It shouldn’t matter. In the grand scheme of things, he knew itdidn’tmatter. But with the plane ticket home burning a hole in his inbox, it felt tenuous at best.
He sagged against the bedpost and stared up at the confetti sitting in the bottom of one of the balloons. “I just hope that’s enough. I feel like nothing is guaranteed in life, and there can be so many obstacles in the way of finding and keeping happiness.”
Noah’s eyes drifted back to James, who was making a pained expression. “Does Leon make you happy?”
James nodded firmly.
“Then I think you should go all out. When you love someone the way you love Leon, you should show them, in whatever way you can, as many times as you can. Sometimes life can get in the way of big gestures and declarations, so when the opportunity arises, I think you should take it.”
James huffed. “You said you’ve had the aspec conversation a few times? Well, you’re the third person to tell me that,” he said, and he walked over to his closet to grab the second basket. “So, I guess it must be true.”
They spent the next hour and a half building James not one, but two Valentine’s Day baskets, and by the end of the night, Noah was a little drunk on wine, but a lot more certain about what he had to do tomorrow.
He spent the entire next morning researching. Because he’d helped Rachel move, with her binder of notes, which she lost after the first day, and color-coded sticky notes she repeatedly forgot the coding for, he knew she preferred hard copy notesover digital. He pulled his old college printer out of his closet, printed the relevant articles, and even put them into a bright red folder he found in his desk. Depending on how the conversation went, maybe he could give it to Charlie and Aspen that night as a surprise.
Aspen didn’t question why he was bringing a backpack to the party; they just asked if they could stash their bottle of rosé in it. Noah had also brought a bottle of rosé, and they clinked together in the backpack as they walked the five blocks to Blair’s townhouse. The weather wasn’t looking great, with sleet beginning to fall right as they rang the doorbell. If things got too bad, Charlie could leave his car on the street here, and they’d deal with it in the morning. He had texted a little over forty minutes ago that he had finished closing the shelter for the night and was heading into town, which meant he should be arriving in the next few minutes.
Blair answered the door in a skintight red dress, and she gave Aspen’s pink lace top an appreciative head nod and smiled at Noah’s red V-neck sweater. It “showed off his sinful collarbones,” which had been requested by Aspen and seconded by Charlie in their group chat.
“Hi, hi, come in, it’s nasty as hell outside. Rachel’s in the kitchen, and I put a traffic cone out front for Charlie—oh, that must be him now,” Blair said, scooting past Noah to clomp down the stairs in her combat boots.
“Do you want to take the wine to the fridge, and I’ll wait for Charlie?” Aspen asked, and Noah couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.
He hurried inside, dodging folks of all genders, wearing variations of reds, pinks, and purples, and arrived at the kitchen a little out of breath.
“Rachel, can we talk?” he said, a little too loudly.
Several of the other partygoers looked at him in alarm. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to use a renowned break-up line on Valentine’s Day, but he knew Rachel wouldn’t read into it.
As luck would have it, one of the folks in the room was actually Talia, and she wouldn’t read into it either. As the other three guests quickly exited the room, Talia stayed put, filling a large pitcher with what looked like Kool-Aid mix.
“Is it okay if I keep getting things set up–oh, thank you so much,” Rachel said, accepting the wine bottles Noah handed her as he pulled out the more important item in the backpack.
He held the folder to his chest as Rachel put the wines in the fridge, and when she turned back around, he thrust it out to her like an overeager waiter.
“Is this a very large Valentine’s Day card?” Rachel asked as she opened the folder.
“Uh, no, sorry, it’s just a folder. But it’s actually awesome that you’re here, Talia, because maybe you wouldn’t mind correcting anything I missed.”
“Anything you missed?” Talia asked, raising an eyebrow in an eerily similar manner to Blair.
“In my aroace research,” Noah said. “I think I’m some form of aroace. Specifically, reciprosexual.”
“Oooh, good vocab,” Talia said, flipping her purple hair over her shoulder as she began stirring the pitcher vigorously with a wooden spoon.
“I inadvertently taught him that,” Rachel said, looking up proudly at Talia, only to cast Noah a much smaller smile before burying her head in the folder again.
“You did. And then last night, uhm…” Noah knew the first time he tried to claim, or even say a new identity out loud, was always the hardest. He straightened his shoulders and lowered the empty backpack to the ground. “James suggested I might be greyromantic.”
Rachel did a pretty poor job of hiding her surprise, but Talia didn’t so much as blink. “Ah, so a flavor of aroace. That’s fun–and I imagine may have been pretty confusing for you up until now.”
Noah had never interacted with Talia before, but he found her bluntness refreshing. Almost like Charlie.
“You wrote romantic-ish on the top of this page,” Rachel said absently. She was somehow already halfway into the stack of research he’d handed her. “I think that makes total sense for what I’ve seen between you and Aspen. Do you feel romantic-ish towards Charlie as well?”
Noah nodded, finding it easier to admit to the second time. Rachel flipped to the next page and skimmed down it, then flipped to the following page, which she turned sideways. “Oh wow, this is nifty.”
It was a series of continuums that depicted how a person identified in terms of gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, romantic orientation, and relationship preference. Noah had plotted out his dots in pencil several times before finalizing them in ink.
