I shrug. “For the record, I’m sorry.”
Levis scooches closer to me and wraps his arm around my shoulders. I let myself lean into him.
“To be fair, we all knew your shitty home life was going to catch up with you,” Briar says. “I think we all knew that Haze’s would catch up with him, too. Maybe we thought we were ready to be there for you and support you in the way you needed, but we didn’t recognize when it was happening.”
“None of us are psychology majors,” Honey Bee points out.
“I’m good now,” I assure them. “I’m also sorry for all the shit I’ve put you through since Loren came into your life, Oakley.”
“It’s okay,” he says, smiling.
“It’s not.”
“Fine. Then I accept your apology.”
“That I’ll accept,” I agree.
“Areyougood now?” Briar asks me.
I’m about to tell them not to worry about it, but I remember what we just agreed on. I don’t want to say things out loud before I’m ready. But I also don’t want to shut them out again. “I am,” I say slowly. “But I still feel confused about… everything. I was so damncomfortablebelieving I finally knew myself. Being aroace made everything fall into place. Every weird facet that I grew up with, thinking I was just weird and different and unlike everyone else, it all made sense. Then Voss comes along and… I feel like I’m starting over again. Asexual no longer applies when he fucking gets me hard.”
“Brek—”
“No, not what I mean,” I assure Briar. “Notmakesme hard. I manage that all on my own, which is why asexuality no longer applies in its most basic form like it once did. Same thing with being aromantic. It made everything I was feeling when Oakley started seeing Loren fall into place. Iwasn’tattracted to him. I wasn’tin lovewith him. But I was panicking because he was leaving more and more, and I clung to you all as the one constant in my life. The one constant since I was a kid. The one placeI was always loved, cared for, supported, and accepted as good enough. And Oakley was leaving.”
“I’m sorry,” Oakley says, and I’m pretty sure there are tears in his eyes.
I shake my head. “My point is, I thought I knew myself because once I found aroace, it all just felt…” My words trail off. “Better. I understood what I was going through. It’s not like I don’t know my issues stem from childhood and the exceptional home life, but I understood. Now it’s all irrelevant because Voss makes mefeel.It’s gross.”
They laugh, but I can feel how heavy I made the conversation.
“Anyway, yeah. I’m good. Really. I have some answers that I’m kinda okay with, though they don’t feel quite so exactly me like aroace did, but I’m working on it.”
“And the pansexual thing? Is that a weight on you, too?” Haze asks.
“Interestingly, no,” I muse. “Voss says I’m aloof to gender. This is probably why I’m indifferent to my orientation. I’ve tried to examine my chaos to figure out if maybe that’s playing into something, but I can’t keep myself focused on that at all, which I think is answer enough, right? I really don’t care about what’s in someone’s pants.”
Briar nods.
“That how you felt?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “No. I wasn’t aloof. I was very aware of what was in Noaz’s pants. It was just… unimportant, and yet left me on unsteady ground because I didn’t know what to do with that… uh… on someone else.”
Honey Bee laughs. “Goober.”
“This feels better,” Oakley says. “Somehow, I feel like something was fixed even though we were never broken.”
I nearly apologize again, but I hold it in. Instead, I lean a little further into Levis and silently agree. Itdoesfeel good to have it out there. Now we can turn our attention to important shit. Like, what’s up with the Van Doren grandparents…
19
VOSS
“Why doyou think they’re really here?” Ellory asks.
I turn my head to watch him. He’s currently on the floor with Axl and a pile of clothes, changing him like a doll. Axl doesn’t seem to care in the least. He’s floating between lazily aware that clothes are coming on and off and dozing.
At almost two months old, he stays awake for longer periods of time now. I love when his eyes open wide and I think he’s looking directly at me. I’m not entirely sure what the truth about their sight is. I get science and all. I’m a firm believer in science, technology, medicine—all that. But I’m also a believer of people being able to speak from experience, and a newborn simply can’t tell us what they see.
