I looked at Alicia. “You’re asexual,” I told her. Oops.
She gasped. “How come no one told me before?” Like Ryan, she often fell back on sarcasm. It could be annoying when he did it, but Alicia was cute.
I hadn’t meant to bring this up. I used to only talk to people when I wanted—most of the time I never wanted—so my conversational skills weren’t always great. However, I blamed my bringing this up even when I didn’t want to on Luke and Ryan. Their spazzy bullshit was contagious.
“Alicia,” I tried again. “You don’t want to have sex. I don’t want to have sex.”
Luke looked a little scandalized that I was saying sex in a public place, but I barely got to enjoy it as Alicia raised an eyebrow at me and remarked, “Oh really? I feel like that’s something we would have bonded over along with black clothing, Snapped, and how often we check Kendall Jenner’s Instagram.”
“You like Kendall Jenner?” Luke asked me, amusement in his voice.
“Not the time, Chambers.” It really wasn’t the time.
Also, I maybe loved Kendall Jenner and didn’t want to talk about it… She was pretty and resourceful and pretty, and she’d been around the rest of the Jenners and Kardashians all her life without killing them so that was impressive. She tried to keep her romantic life private, which allowed me to believe she was into women and I had a shot with her in some world where our paths crossed and Alicia didn’t exist.
However, if I started a relationship with Kendall, I’d have to be around the Kardashians without killing them and I wasn’t sure I could handle that. Being around Luke sometimes was challenging enough already.
“If we’re talking about this asexual thing,” he said, proving my point. “Can we talk about this asexual thing?”
Hmmm. I considered his question. His stupid question. One of the main things Ryan and Luke had in common was their innate ability to take a tense situation and make it a million times worse. Ryan by having no filter and being a giant spaz and Luke by being dumb and clueless, which were two separate things when it came to Luke. He made being dim an art form.
I vetoed Luke weighing in by stepping on his foot with force. He hissed and stepped on my foot back.
Obviously, this meant war.
We fought like the siblings we actually weren’t for a few moments until he went to kick my leg and I moved it at the right time and he hit the table leg instead. He hissed in pain and I grinned triumphantly.
“Break it up, children,” Alicia said and we both turned to her dumbly after being distracted and then we sat in a stupid, weird silence.
“Okay,” Luke said again. “Can I just say something now?” The time for subtlety was over, so I raised my hand to whack him on the arm and he moved his arm and said, “Just let me talk!”
“Is he about to mansplain things to us?” Alicia wondered.
“I hope not.” If he did, he might die. And even if he didn’t, he still might die.
“I don’t even know how to regular ‘splain it,” Luke told Alicia while I braced for him making it worse. “Just, like, I guess I thought you wouldn’t be having sex.” I’m not sure if he saw the full force of my glare as I was sitting next to him, but he saw Alicia’s and he raised his hands in surrender. “Not that I was thinking about it! I just know you’re asexual, so I thought that meant you didn’t have sex? I didn’t know there was more to it?”
“There isn’t,” I said. Sex was off the table. I knew that when we got together.
“Yes, there is,” Alicia said right after me. Ugh, why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut? I could feel Luke slump next to me as things got even more unclear than before. “Asexual people do have sex all the time,” Alicia told him.
I glanced towards Luke to see the look on his face while his brain tied itself up in knots trying to figure that out. Hanging around him paid off sometimes. He was entertaining… and you know, that whole thing where his family was basically also my family too now, that was nice.
Our desserts came, even though no one dug into theirs immediately. Caramel and whipped cream weren’t going to cut it for me as far as comfort food went. I wanted to go home and watch something where people died in violent ways. Fiction, nonfiction, I didn’t care, just bring me all the gruesome details.
“Can I just say I don’t get this at all?” Luke complained. So much for entertainment, he was back to ruining things again. “I think I got the wrong idea. Can we start at the beginning?” he asked Alicia. “How does being asexual work?”
“It doesn’t,” she told him simply.
Luke nodded and relaxed in his seat like that made perfect sense. “Okay, so that’s why you can’t have sex, because it’s broken.” He picked up his spoon to eat his ice cream.
Yep, I was definitely killing him so he could never make things worse again. “Oh my god, Luke,” I hissed.
He turned to me with an angry face. “You’re the one who invited me to hang out with you two.”
Even I had bad ideas from time to time! “That was before you said my girlfriend’s vagina was broken.”
Luke’s mouth dropped open, scandalized. “You can’t say vagina in public!” He whispered the v-word.
