“Can I ask something?” Eli says.
“Fine,” I grumble. “But make it quick. I want to watch Muppets dressed in Victorian clothes and forget about reality.”
“Does Jonathan know you’re on the spectrum?”
I fidget and stir my soup. “No.”
“But the Baileys do,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Your point?” June asks, leveling him with one of her sharp, intimidating looks.
“What I’m getting at is, with the Baileys, Gabby, you’re your authentic self, right?”
I nod.
“And not that I think you need to label yourself with folks to be your authentic self,” he continues, “but I’m wondering if there’s a reason the Baileys know and Jonathan doesn’t. Are you your authentic self with him?”
I avoid Eli’s eyes, staring into my soup as steam wafts off its surface. “I don’t know. Mostly? I don’t hide my sensory stuff, and I don’t pretend to be anything other than who I am…”
“But,” Eli says gently.
“But I haven’t explained my social struggles, anything I’d convey when trying to form a friendship or relationship with someone, because…well, I had no plans on being friends or anything else with him.”
“Why not?” Eli asks.
“He’s just always been so…intimidating and arrogant and…”
And you’ve had a chip on your shoulder since the day you met him, the angel on my shoulder chides, when you saw him as the human embodiment of every aptitude that makes you feel inadequate.
The devil on my other side says nothing—just maneuvers her pitchfork, revealing an extendable handle that makes it long enough to poke the angel off my shoulder and send her into a screaming freefall.
I think I’m coming unhinged.
“Gabby?” Eli’s voice snaps me out of my angel-devil dilemma. “I understand your logic, and you know I’ll always respect your decision on this. That said, do you see how it might be better between you two if he knew the things he does that confuse you and make communication difficult and push your buttons?”
“But then…” I swallow nervously, licking my lips. “But then he’d know my soft spot. And I wouldn’t know his.”
The devil on my shoulder nods in agreement.
“Or he might follow suit and show you his soft spot, too,” Eli counters. “And then you’d have shared vulnerability together. You might even become friends.”
June gives him another sharp look. Some sort of neurotypical eye conversation happens.
“Hey.” I snap my fingers. “Stop talking around me.”
“Eli reads too many romance novels,” June says.
I frown between them. I read and sell romance novels for a living and I’m not making the connection. “Huh?”
“I just wonder if he likes you,” Eli says, carefully. “But because he doesn’t know how you tick, he’s blown it to hell so far in showing you he cares.”
I stare at him, stunned. A bubble of silence swells in the room until I burst it with laughter. I laugh so hard, my sides hurt and there are tears streaming down my face. “Oh God. That’s good.”
Eli’s not laughing. “I’m serious.”
“I’m unimpressed,” June says. “Even if he does ‘like’ her, being a dick is an ass-backwards, misogynistically regressive way of showing it.”
“There’s no chance,” I tell them. “Especially considering that, up until today, he clearly thought I was still dating the enemy.”
“But you broke up with Trey as soon as you found out who he really was,” Eli says.
June blinks at me in confusion. “So why did the asshole think you two were still dating?”
“I wasn’t giving him a relationship report, and while I thought it was pretty obvious Trey was out of the picture, I guess Jonathan assumed we were still together and that I’d just become more discreet about it.”
Eli scooches closer on the sofa. “Okay, but how did he learn that you broke up?”
I stare longingly at the movie, paused on screen. “Are we ever going to see a ghost scare the shit out of Michael Cain?”
“After you clear this up,” Eli says.
Sighing, I set down my soup and flop back on the sofa. “Trey sent a grotesquely expensive holiday bouquet to the shop this morning with a note that said, and I quote, ‘All I want for Christmas is you.’”