I’d thought she had a super-cool life. But I guess I had always wondered whether she was happy. Or whether she was sad and alone, desperately wishing for romance, just like I had been.
‘No boyfriend, then?’ Ellis asked me as I slumped down next to her in the conservatory that evening.
‘Tragically, no,’ I said.
‘Sounding a little sarcastic there.’
‘Maybe so.’
Ellis smiled and shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about Gran. She’s been saying the same things to me for the past fifteen years. She’s just scared she’s going to die without a great-grandchild.’
I chuckled, even though this was something I thought about and felt a little bad about. I didn’t want Gran to die unhappy.
‘So …’ Ellis continued. ‘There haven’t been any … girlfriends? Instead?’
It took a moment for me to realise that she didn’t mean ‘girlfriend’ in the platonic sense of the word. She was asking me if I was gay.
Which, you know, massive props to Ellis. If I had been gay, this would have been a bloody amazing moment for me.
‘Um, no,’ I said. ‘Not really interested in girlfriends either.’
Ellis nodded. For a moment she looked like she was going to ask something else, but then she just said, ‘Fancy a bit of Cuphead?’ So we turned on the Xbox and played Cuphead until everyone went home or went to bed.
The Warrs are one of those terrible families where Christmas Day present-opening is banned until the late afternoon, but that year I didn’t mind too much, having other things on my mind. I hadn’t asked for anything in particular, so ended up with a big stack of books, an assortment of bath products I’d probably never use, and a sweatshirt from Mum featuring the phrase ‘Fries before guys’。 The family had a good laugh about that one.
After presents, the grandparents all fell asleep in the conservatory, Mum got into an intense chess match against Jonathan while Dad and Rachel prepared the tea. Ellis and I played a bit of Mario Kart before I snuck off to my bedroom to chill out and check my phone.
I opened my Facebook message chat with Pip.
Georgia Warr
merry christmas!! i love you, hope you had a good day yesterday xxxxx It was still unread. I’d been drunk when I sent it midway through Christmas dinner. Maybe she just hadn’t seen it yet.
I checked her Instagram. Pip’s family celebrated Christmas primarily on Christmas Eve, and she’d been posting a lot of Instagram stories. She’d posted a photo in the early hours of the morning – her family walking along the street on their way back from Midnight Mass.
i fell asleep in church lol
And she’d posted another photo half an hour ago of her in her family kitchen, putting a doughball into her mouth.
leftover bu?uelos get the FUCK inside my belly
I thought about responding but couldn’t think of a funny thing to say.
Since she posted that half an hour ago, she had probably seen my message on her phone. She was just ignoring me.
She still hated me, then.
I was tucked up in bed by 10 p.m. Overall, not a bad Christmas Day, despite having lost my best friends and the way my singleness was becoming an ongoing family joke.
One day I would probably have to just tell them.
I don’t like guys. Oh, so you like girls? No, I don’t like girls either. What? That doesn’t make any sense. Yes, it does. It’s a real thing. You just haven’t met the right person yet. It’ll happen with time. No, it won’t. This is who I am. Are you feeling OK? Maybe we should get you an appointment with the GP. It’s called being ‘aromantic asexual’。 Well, that sounds fake, doesn’t it? Did you hear about that on the internet?
Ugh. OK. Didn’t really want to venture into that conversation any time soon.
I was heading downstairs to get some water when I heard the raised voices. At first, I thought it might just be Mum and Dad bickering at each other, but then I realised the voices were, in fact, Auntie Sal and Uncle Gavin. Ellis’s parents. I hung back on the stairs, not wanting to interrupt.
‘Look at Jonathan,’ Auntie Sal was saying. ‘He’s got it sussed. Married, his own house, his own business. He’s set for life.’
‘And he’s a decade younger than you!’ Uncle Gavin added.
Oh. Ellis was there too.
I wasn’t super close to Auntie Sal and Uncle Gavin. Same as Ellis, really – they didn’t live close by, so we only saw them a few times a year at family gatherings.
But they always seemed a little more uptight than my parents. A little more traditional.