When Dex spoke next, his voice was thick with amusement. “Aporn? Like, one singular porn?”
Throwing their hands up in exasperation, they snarled, “Of course that’s the part you focus on.”
His laughter was loud and boisterous and made Cya’s teeth grind. It also made them smile, and since they were alone, they didn’t have to hide it. Dex would never know.
“Okay, sorry. I’ll try to keep my noises from sounding likeaporn.” He sounded smug, and it grated. “I should have known my raw, animal magnetism would be too much for you.”
He followed his vain declaration with a grunted growl, and Cya rubbed the space between their eyes. “You’re flexing right now, aren’t you?”
“You bet that slithering ass I am.”
“You keep my ass out your mouth,” they shrieked in outrage, blushing furiously when Dex guffawed. “I didn’t—that’s not—you know what I meant!”
“I mean, it’s cool if you’re not into ass play,” he said around his chortles.
“Technically, it’s anatomically impossible for me to beintoass play,” they said cheekily, and Dex choked on his next laugh.
“What?”
Triumphant at the power reversal, they adopted an overly innocent air. “Oh, I think I hear Hemersyn calling me. Gotta go.”
“Wait, you can’t just drop a bombshell like that and hang up!”
“I really must be off,” Cya trilled with a laugh. “Toodaloo.”
“Cya, don’t you—”
They rang off before he could finish, feeling far too pleased with themself. The Lupyn continued to blow up their phone for the next hour, but regardless of personal growth and maturity, they were still—and probably always would be—a bitch. So they ignored him for no other reason than entertainment on their part.
Before bed, they went for a soak in their dropped-floor bathtub, the water near scalding, the steam speckling their face in dew. They took out their phone but had nothing to actually do on it, so they scrolled social media.
After the disaster of their final year in secondary school, Cya had deleted their socials, but since they were, on some level, a masochist, apparently, they’d created a fake profile so they could internet-stalk their old friendgroup. Niki posted about the parties she attended and the fun activities filling her summer break. And Kent. So many pictures of him.
They paused on a picture of Kent and Niki at the country club, and it might as well have been a reenactment of the pictures that had graced Cya’s profile three years ago. Copied and pasted after replacing Cya with Niki. Kent had heldthemthat way, smiled atthemthat way, kissedthemthat way. Hadn’t he?
They wondered if it had looked as performative with them as it did with Niki? Probably. Everything about their life back then had been false, plastic. It had felt real because they’d never known anything else, but looking back, it had been so fake.Theyhad been so fake.
Even in the small ways they’d tried to be themself, they’d never pushed too hard. They’d come out as nonbinary, and their friends had more or less accepted it. But they still got misgendered sometimes, and Kent always introduced them as his girlfriend.
“Partner sounds so weird,”he’d said every time they’d asked him to stop.“I mean, do youwantpeople to think I’m gay?”
Eventually, they’d stopped asking. It wasn’t worth the fight, they’d reasoned. The fact it was even a fight at all should have been the first red flag, but they’d been young and stupid.
Dex had stopped calling themprincessafter the first time they’d asked him to. No fight. No pushback. Just acceptance, a simple apology, and then never again. He’d found a different, gender-affirming term to annoy them with instead, and it shouldn’t have been a remarkable thing.
Six months ago, seeing this picture of Kent holding Niki in the pool might have stung, might have hurt. Now, it just made them sad. It was surprisingly easy to click on Niki’s profile and tap the Unfollow button.Even easier to do the same for Kent and every other fair-weather friend they’d had.
Then they searched for Gem’s profile, and it was filled with ridiculous pictures of him and Rusty making crazy faces, and videos of the two of them playing pranks on Toni, and little doodles Rusty had drawn that Gem claimed would be worth millions someday once Rusty was a famous artist. Then there was Toni’s profile with posts of him and Jude, him and his nephew and nieces, him and Gem and the rest of his friends. Then Oliver, Willow, Glyma, Dex, and Yve.
It was imperfect and cringey and messy, but it was wonderful and real.
With shaking fingers, Cya clicked the Edit Profile button and replaced the fake information with their real details. They added a photo from the mineral fair, their smiling face next to Hemersyn’s, as their profile image, and nibbled on their thumb nail for almost a full minute before pressing that innocuous Save button.
They followed their coworkers’—theirfriends’—socials, and immediately received follow-backs from Gem, Yve, Willow, and Dex.
A text made their phone vibrate a few seconds later.
[Dex] You’re on socials! Welcome to the internet, my friend. It’s a horrible place, no cap.
