"So you're..." He pauses. The pause is Jonah being careful, which is a rare and somewhat alarming event.
"Bisexual," I say. "The word is bisexual. It means exactly what it says, and I am done letting people round it off into something easier to file."
Nikolai's hand tightens on my knee. The restaurant noise continues. The earth continues to rotate.
Jonah nods. The nod is immediate and complete.
"Got it," Jonah says. "Want pad see ew? Ren is ordering and we're getting extra."
The response is so Jonah, so perfectly and exactly Jonah, that my eyes sting. The stinging is not sadness. The stinging is the overwhelming relief of a man who has been carrying a word for seven years and who has just set the word on a table in front of thirty men and the table held it and the table did not break and the men did not flinch and the response was pad see ew.
Pad see ew is the acceptance made noodles.
Nikolai's hand tightens on my knee. The tightening is small. A fraction. The fraction says: I heard you. The word you said is the word I did not know you were carrying, and the carrying must have been heavy, and the setting-down is brave, and the brave is the thing I have been learning from you since the corridor.
After dinner, outside the restaurant, the Beltline lit with string lights and runners and the specific Atlanta evening energy that makes the city feel alive in a way that Tampa never did, Nikolai pulls me into a doorway.
"Bisexual," he says.
"Yeah."
"You did not tell me."
"I didn't know how to bring it up without it sounding like a correction."
"It is not a correction. It is a fact about you. Facts about you are not corrections. Facts about you are data I want." The sentence is Mars-language in Nikolai's voice, the analytical vocabulary that Nikolai has absorbed from his goalie, and the absorption is endearing in a way that I am not going to tell him because telling him would produce the jaw-flex and the jaw-flex is too enjoyable to rush.
"Are you okay with it?" I ask. The question is small and the question is the fear. The bi-specific fear. The fear that the word changes the math. The fear that "bisexual" is heard as "not gay enough" or "will leave you for a woman eventually" or any of the other misreadings that the word attracts.
"I am okay with every fact about you," Nikolai says. "Including the facts I did not know. Including the facts you are still finding."
The sentence is the answer to the fear. Not "I don't care" (which would erase the word). Not "it doesn't matter" (which would diminish it). The answer is: every fact about you is data I want. The word matters. The word is received. The word is held.
I kiss him. In the doorway. On the Beltline. In public. In view of runners and walkers and the string lights and the Atlanta evening.
The kiss is not the elevator kiss (urgent, detonating). The kiss is not the kitchen kiss (desperate, hungry). The kiss is the public kiss. The first public kiss. The kiss that says: we are here and the here is visible and the visible is chosen.
Nikolai kisses me back. In the doorway. On the Beltline. His hand on my jaw in the precise, Nikolai grip that I have learned is the grip of a man who holds things carefully because the holding is the care.
A runner passes. The runner does not stop. The runner does not care. Atlanta does not care. The Beltline does not care. The world continues.
Inside the restaurant, through the window, I can see the team. Jonah is talking. Bennett is eating. Luca is showing someone something on his phone. Mars is drinking water and probably calculating the exit velocity of every person in the room. Cole and Mik are in the corner, Cole's hand on the back of Mik's neck.
The ordinary. The booth. The table that held the word.
I lean my forehead against Nikolai's chest. The chest is warm and solid. The doorway is small. The Beltline is bright.
"Thank you," I say.
"For what?"
"For wanting all of it. Including the parts you didn't know."
His arms go around me. The holding is the public holding. The first public holding. The holding that says: the booth is ours now.
The booth is ours.
NIKOLAI
