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Wren was starting to think maybe he’d only seen what he wanted to. He’d only seen what made it easier to pull the plug so he didn’t have to deal with all the complications that he was just not wired to deal with. And now all he could do was simmer in his regret because Percy was a once-in-a-lifetime person, and he wasn’t sure there was anything left to fix. No matter what Ravi had said after they got home.
He was operating on absolutely no sleep. He’d stayed up until Ravi finally passed out, then spent the rest of the night on an aromantic Discord server talking to people like him—and a few people not like him at all. But the sea of users who understood what he was going through was like a balm to his nerves. He wasn’t an anomaly. He wasn’t a freak. He wasn’t betraying the label of aromantic because he existed in shades of grey.
He was just himself, and there were people who not only understood him but who experienced life like him.
By three in the morning, he’d ended up on a FaceTime with a couple—Robbie and Braedon—who had been together for seven years. And that number was still in single digits, but it felt like an eternity for Wren, who hadn’t wanted to ever commit to more than a couple of weeks. Every time he’d been with someone longer than a night, it had been a compromise for their comfort. Not his own.
“I feel like maybe I’ve been a giant asshole for a lot of my life,” Wren told them just before he was ready to hang up.
Robbie offered a smile, which was obscured a moment later when the captions covered his mouth. “I get it. I did the same thing, and the guilt was kind of overwhelming. I started therapy to help me deal with how it was making me feel.”
“And does it?”
“Some days,” Robbie said. “Some days, it’s harder.”
“And that’s where I come in,” Braedon said, shoving his head next to Robbie.
From what Wren knew, Robbie had been a lot like Wren—back and forth with Braedon until it almost broke the man because he was too afraid to explore what it was he was feeling. And the things he wanted. At the time—also like Wren—Robbie didn’t have the language for what he was or how he felt. The only thing he knew was that he was different.
He thought he was broken, something Wren felt deep in the pits of his soul.
For so long, Wren thought maybe his fucked-up childhood and his relationship with his identity as a Deaf man had destroyed his ability to have any real sense of self. And he was still mad that nothing about him could be simple, but maybe he was just used to letting things be overcomplicated.
“Do you think he’ll forgive me?” Wren asked at the end of the call. It still hurt to think about losing Percy, but he wanted someone to give it to him straight.
Robbie’s brows furrowed, and Wren liked that for a hearing man, Robbie was expressive enough that Wren could understand him without his ability to hear emotional tones. “I don’t know. I think it’s worth it to try and explain—really explain. Not to make excuses or try and set his expectations of a future when even you don’t know how you’re going to feel,” he added.
Wren flushed. He’d done what he thought was right at the time. He told Percy what he thought the man should hear because Wren had no idea what his future was going to look like. It seemed safer to prepare for the worst, and Percy had so readily accepted it.
Wren was the one who hadn’t. Wren was the one who panicked.
“And how much will he hate me if I tell him I just don’t know?”
Robbie laughed. “I think he might appreciate that more than you think. I love Braedon more than I thought I was capable of loving someone. We’re not traditional, and it still makes people uncomfortable. Braedon has a rough relationship with his family because they think I don’t do enough—that I’ll never be enough for him. But their opinion doesn’t matter to us, and I think that’s what saved us.”
Wren had another crushing moment of realization. How much of his fear and panic over Percy had been worrying that other people would judge them? That Percy might crumble under the weight of everyone else’s expectations?
“I really want to see him.”
“So see him,” Robbie said.
Those words had carried Wren through the rest of the night and into his shift in the morning. But he was exhausted now and hiding out in Caleb’s office with Mouse at his knee and a mountain of inventory he wasn’t doing because the words on the page were a blurry, jumbled mess.
Mouse nudged his hand, and Wren looked up just in time to see the door open. His heart caught in his chest when Ravi walked in, looking as exhausted as he had when Wren turned up on campus to get him. He hadn’t said much at home, but Wren knew he was still processing.
He was mostly surprised to see Ravi had come in for his shift.
“Before you say anything,” Ravi signed, his hands a little stiffer than usual, “Caleb already gave me shit for working today.”
Wren rolled his eyes and gestured for Ravi to sit. When he did, he gave Mouse the signal to go say hi, and he hurried over, burying his head in Ravi’s lap. Ravi’s eyes closed in a moment of bliss—something Wren understood profoundly. Mouse had saved him in more ways than one.
Sitting back, he waited for Ravi to look up at him, but before he could raise his hands, Ravi shook his head.
“Please don’t ask me how I am.”
Wren’s palms fell to the desk. He didn’t know what to say. He was still so goddamn furious, but Caleb had taken charge and was talking to a lawyer. No one really expected anything to come of it. Ravi was more exhausted than he was up in arms about the mistreatment, and Wren had seen the look on Caleb’s face when Ravi said it had happened to him more than once.
Then Caleb shattered when Bodhi nodded and said he’d been stopped and questioned more times than he wanted to think about. It was something he knew Caleb had never considered—and something Wren wished they both had. But Caleb wasn’t going to let it go, and Wren didn’t want to pile on while Ravi was recovering.
