We laugh a little, but it dies off. “Yeah,” I say, bouncing one leg for a moment. “I believed that, you know. I mean, once I understood what being a late bloomer is.” Amemory of early internet searches rushes behind my eyes, with a young and confused me huddled around my dad’s computer while he was in the shower. I’d searched the words “late bloomer” and learned that my dad believed I was simply a case of developing those urges and desires late.
I believed that, because I’ve always trusted and believed my dad. I tell my sister as much. “I shelved my concerns, and took Dad’s word for it that I would gain interest in girls and dating, but… much later than my peers.”
Kat nods, and listens, the best response.
“I dated.” I recall my singular girlfriend in grad school, the three times we had sex, and the way everything slipped by the wayside with us. I didn’t even care. And I liked her, as much as I’d liked anyone. “But… I don’t know.” I scratch at my sternum, feeling uncomfortable with the truth, despite the fact that it is indeed my truth.
“Didn’t feel it with Rhiannon?” Kat asks, recalling my grad school girlfriend.
I shrug. “It’s not like I didn’t like her because I did. She was great. Really well read, a great conversationalist, a layered individual all around. Cool family, too.” I think about Rhiannon and her wide set dark eyes, and her toothy smile.
“She was so hot,” Kat hums.
“She was.” And yet, the first time she peeled off her tank top and straddled me on my couch, my body didn’t react like it had a gorgeous goddess in my lap. I look up atmy sister. “But we had no electric spark. No… chemistry.” I decide chemistry is the best word to describe the lack of butterflies in my stomach when I was around her, the way I didn’t think about her when we were apart and how I certainly didn’t fantasize about a life with her.
Kat lifts one shoulder and shrugs it. “That’s okay. Sometimes you like someone but your bedroom chemistry isn’t there. It sucks but it’s better to find out the bedroom is dead before you fall in love or something.” My sister sips her drink, and I’m jealous she has a drink to sip. She spots me eyeing the bottle. “More talk,” she encourages, “more booze.”
I let my head fall back against the cushion for a moment, and peer up at the ceiling. “It’s not even the lack of chemistry though. I mean, obviously there couldn’t be a relationship without that but… I just didn’t care.” I think about the last time she left my house before I’d broken up with her. We had Thai food (takeout) and watched a marathon of foreign films, all with the theme of unrequited love. She cuddled up to me, her fingers stroked over my heartbeat as the scenes intensified, and when it was over, she bundled up, kissed me on the cheek, and left.
It was a nice time.
But I stood there, hand pressed against the back of my front door, and realized I didn’t want her to spend the night. I didn’t want the obligation of taking care of her in the morning. Equally, I didn’t want her trying to do things for me, trying to take care of me.Iknow how I like to wash my clothes and make my coffee,Iknow which bakeries Iwant to stop at and when I need quiet time. It was then that I realized I wasn’t meant for romantic relationships. That I was someone born to be alone.
I look up at my sister, who is watching me intently, nodding her head ever so slightly, waiting, waiting maybe for what she already knows is coming, or maybe suspects is coming. I don’t know. But I lick my lips, and skate my hand over my chin, and waste no more time. “I came to the realization after Rhiannon that I’m not interested in any romantic relationships whatsoever.”
Kat listens, dragging her finger beneath her eye, leaving a smear of dark makeup in its wake. “Not at all, ever?”
I shrug. “Nope. I just… I have no urge to relay things to a partner. I don’t dream about weddings, or tangling my feet with another’s in the sheets. I don’t long for walks on the beach hand in hand and I don’t fantasize about being a father or even… being in love.”
“Okay,” Kat steadies, folding her legs on the couch as she takes another sip of her whiskey. My eyes hang on the liquid that swirls in her glass, and it urges me onto my next point.
“Except lately.” Heat stalks up my throat and claims my cheeks, and I try my best not to close off, throw the walls up and stop. This is Kat. I can tell Kat. If my dad were here, I could tell him, too, but… I wouldn’t.
Kat is the only one I feel even a modicum of comfort with.
My eyes lift and find hers, and the gentle smile curvingher lips makes the weight on my chest lift. “I am immensely attracted to someone, and I’m starting to realize, it’s not that I didn’t want a relationship before. It’s that… it had to be the right person. I had to find the one that made me want those things.” I swallow hard against the discomfort, all the unknown. Admitting this when I know for certain it’s reciprocated would be much easier, but as of now, I’m discovering things about myself, and admitting things that I’m not sure will be returned.
Kat nods her head. “There’s a term for that.”
I scratch above my eyebrow, then stick out my glass. “I’ve earned it.”
She reaches out, tipping the bottle to my glass until they kiss with a gentle clank. The whiskey glugs into my glass until she’s filled three fingers, and pulls it back. “Pan,” she says as she carefully sets the glass bottle on the glass-topped table.
I take two quick drinks, my mouth puckering as my entire body loosens, just a touch. “Pan?”
Kat nods, quickly checking her phone when it lights up on the couch next to her. She replaces it, face down, after a moment. And I don’t ask if it’s pressing, because she gives her focus back to me. “Yes,” she confirms. “It means you’re gender blind. You’re attracted to the person, the chemistry you two have, the way that person makes you feel, their identity—who you like isn’t defined first by gender,” she says, clarifying. “But instead, that comes after. And it can go either way.”
Either way.
I roll my lips together, feeling my Adam’s apple slide down my throat, feeling like a trillion pounds as my eyes search my sister’s. She nods slightly, encouraging, but I stay quiet. Kat scoots to the edge of the couch with a squeak, and lowers her glass to the table. “Did this never occur to you?”
I shake my head. “I just thought I was broken, kind of. Or, I don’t know,” I skate a hand up the back of my head and take off my glasses, pinching the stress lingering at the bridge of my nose. Kat is suddenly next to me, her arm looping my lower back, head tipped to rest on my shoulder.
“Cade, you are not broken.” Her voice is so low that heat nudges the backs of my eyes. “I hate hearing you say that. I hate knowing you think that, or thought that.”
“I love my work. I thought, I’m like Dad, you know? The type of person who sets aside the rest of it and is meant to dedicate myself to my work.” I shake my head, realizing how wrong I was as an image of Noah dances behind my eyes. “Now I feel like I have no experience and have no clue how to… be a guy in a relationship, because I’ve never been that guy.”
Kat rolls and unrolls the hem of her top, busying her hands. “You’re just like Dad, you know that?”
