“Fine,” I say. “Let’s get some sleep and leave first thing.”
Ezra rejects the bed and opts for the floor. I give him the comforter and a couple of pillows. He arranges them on the carpet, then lies down and faces the wall opposite of me. Tommy shifts in the sheets of his bed and I stare up at the ceiling. I won’t get much sleep tonight. Uncertainty hangs like a hook over our heads, biding its time to snatch us up. I close my eyes and search for Ezra’s soft breathing. It’s there, but subtle at the foot of the bed. I listen, I lie here, and I wonder . . .
How the hell did this happen?
Chapter 15
Ezra
The carpet has a musty scent to it. The motif is some ugly green atrocity probably coated with bodily fluids of every kind. Conin and Tommy offered to take my place or share the queen-sized beds, but I declined in favor of the stiff floor and its familiarity. It reminds me of Conin and the sleepless nights at his home where I’d take the floor, comforted knowing he was nearby.
And it’s not the stiffness that keeps me awake, but the incessant pounding of my heart, and my mind which won’t shut up. Are any of us actually asleep? I doubt it. How could we when the Barclay Network is potentially after my ass? Every car, every burst from a pair of headlights, makes me freeze like a deer afraid of its impending doom. Subtle noise from the city’s nightlife travels into the room. In a way, it’s the most comforting reassurance tonight will bring.
“You awake?” Conin’s voice is small, but it penetrates the night.
“I don’t know how anyone could sleep,” I say in place of an answer, hoping Tommy’s passed out.
“Will we ever be able to sleep again?” he asks. The joke doesn’t land, but I don’t think it was meant to be one. My mouth is zipped shut. I don’t have a response, not one we’d like.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you were a—”
“Recidivist?”
“I don’t like that word . . . I never did,” says Conin.
“We never talked about it,” I answer.
“I wish we had. I don’t have a good enough answer to why it never came up. It just felt taboo, I suppose. Maybe if we had . . . you would have felt comfortable telling me.”
“To answer your question,” I whisper, exhaling a perpetuated breath, “I thought you wouldn’t look at me the same.”
An unmistakable, choked-back sob emanates from Conin’s bed. I sit up, feeling the urge to join him there, embrace him, pull him close—share that comforting heat that exists only between two pressed bodies.
“I should have said something,” he says. It’s unmistakable, the way he suppresses that sudden outburst of emotion. I wish he’d let himself cry.
“Conin. You had no way of knowing.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s like the time Dan and the other guys made these homophobic slurs and I did nothing about it. I had the power to, but I kept my mouth shut. Maybe then, like now, I could have changed something. I could have made an impact—made someone feel comfortable in their own skin.”
My mouth goes slack-jawed. My hands tremble, and an abrupt cold runs down my spine. We’ve never approached queer topics, as I’ve always been afraid of outing myself to Conin. And now, at this moment, I have a strong desire to tell him I’m demi and admit the truth I’ve kept to myself.
He wasn’t aware of it, but Conin accomplished the impossible. I thought I was broken. Boys in the locker room would brag about body counts, scrupulously detailing a woman’s body in the most derogatory manner. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t feel the same. Girls were fine enough, and so were boys, but the idea of kissing them or . . . having sex with anyone was nothing short of horrifying. When Conin and I would lie next to each other watching movies, I’d feel a slight shift, a subtle crack inside me. During a particularly passionate kissing scene, the damn broke loose. The thought of kissing Conin, having sex with him, hit like a sucker punch—an irremovable want that only he could satiate.
Every day after was full of sleepless nights researching what the hell this feeling was. Conin and I carried a deep bond only years of friendship could cultivate and so that could be the only reason I was brimming with embarrassing, sexy thoughts of him. I figured that’s what it was, that could be the only logical explanation, so I typed that feeling into the search bar. Lo and behold: demisexuality.
It felt right.
If I keep this part of myself hidden, would I be smashing or setting barriers? On the off chance Conin doesn’t reciprocate those feelings, how would my confession affect over a decade of friendship? And given our situation, now’s not the time to admit I’d move the moon and stars for him, not when our lives are at stake.
“I don’t believe you’re capable of what the government would accuse you of. It’s not fair to criminalize an entire people for their mere existence,” Conin says after many beats of silence.
“No,” I say, “but that’s the world we live in.”
Another beat. Two, three.
“I never noticed, growing up.”
“My powers?”
