I did. I really did. Except… not as it applied tome.
“Well, the thing is, he doesn’t know exactly how to label himself. What if it turns out that his feelings go away, and he needs to take it back? Imagine if he goes around saying, ‘Oh, hey, I’m bisexual.’ Except then he realizes it was just a fluke?” I swallowed. “A mistake.”
“Except, if it’s the way he’s feeling now, it’snota mistake because, again, sexuality evolves. It’s complex and not black and white. Andyou know this.” He paused, and I could picture him trying to peer through the phone. “Mason, are you okay?”
“Yes, peachy! Just thinking how you lose credibility when you keep changing your mind about things, though, you know? How do you respect a person who doesn’t recognize something integral like that? It’s probably best for him to be… cautious… since coming out might be useless.”
“Mmmmkay. I mean, it’s true that no one can tell you when it’s the right time—”
“You meanhim. My patient. Edgar.”
Toby sighed. “Yes, obviously. I meantEdgar. IfEdgarchooses to come out, it should be a thing he does for himself, and other people’s opinions have fuck all to do with it.”
I snorted. “I mean, it’s easy tosaythat—”
“Mason, do you hear yourself? It isnoteasy to say that. At all.” Toby laughed a little bitterly. “You remember my coming out, right?”
I felt instantly ashamed. “Yeah, I remember.”
“But coming out might be empowering for, ah… Eddie.”
“Edgar.”
“Right. Because coming out’s not a one-shot dealanyway. It’s not like sending an ‘I’ve Moved!’ card to your friends and neighbors to let them know they can now find you amongst the Super Queers. It’s hard doing it over and over, especially since therewillbe negative reactions. It’s easier knowing there are a whole bunch of people who get you.”
“That’s not a concern for Edgar. The… the acceptance.”
“It’s the idea that he might be wrong?”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah.”
“Jesus H. Christ on a gondola. I don’t suppose Eddie—”
“Edgar!”
Toby nearly growled. “Right,” he said impatiently. “I don’t suppose he recently rescued himself from indentured servitude to a blonde who exploited his perfectionism and never deserved his noble, self-sacrificing ass?”
“Wha—”
“MaybeEdgaris totes fine accepting he’s gay, but he needs tocome outas an actual, fallible, evolving human being, not a perfect Instagram image.”
“I don’t—”
“Oh, by the wigs of Lovey Bricknell. What’s his name, sweetness?”
I clenched the shower curtain in my fist. “Whose?” I asked faintly.
“The guy Edgar’s hot for.”
I made a noise that was half laugh, half sob. The guy I was hot for. It should have sounded weirder than it did.
“It’s Fenn,” I admitted miserably. “He’s fucking gorgeous, Toby. And so completely wrong for…Edgar.”
“Wrong because he’s a dude.”
“No! No, even aside from that.” I took a deep breath, and everything I’d been feeling and not saying tumbled out of me in a rush. “Fenn’s sarcastic—you would love him—and when you give him shit, he dishes it right back. And he makes nonviolent people want to do violent, violent things, because he gets this smirk and this look in his eyes that…gah.”
“Oh, boy.”
