I did the mental equivalent of kicking myself, which meant I also actually kicked my leg out and knocked over my chair. Asexuality wasn’t any more of a choice than anything else in the queer rainbow and that was insensitive. Sorry, Alicia.
“It’s not about that,” Luke said. It should always be about queer rainbows. Duh. Wait, he meant it wasn’t about sex between Alicia and Lydia. I tried to see it that way for a moment… nope, that made no sense at all. “They’re not talking to each other and making assumptions and you know what they say about that saying—"
“When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me,” I told him promptly.
Now, his side of the phone was disappointed. “You didn’t even let me try to get the expression right, Ryan.”
“Sorry, I wanna know the point.”
“What they’re currently stuck on deals with sex, yeah,” Luke surmised. “But that’s not why they’re having problems. They’re just too afraid it will ruin things if they’re honest with each other.” He made a noise. “This is everyone’s problem.”
Oh. Shit. “Not us.”
“Oh, we do that all the time.” And if we were talking about the past, that would be totally right. Stupid present.
Except now, it’s not communication issues. “We’re both being honest, brutally honest, and we still have a problem. Why aren’t things better if we’re doing that right?” I didn’t want to think about it, but it was so clear now. We were doing the right things and still getting the wrong results. That meant… that meant the problem was us.
Not me or Luke individually, but both of us together.
God, how did this happen? How did our sexual misadventures question the very fabric of our relationship and possibly the universe? No, just our relationship. How did talking about Alicia and Lydia lead to talking about us?
No, don’t freak out yet. Luke was the man with all the answers apparently. He would know. He would make everything okay again. He would—
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. How could he know so many things and then come up blank when it came to us?
“What, how do you have all the answers expect the ones you need?” It made me angry. Being angry felt better than being clueless.
“That’s how life works, right?” he joked weakly.
“Or you just don’t care.” Placing blame was not the right thing to do, but I was going to put it all on Luke and fine, I wouldn’t win any maturity points, but it would feel good. “All of this is no big deal to you. Maybe it should be. Why aren’t you worried?”
“You always jump to worst case scenarios, make me the voice of reason,” His voiced sounded as tense as mine. “Maybe I want to freak out too but you’re always taking all the crazy up.” That was both good and terrible. Good because he wasn’t being the stoic man with all the answers, he was fighting back. Bad because he was fighting back.
“Make me the bad guy so you can be the white knight. Really classy, Chambers.” Almost wished we had video chatted just so that he could see the expressions that went with my scathing and sarcastic words.
Unlike all the other stuff happening with us lately, a fight would be fun. I did the mental equivalent of taking my earrings off so that, I don’t know, whatever reason ladies take off their earrings for in a fight? So no one can rip them off? God, women were vicious. Wait, why was I mentally wearing earrings?
“Ryan,” Luke said, drawing me away from my thoughts. He sounded all reasonable again, like his brain apparently hadn’t figured out we were fighting yet or maybe it forgot. “I just think—"
“Careful, don’t strain yourself,” I said sweetly and icily at the same time. It was an art form.
He laughed but not in a funny way. “You’re such an asshole sometimes.”
“And you’re always a delight, baby. You think honesty is the problem? I’ve got a couple choice things I could say to you right now if you wanna test that theory.” That was a total lie, but I could come up with something.
“What, more complaining from you? Like that’s new.” At least there was finally some passion, some heat, no more dancing around each other awkwardly. “I’m just as scared as you, but I was actually trying to make things better.”
“Must have been a nice change of pace from trying to make everything worse.” He did that for so long after we got together. No, he even did that before we got together.
“It’s better than being a douchebag who doesn’t let anyone close,” he said and accused.
“Says the braindead jock you’ve always been,” I returned.
“At least I remembered that we were actually trying to be mature about all this.” Him being annoyed and superior wasn’t hot at the moment.
“I’m not allowed to get upset?” I laughed hollowly. “Sorry this matters to me.” Guess I was the only one.
“Just don’t see what good us yelling at each other is doing.” Maybe it wasn’t doing any good, but he didn’t get credit just for saying that as not seeing the benefits of this argument didn’t stop him from having it with me.
