God. I was regretting not ordering more alcohol.
We sat in silence for a moment, neither of us wanting to really push the issue. Normally Pip was nosy as hell whenever we started talking about deep stuff, but she probably knew there were some things that it wasn’t cool to be nosy about.
I wished she had been nosy.
I wished I could find the words to talk about all of this with my best friend.
‘So, you and Jason,’ said Pip, and I thought, oh no.
‘Uh, yeah?’ I said.
Pip snorted. ‘Have you kissed yet?’
I felt myself go a bit red. ‘Uh, no.’
‘Good. I can’t imagine you kissing.’ She narrowed her eyes and looked off into the distance. ‘It’d be like … I dunno. Like seeing my siblings kiss.’
‘Well, we’re probably going to end up doing it at some point,’ I said. Definitely. We definitely were.
Pip looked at me again. I couldn’t read her. Was she annoyed? Did she just find it weird?
‘You’ve never really been interested in anyone before,’ she said. ‘I mean, the Tommy thing … that was all … you just made up that crush. By accident.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed.
‘But you … you just like Jason now?’
I blinked at her. ‘What? Don’t you believe me?’
She leant forward a little, then back again. ‘I’m not sure I do.’
‘Why not?’
She didn’t want to say it. She knew it’d be disrespectful to say it, to assume anything about my sexuality, but we were both thinking it.
We were both thinking that I probably just didn’t like men.
I didn’t know what to say, because I didn’t disagree.
I wanted to tell Pip that I didn’t feel sure about anything, and I felt so weird all the time, to the point that I hated myself, being a kid who knew all about sexuality from the internet but couldn’t even vaguely work out what I was, couldn’t even come up with a ballpark estimate, when everyone else seemed to find it so, so easy. Or if they didn’t find it easy, they got through the hard bit at school, and by the time they were my age, they were already kissing and having sex and falling in love as much as they wanted.
All I could manage to say was: ‘I don’t really know how I feel.’
Pip could tell I wasn’t saying everything that was in my head. She could always tell.
She grabbed my hand and held it.
‘That’s OK, my guy,’ she said. ‘That’s fine.’
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m … shit at explaining it. It sounds fake.’
‘I’m here to talk whenever you want, man.’
‘OK.’
She pulled me into a side hug, my face pressing against her collar. ‘Date Jason for a bit if you want. Just … don’t hurt him, OK? He acts all calm and collected, but he’s really sensitive after all that shit with Aimee.’
‘I know. I won’t.’ I lifted my head. ‘You’re really OK with it?’
Her smile was forced and pained, and it nearly broke my heart.
‘Of course. I love you.’
‘Love you too.’
I decided to leave after that. Pip kept getting dragged into conversations with people I didn’t know, and I didn’t have any energy left to talk to new people. Jess was busy mingling, and Sunil was nowhere to be seen.
I checked my phone. It was only twenty past ten. I wondered whether Jason was OK.
He was probably still sitting in his room, all alone, wondering whether I’d really had a headache or I just didn’t like him.
I didn’t want to think about love any more.
As I walked out of the restaurant and down the narrow stairway, I heard a pair of hushed voices at the bottom. I stopped, realising that one of the voices belonged to Sunil.
‘I’m the president now,’ he was saying, ‘and if that pisses you off so much, you don’t have to come to the society events any more.’
‘What, now you’re trying to kick me out?’ said the second voice. ‘Classic. I shouldn’t be surprised by this point.’
‘And now you’re trying to pick a fight again.’ Sunil let out a long sigh. ‘Don’t you ever get tired, Lloyd? Because I do.’
‘It’s my right to voice my concerns about the society. You’ve changed all the events we do and now you’re letting in way too many people!’
‘Letting in too many – what planet are you on?’
‘I saw the fucking flyers you were handing out at the Freshers’ Fair! Asexual and bigender and whatever. You’re just gonna let in anyone who thinks they’re some made-up internet identity?’