Page 97 of All the way home

“I never said I was gay,” Oscar said with a touch of defensiveness.

With a sigh, she told him, “I know you didn’t.”

Then she’d gone home and woken an equally hungover Kieran—he was not thrilled—and interrogated him about the flexibility of his sexuality until he had threatened to forcibly remove her from his bedroom.

“I’m pretty into dudes, Reen,” he said blearily, nose in the crook of his elbow. “It’s not that complicated.”

Except it was that complicated.

When Siobhan and Oscar had first gone Instagram official a few weeks later, Rena had sat and stared at the post with her jaw clenched. Then she’d asked her mother, “Are people even allowed to just . . . change like that?”

“Change?” Mum asked, smiling softly at the photo they’d posted. “Is it really change? Or is it just that you didn’t know this side of them?”

“I know everything about Oscar and Siobhan,” Rena said, then corrected herself. “Knew. I knew everything about them. Oscar . . . I didn’t even know Oscar likes girls.”

“Even if Oscar didn’t know that about himself, it’s okay for him to change his mind.” She moved as though to brush Rena’s hair out of her eyes but stopped at the last minute. “People are always learning who they are. Humans are always changing.”

“I have known myself for a long time,” Rena said stoutly.

Mum laughed.

Rena stared at the post, feeling unsettled and a bit grumpy.

Since then, Rena and Oscar have talked it through. A lot. Dozens of conversations about sexuality and gender as Oscar tried on new identities like hats—pronouns, names, labels—have paved the way for Rena to acclimate to the concept of fluidity.

Humans are always changing.

The same question has always battered against her chest, a helpless, desperate whisper: Do we have to?

“Hey.”

Rena jumps.

Standing over her, Lucas holds out a paper cup. “You would not believe the lineup.”

One hand pressed over her chest, where her heart suddenly races, Rena takes the cup gratefully, relieved at the warmth leaching through it to her fingers. “Thank you.”

“Isn’t that Kieran’s?” Lucas nods at the sweatshirt she’s wearing as he sits down next to her.

She nods, words lodged at the back of the throat.

“If you wanted another jacket you could have asked,” he says, like that means anything at all, as if she’d ever ask anyone to take off the jacket they were already wearing. As if she’d really take any comfort from his—

Rena swallows hard as her heart drops. To distract herself from that line of thinking, she takes a tentative sip. Her eyes widen, brows shooting up.

Lucas frowns. “Something wrong?”

Shaking her head, she fights to get her expression back to neutral. What had he asked her, specifically?

The usual?

She’d said yes. Yes to the usual. Rena’s usual coffee order is easy: black, one sugar.

This coffee has cream in it.

The fact that it’s wrong wouldn’t bother her much—it’s not that she’s particularly picky—except that one sugar and one cream had been her usual.

In high school.