“Ewww.” June grimaces. “What a creep. How many different numbers of his have you blocked?”
“Five. Thought I made myself pretty clear. So this bouquet came,” I tell them, “Jonathan saw the note, and then he gave me shit about my boyfriend not being considerate enough to order a low-fragrance bouquet. That’s when I told him I didn’t have a boyfriend anymore.”
Eli sits back, stroking his jaw. “And how did Jonathan respond to that?”
I stretch toward June’s recliner and hit play on the remote in her hand. “He turned the color of slushy street snow after a long day of traffic and gaped like a broken nutcracker. It was delightful.”
June’s eyes widen. Eli flashes her a slow, smug smile, but I hardly notice.
“Now can we please watch The Muppet Christmas Carol?” I ask them, propping my feet on Eli’s lap. “I need at least one Scrooge in my life to get what’s coming to him.”
After the movie, I shower, then change into my favorite snowflake-print pajamas. Hair wrapped in a T-shirt to dry my curls and humming “Greensleeves,” I waltz into my bedroom. Gingerbread, my orange tabby cat, snoozes, draped like a starfish on my bouncy ball chair. I pluck her off before I sit in her place, then settle her on my lap.
Smiling at the sound and feel of her rumbling purr as she settles back to sleep, I power on my laptop and bring the screen to life.
A photo of June, Eli, and me, huddled close, fills the screen. Eli grins, auburn ringlets falling over his eyes, which are squinted shut because the man can’t help but blink when his picture is taken. Glossy chin-length black hair, crinkled nose, wide smile, June has her arms hooked around our necks, temple to temple with Eli, smooshing my curls to my head as I kiss her cheek. Snow dusts our heads like confectioner’s sugar, the conservatory’s Winter Wonderland display a tapestry of intricate twinkling lights behind us.
Looking at the photo, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude—for loving parents who are good people, friends who are the siblings I never had, a faithful feline pet, a city that feels like home, a job that I love run by people I love even more. I have so much to be thankful for. And if my only true burden in this life—even if he is a very large, surly burden—is Jonathan Frost, I guess I can deal with that.
“Hey.”
I spin around to face June standing on the threshold of my room.
“You okay?” she asks. “I know we got a little intense back there about the work nemesis situation. I’m just protective of you. And Eli’s a hopeless romantic.”
“I know.” I smile. “I love you both for it. I’m fine. Just tired.”
She nods. “All right. Don’t stay up too late talking to Mr. Reddit.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, Mom.”
Eli and June have admitted they don’t quite understand why I talk daily with someone I’ve never met, whose real name I don’t know, whose personal life I don’t know much about either, except that—smallest of worlds—we’ve figured out we live in the same city.
I could try to explain my relationship with Mr. Reddit, as June and Eli named him, but I’m protective of how great talking to him makes me feel. Behind the safety of a screen, I’m my most sophisticated self—articulate, witty, sharp. Mr. Reddit hasn’t seen me struggle to read his facial expressions or observed how often I wear my noise-cancelling headphones or learned how anxious I get when life veers off my routine. And listen, I love myself for who I am, every part of me, the parts that fit easily in this world and the parts that don’t, but it’s a whole other thing to ask someone else to love me for all of those parts, too.
I don’t show Mr. Reddit those parts that don’t fit so well, and in doing so, I don’t risk him rejecting them, either.
That’s the truth of why I don’t tell June and Eli more. I know how they’d see it. Eli would encourage me to embrace vulnerability. June would say the person who deserves me will be wild about all of me, otherwise they can fuck the fuck off.
And my friends would be right. But it’s easy for them to say. They don’t understand what pursuing friendship and romance is like for me, how being autistic and demisexual means not just the exposure of myself, like it is for anyone when they meet people and try to forge a connection, but weighing when and how to trust someone with the truth of who I am, a truth that’s not always been met with understanding or acceptance or kindness.
So I’ve kept Mr. Reddit to myself since we met, a little over a year ago on a bookish Reddit thread that got real heated when a guy started mansplaining George Orwell’s 1984, and another someone—that would be me—patiently, logically explained how wrong he was.