Aster loosened his hold so that he could look up at my face. ‘You’re still sad, though?’
‘Yeah.’ I couldn’t hide anything from him, except for the one thing I hid really well. I didn’t even like to think about it around him, just in case I blurted it out. ‘Since then, I’ve kind of messed up stuff with Kit even more.’
Aster’s light eyebrows drew together, throwing the freckles across his forehead into new constellations. ‘Oh, Lukey.’
I’d told my bestie my fears around making friends without him. Aster believed they were totally unfounded despite the unignorable evidence to the contrary, but even he couldn’t deny that I didn’t have any buddies outside his circle. It had bummed me out that things with him and Jamie ended so badly before he came to Doughnut, because losing Jamie as a friend had been a serious blow. At least he’d fucked off to Iceland the day after Aster left London, so I didn’t have to hang out with my new enemy.
Aster guided me inside the cabin, which was tiny and rustic but also inviting and comfy. While Callum stirred stew and baked bread, I unpacked the short but embarrassing interactions I’d had with Kit.
Steaming bowls in his hands, Callum joined us on the sofa. He seemed unbothered when Aster perched on his knee and continued nattering to me.
Seeing my bestie with someone who got him made me happy. If anyone deserved unconditional love, it was Aster. His heart was a wide-open book, one which everyone before Callum had decided to scribble in and crumple up the pages. It was good that he’d found someone who loved him just as he was, because who my bestie was pretty freaking awesome and I’d fight anyone who tried to say otherwise.
Well, he was awesome until he said things like, ‘It would make life much easier if you fancied Kit. Then we could chalk your awkwardness up to being tongue tied because all the blood in your body had flowed to your dick.’
Callum choked on his last mouthful of stew. He extracted himself from beneath Aster and carried our bowls over to the sink, perhaps sensing that the conversation was taking a turn.
I jumped up as well. This was a topic I needed to avoid. ‘You know that’s not the case.’
‘I know.’ Aster flopped back on the sofa but puffed out his chest. ‘My name’s Lucas and I’m straight even though my best friend has told me how boring that is and how bum sex is the bestest.’
I shoved my feet into my boots and decided tying the laces could wait until I was out of sight of the cabin and thus out of shouting distance of Aster. ‘Yup. That’s me. Totally straight.’
Callum’s head snapped up. He stared at me, his thick eyebrows lowering.
I waved at him as I tripped out of the cabin. There was no way he could know I was lying. Not that I even was lying. Aster had said I was straight a hundred times because of my lack of interest in any of the apparently hot guys he pointed out, and it was easier to go along with that rather than unpacking the truth.
Because the truth wasn’t normal. I already ran the risk of pity-filled looks because of my inability to make friends without Aster around, and I didn’t need him also treating me like a hurt kitten because of my inability to form any kind of romantic attachment to anyone as well.
He wouldn’t understand. Aster, and apparently most of the population of Earth, walked through life looking at people and feeling instantly attracted to them. That had never happened to me. Not once.
‘Lukey, wait up.’ Aster caught me outside the cabin door and pulled me into a tight hug. ‘Everything with Kit will work out, I promise.’ He squeezed around my middle. ‘And you know I thought me and Callum would have sex four times my first night back on the island? Well, it was five times and they were all amazing and I’ll tell you about it the next time I see you.’
‘Bye, Aster.’ I wriggled out of his embrace and started the walk down the mountains.
I didn’t begrudge him and Callum their wildly active sex life, but I simply didn’t get it. Alongside never forming an instant attraction to anyone, I’d never felt what Aster described in detail with the small number of the people I’d had sex with.
I’d wandered if a connection might come after humping, that maybe I needed physical closeness to feel an intense pull towards someone, but that hadn’t worked either. I definitely wanted to have sex, which probably ruled out the chance I was asexual, but I didn’t feel the urge others did to be with someone in that way. I’d had sex with a grand total of three women, and each time had been as disappointing and lacking as the last. The final time, I’d pretended to come just so that it would end.
Even kissing, which Aster could have written sonnets about even before he met Callum, did nothing for me. I couldn’t stop focusing on the mechanics, the sounds and physical sensations. There was never a spark. Nothing.
Callum couldn’t possibly know that. Maybe he pitied straight people as much as Aster. Callum couldn’t know I went along with it when Aster said I was straight because it was easier than the alternative. Which was that I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I wanted a relationship, wanted sex to be as amazing as it seemed to be for everyone else, but I couldn’t get there.
I’d never looked at a person, male or female, and felt a stirring of attraction.
I hadn’t consciously decided to keep my abject failure to fancy anyone from Aster, but it had gone on for too long now. I was twenty-three years old and had never had a satisfying sexual experience with another person. I’d never even enjoyed a kiss.
Telling my bestie that was never going to make him happy, so I kept it to myself. I let him believe I was boringly straight and unbothered about finding a woman to settle down with. I let him assume I didn’t mind being alone.
I blew out a long breath as I walked down the road towards the village. I’d declined Callum’s offer of a ride on his quad bike not because Aster warned me of the danger of death but because the longer it took me to get back to Kit’s, the more likely it was that he’d be tucked up in bed when I got there. No chance for me to make a twat of myself if I didn’t see him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KIT
Another day, another note.
Morning Kit,
