“Okay, okay, O. I love that you’re so on top of this, but I think we need to get something else out of the way here.” He set his hand on my shoulder, and I turned to him, noticing the concern in his expression. “I know what Lucas believes, and I know what you’re planning, but I also know you well enough to know you don’t go sticking your tongue down random guys’ throats in bars. I’ve also seen you with women since we were teens.”
“I feel like any question you might have was answered today with what you saw.”
“Maybe I want to hear it. We’ve been friends since we were kids. I would have thought if you swung another way, had these bisexual tendencies, surely I would have figured out before our thirties.”
“I can say that it’s very rare that I am attracted to a guy, and in the times I have been—”
“Oh my God, so there’ve been other times?”
“That I’ve been attracted to men, yes.”
“How far did you go with them?”
“Nothing ever happened. God, Frederick, can we not get into salacious questions about my sexual history?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Now we have boundaries? Maybe it’s confusing me, considering we both had our dicks in plenty of women at the same time.”
“Again, that shouldn’t be that strange, considering nothing about that suggests I can’t also be attracted tothisguy. It’s not like I was into you or anything weird like that.”
“Now you’re just trying to hurt my feelings, aren’t you?” he teased with a smile on his face.
“I have…always known about this aspect of myself, and in some ways, especially with Mother and Mère’s history, I think I’ve just felt it was easier to tuck it away.”
“I’m sorry you felt you had to do that.”
“Well, no worries,” I said, trying to brush it off, maybe because I wasn’t ready for this sort of conversation about it just yet. “Now if I could figure out who the hell this guy is…”
“Well, I mean, if you need more details than you’re able to find by Facebook-trolling, then I have the scoop. He’s nineteen years old, from this Fever Falls place. Works part-time waiting tables at a restaurant and volunteers at the local animal shelter. Plans to attend veterinary school. He lost his father when he was eight years old. Well, his adoptive father. And with his brother, Jace—also adopted—he volunteers at this anti-bullying thing at his school, so I figure he must have been picked on at some point.”
I was horrified at the information he’d dumped on me like that, some of which I’d already heard from Keegan, some of which I hadn’t…and most of which sounded so invasive. “Wait, wait! These are things I shouldn’t be hearing from you. If someone’s going to tell me, it should be him. I don’t want to peer into his life where I’m not allowed.”
Frederick eyed me curiously. “But you’re stalking his Facebook page?”
“This is stuff he’s agreed to let the rest of the world, myself included, see. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s wrong when I’m looking at things he hasn’t given me permission to look at.”
Frederick rolled his eyes, as though he could not understand where the lines of privacy belonged. “Okay, if you say so. Let’s go ahead and play this game that we don’t have access to anything we want to know because you’re the prince of your own fucking country. That’s fine.”
“Okay, good. As long as we’re on the same page.”
Another knock at my door, though I was surprised by this one. “Come in,” I said, and it opened to reveal Mère, who stood outside with a sympathetic expression on her face.
“I tried to call,” she said. “I’ve spent the afternoon traveling from the East Library to see you.”
Frederick and I shared a laugh, and he set his hand on my leg. “I think I’ll let you two chat, and we can work out the remaining details soon enough.”
He headed out of my room as Mère entered, closing the door behind her.
As was her way, she approached quietly, studying my face like she could read so much more than I wanted to share.
“So news has made it so far as the East Library already?” I joked, but she didn’t laugh.
“Did you want to talk to me about anything, my secretive child? What am I saying? Both my children are so secretive. Just like their dear mother. Trapped in our palace of secrets. Your brother has his thoughts and I have mine, but I would rather hear it directly from you.”
“I’m dating this man, and I’m glad we have this opportunity to be open and share this to effect change in our country,” I said stoically, the way I might have at some assembly, rather than to my own mère.
Her chin quivered as water glistened in her eyes. “Anything else you wanted to share?”
I thought for a moment, through my sordid day, through over a decade of pain. I rifled through so many memories and so much that I’d experienced in my life.
