he hands me a tissue box from the nightstand. “It’s not that bad. I’m sure a hairdresser can save it… somehow.”
“I can’t believe you’re just noticing it now .”
“Forgive me, I’ve been kinda stressed out lately.”
“Fair. Remind me to book an appointment asap,” I tell him before plucking a tissue from the box and blowing my nose. “I met with Natalia today, and I don’t know. I guess it brought up a lot of unresolved stuff for me.”
“Like what?”
“How awful was it to be the only queer member of the family before I came out?” He looks surprised by my question. “Is it still awful even though you’re not the only one anymore?”
“It was definitely isolating,” he admits. “But it was more isolating before I came out. I don’t have any regrets, even if I never have a relationship with my father again. It’s better than hiding who I am.”
“Yeah.” I nod. “You’re right about that.”
“Come on.” Julian pats down the duvet beside him, carefully avoiding the snot stains. “Tell me what happened.”
I sit down in the middle of my bed, facing him.
“What if no one ever understands me?” I ask him. “What if I don’t even understand myself, and it makes any romantic relationship I have that much harder?”
He’s quiet for a long time. Long enough for the dread to sink in that maybe I’m right. Krystal loves me now, but what if the feeling fades and she decides I’m not worth it anymore? What if my identity changes a third time and I decide later in life that I never want to have sex again?
There’s always been this fear in the back of my head that I’m wrong—that I announced myself to the whole internet without thinking it through. And then I get angry thinking of the hundreds of people online this very moment questioning the validity of my identity, because I’m the only one who gets to decide who I am.
Which is it, then? Righteous anger or constant indecision? You can’t have both.
“I watched all your videos, you know,” he says finally. “Pretty soon, the algorithm caught up and my feed was full of other ace-spec creators. I haven’t told anyone this yet, but for a while I’ve been questioning if ‘bisexual’ was the right identity for me. Coming out the first time was a fucking circus, and not the fun kind I want to repeat anytime soon.”
“Oh.” I had no idea Julian was feeling this way. “Did you get any answers?”
“I think I’m demisexual,” he says, his smile small. “A biromantic demisexual. Not that anyone in this family aside from you is going to understand that, so I get it. Believe me, whatever internal conflict you’re going through?” He falls back against the mattress and lets out a sigh. “Me too.”
I lie down next to him. “Krystal told me she loves me, and all I could say back was ‘I don’t know.’”
“Oh,” he replies. “Do you not love her?”
“It’s not that simple,” I tell him. “Or maybe it is and I’m overthinking it.”
“What’s the problem, then?”
“The scavenger hunt was supposed to be my grand entrance into the dating world,” I explain. “I was going to get my time to play the field. Have fun. I was finally going to have the chance to do everything I was supposed to have done years ago. That’s what I’m supposed to want.” I shake my head. “But I don’t. I don’t think I ever did.”
“Because of Krystal?”
“Partly, yeah.” I let out a long sigh. “Krystal obviously has no idea what she’s gotten into by falling in love with me of all people. I don’t know what it feels like to love someone. I haven’t done anything! Everything I have done has been with her. Don’t get me wrong, I care about her. A lot. So much it hurts sometimes just looking at her stupidly beautiful face, but would you call that love ?” I shake my head, this time with conviction. “I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve still never been kissed. What do I know about loving someone? How am I supposed to know for sure that that’s what I feel?”
“I’ve never been in love either, you know,” he reminds me.
Maybe I should’ve gone to Marcela. We never finished our conversation the other day at the library. I should’ve asked her when she knew Theo was the one. She was so scared to commit to him, even when she knew undoubtedly how she felt about him. I didn’t understand it at the time, but now that I’m in her position, I do.
After a moment, my cousin says, “But I think I can give you some advice.”
“You’re the perfect person to be giving relationship advice. I know because that used to be me.” I nod at him. “You’re a rare, unbiased opinion.” He’s a late bloomer, too, though unlike me he at least has had minimal experience with dating.
He chuckles lightly at this. “I think it’s just that our advice comes from reading romance novels.”
“You may have a point there.” My eyes slide to the bookshelf in his room visible through the open door, where an entire row of mass markets taken from my room sit. When he asked to borrow a book last month to read during spring break, I never expected him to rob me. “By the way, I’d like some of those back one day.”
“Not a chance.” He lets out a loud oof when I punch his shoulder. “Ow! Fine, all right. Geez.”
Once we’ve settled the issue, he grows serious. “Did you always know you were different? Before you realized you were ace-spec?”
I consider his question, thinking back to the days when Briana and Esme and my other friends first started talking about boys they liked. “On some level, yeah. I think so. I always tried to shove that feeling back, find some other explanation for it. But it was always the reason I avoided dating anyone for so long.”
“I did that too.” He nods. “But I couldn’t avoid how I felt forever. I didn’t want to, but I knew what it would mean to tell other people. Especially my dad.”
“I wish there had been some way out of it for you.”
“It’s okay,” he says, even though we both know it’s not. “When we came home that night, after my dad had his whole tirade and left, my mom made me sit down and talk to her. She asked me a lot of questions to better understand my identity. She was very understanding about it. More than my dad, even more than some of my closest friends. I saved coming out to the family for last, and by that point I was starting to feel really… lonely. No matter how kind or supportive everyone was, I never felt understood by any of them. Especially when they’d say they knew I was queer all along and were just waiting for me to say something.” He shakes his head.
“How could they know when I didn’t know?” he continues. “Anyway, the point is I never banked on feeling understood by either of my parents. But my mom must’ve sensed some of the doubts I was having. So I told her how I felt. The whole circus of coming out, let alone what dating would be like. She just smiled and said she couldn’t wait for the day I fell in love. ‘The fight will be worth it,’ she said, ‘when you find the person who looks at you and sees the sun.’”
I smile to myself, picturing Soledad with her son, pushing him into a chair to give him the best kind of lecture a mother can give.
“So? Is the fight worth it if you get to be with Krystal at the end of the day?”
I’ve spent years pining over Krystal. Her face has been burned into my brain since the moment I first saw her. How could I have spent weeks getting to know her without cataloging the changes? How did I miss the moment she started to see me differently? The moment she looked at me and saw the sun?
I only began to realize it when my cousin exposed that picture. It’s since circulated online in the worst possible way, proof of my betrayal, but maybe it’s proof of something else—something that’s been between me and Krystal for much longer than either of us knew. Even now, when I close my eyes, I can see her face in that picture.
Of course she’s worth the fight. How could I be so stupid to ever think otherwise?
“Oh my god.” I’m not sure if I only think the words, or if I say them out loud. When Julian breaks out into a knowing grin, I have my answer.
I love her.
Now I have to fight for her.