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“The internet? I saw it in a fic, and I started Googling, and…realized that if I hadn’t fallen for you, I would have been happy to be single forever. Maybe if I’d gotten to know someone else really, really well, the kind of trust we had, I might have wanted them, but otherwise…”He trailed off and shrugged.
She was quiet, watching his face. He started twisting his scarf. “Please say something!”
She put her hand over his, lacing their fingers together. He took a deep breath. “You said someone else. Do you think you could have fallen for a boy? Or someone nonbinary?” she asked, sounding only curious.
“I think it could have been anyone I felt that close to.” He laid his head down on the back of the swing. “I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m not sure gender matters much for me. If you told me tomorrow you were transitioning, you would have been a boy all along, and I would be in love with a boy; I would have been all my life. I would obviously feel thrilled for you, but you being a boy wouldn’t change howIidentify in any way. I don’t know, it’s not clear-cut. I’ve never loved anyone else, so I can’t say for sure.”
“So you’re demi and pan? Maybe? But maybe just…?”
“Hannah-sexual.” He laughed.
She frowned. “That’s a lot of pressure, Blue.” But she didn’t unlace their fingers, so he knew she was processing out loud, and while he didn’t love the response, he was willing to see where she went next.
“I don’t mean it to be.” He shook his head. “I’m not missing out on some crucial experience when I’m not experiencing sexual desire. My life isn’t less fulfilling without it. I would have thought ‘you’re the love of my life and I don’t want to divorce you’ would be way more pressure.”
She tipped her head back onto the porch swing and blew out a breath. “You’re right. Your sexuality isn’t a burden for me. I never want you to feel that way. It’s not about me at all, and it’s amazing, and I’m so excited for you that you know.” She teared up a little, and his eyes welled up in response. “I wish the angry little boy mad at the world because he felt like a square peg would have had the internet to give him some language and community.”
“You and me both.” He nodded, choking up. “I think he still would have been angry at the world, but less angry at himself.”
“I love that little boy. I never wanted him to be mad at himself for existing. He was perfect.” She looked over at him, and some part of his heart blossomed where it had been barren before.
“And now?” he grumbled, because he was trying not to fully weep.
She ruffled his hair. “Now you’re an asshole, and you make my life difficult.”
“Fair,” he said. He could work with that. Hannah liked difficult, and she kind of liked assholes. She kind ofwasan asshole a lot of the time, and it was one of his favorite things about her.
“Thank you for telling me,” Hannah said.
He’d imagined this conversation, wondered how she would react, tried to script what he would say. He’d never come out to anyone else, because it wasn’t anyone else’s fucking business who he had pantsfeelings for, but he’d known as soon as he first learned demisexuality existed, that first year he was working out on that first cruise ship, that he wanted to talk about it with Hannah, that she would understand what it meant to him. To have words for what he’d always felt and never been able to articulate. It didn’t functionally change anything about his marriage but knowing changed everything about himself.
“No matter how it works out, I’m glad if I was going to love for the rest of my life, it’s you.”
Something occurred to him. “So, back to sex, do you still have your IUD?”
Hannah laughed. “Did it just occur to you that we should probably not get pregnant right now? Yes, I do. I do not prefer to ever be surprised by my period.”
He was relieved, and also, just a tiny bit, disappointed. She was right that they probably shouldn’t get pregnant. Right now. Because he didn’t want to get into that, he asked, “Are you ready for the party?”
They worked well together as a professional team, he was finding, and it was something they could talk about that didn’t feel like being put under an X-ray machine and having his darkest secrets revealed. Besides, he needed to give them time to talk about work. She needed to see him as someone who took her career seriously.
“Is everything completely organized and reorganized and triple-checked and ready to roll? Yes. Obviously, it’s me.” She pulled her hand away and his whole body protested the loss of her touch. “Am I having a little bit of anxiety over the governor being here and about leaving you in charge of the kitchen for a major event? Yes. But it’s a good trial run for the wedding.”
“You know I’ve run some kitchens, right?” he reminded her.
“I actually don’t know, because I’m not clear on what you’ve been doing for the past four years except swanning about on a boat,” she pointed out, “but I know for sure you have never runmykitchen, so the anxiety stands.”
“Excuse me, I was making my fortune on a boat,” he protested.
“Oh, I thought you were ‘finding yourself,’” she teased him, doing finger quotes. “Who are you, Frederick Wentworth?”
He put a hand over his heart. “I am, after all, half agony, half hope.”
“Batting your eyelashes and quoting Austen won’t win me back!” she said, pushing him off the porch swing. He went, feeling lighter than he had in years.
“If you’re done, and we can’t eat in the kitchen because of the event situation, would you have time to have dinner with me? Maybe at the diner so I can see if Collin’s egg salad is actually better than mine? I’d like a do-over of that first date.”
“Once again I will ask, shouldn’t you be cooking?”
