I knocked.
“Yeah?”
I took in a deep breath and opened the door, then stepped inside.
Ben look startled, but he didn’t tell me to leave.
“Benji,” I started. And then I didn’t know how to continue.
“I know.” He sighed and went to sit on his bed that was neatly made unlike mine at the other end of the hallway.
I leaned on the closed door and watched him. He seemed tense, but also kind of…resigned?
“Hey, I don’t want you to feel bad about anything,” I said quickly. “It’s not—”
“I don’t know what I am.” His voice was so quiet I wasn’t sure I heard him right.
“What?”
“I’ve never known what I am,” he said more loudly. His gaze was on the floor somewhere between us. “I’ve been living here for a while now, and I see all you guys be so open. Happy about how you identify. Even Rey tried to talk to me yesterday—”
“I didn’t know that; if he crossed any lines—”
“River, no. He’s fine. He’s a good kid. Young man, really.” Ben sighed again, then he looked at me. “I realized the other day that you’re attracted to me.”
Now it was me who dropped my gaze and wanted to slide down the door and onto the floor.
“I always was, on some level.” Might as well confess as much. To get the ball rolling. “When we were kids, I had the biggest crush on you, but you never noticed.”
Ben made a sound that was half gasp, half something else. “Really?”
I smiled wryly and finally looked at him. “Oh yes.”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, and I could see him calculating something. “I’ve done some research the last few nights.” It seemed to take a lot for him to look me in the eye. “River, I think I might be asexual, if not aromantic.”
Chapter 6
Ben
Working with Lake was easy and comfortable. We had fun, too.
While he wrote new words, I edited the old ones to fit his slightly different writing style, so the difference wouldn’t be obvious to anyone. We wanted to keep the whole book coherent, and we had narrowed down what we thought would happen in the story in the long run.
Technically, we’d gone from no clue to having a loose outline, which Lake tried to follow. We chatted about the characters a lot, having whole days of conversation about them, so Lake would feel more connected to them.
The new side characters he came up with were great, and I frequently told him so, loving the way he was getting more confidence in his abilities the longer we worked together.
It was slow going; he still doubted himself and often stopped mid-paragraph to ask me if something sounded good, but I knew those times would become few and far between just by keeping it going. The only way to become a better writer outside of trying to absorb guides and writer self-help books was to write.
I also wasn’t sure that those self-help books were for everyone. Sometimes they constrained people too much, and I’d always thought that as long as the text fit the genre, it was compelling and flowed easily when you read it, it was good. Now, there were agents and publishers who thought certain rules of writing needed to be obeyed, but luckily that wasn’t the case here. All Maria and the publisher wanted was another book like Ruth’s that they could market favorably by letting the world know that while Anneliese Harris was gone, her nephew had finished her last book.
They hadn’t announced Ruth’s death yet, either. Literally nobody other than the publisher, Maria, myself, Ruth’s old agent, and a few close friends had known that Ruth was Anneliese.
It felt surreal to know that we’d all managed to keep it a secret. Either way, she was gone now, the world was worse for it, and these were the cards that she’d left us to work with.
But as much fun as the work was, I’d also started to get to know the people better. That had led to some interesting and troubling realizations.
For one, every adult here seemed to be very settled in themselves. Lake and River were proudly gay, Sierra was bisexual and leaned towards women, and even Theo seemed to have it figured out, although maybe not in such simple terms.
