Loveless(79)

She raised her eyebrows and huffed out a sigh as if this was all a minor inconvenience.

‘But the thing was,’ she said, ‘everybody else I knew got crushes. They dated. All my friends talked about hot boys. They all got boyfriends. Our family has always been big and loving – you know, your parents and my parents and our grandparents and everyone else – so that was always what I saw as the norm. That was all I knew. In my eyes, dating and relationships were just … what people did. It was human. So that’s what I tried to do too.’

Tried.

She had tried too.

‘And this continued into my late teens, and then into my twenties. Especially when I got into modelling, because everyone was getting with each other in modelling. So I would force myself to do it too, just to be involved and not be left out.’ She blinked. ‘But … I hated it. I hated every fucking second of it.’

There was a pause. I didn’t know what to say.

‘I don’t know when I started to realise that I hated it. For a long time, I was just dating and having sex because that’s what people did. And I wanted to feel like those people. I wanted the fun, exciting beauty of romance and sex. But there was always this underlying feeling of wrongness. Almost disgust. It just felt wrong on a fundamental level.’

I felt a wave of relief that I had never let myself go that far.

Maybe I was a little stronger than I thought.

‘And yet, I kept trying to like it. I kept thinking, maybe I’m just picky. Maybe I haven’t met the right guy. Maybe I like girls instead. Maybe, maybe, maybe.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe never came. It never got here.’

She leant back into the driver’s seat, staring ahead at the soft glow of McDonald’s.

‘There was the fear too. I didn’t know how I was going to function in this world alone. Not just alone now, but endlessly alone. Partnerless until I die. You know why people pair up into couples? Because being a human is fucking terrifying. But it’s a hell of a lot easier if you’re not doing it by yourself.’

I guessed that was the crux of it.

I could, on a base level, accept that I was like this. But I didn’t know how I was going to deal with that for the rest of my life. Twenty years from now. Forty. Sixty.

Then Ellis said, ‘But I’m older now. I’ve learnt some things.’

‘Like what?’ I asked.

‘Like the way friendship can be just as intense, beautiful and endless as romance. Like the way there’s love everywhere around me – there’s love for my friends, there’s love in my paintings, there’s love for myself. There’s even love for my parents in there somewhere. Deep down.’ She laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile. ‘I have a lot more love than some people in the world. Even if I’ll never have a wedding.’ She took a big spoonful of ice cream. ‘There’s definitely love for ice cream, let me tell you that.’

I laughed and she grinned at me.

‘I was hopeless about being like this for a long time,’ she said, and then shook her head. ‘But I’m not any more. Finally. Finally I’m not hopeless any more.’

‘I wish I could be like that,’ I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Ellis raised a curious eyebrow at me. ‘Yeah?’

I took a breath. OK. Now or never.

‘I think I’m … like you,’ I said. ‘I don’t like anyone either. Romance-wise, I mean. Dating and stuff. It’s … I just can’t feel any of it. I used to want it – I mean, I still think I do want it sometimes. But I can never really want it, because I don’t feel that way for anyone. If that makes sense.’

I could feel myself going redder and redder the more I spoke.

Ellis said nothing for a moment. Then she ate another spoonful of ice cream.

‘That’s why you got in the car, isn’t it?’ she said.

I nodded.

‘Well,’ she said. She seemed to realise the magnitude of what I’d admitted. ‘Well.’

‘It’s a real sexuality,’ I said. I didn’t even know if Ellis knew it was a sexuality. ‘Just like being gay or straight or bi.’

Ellis chuckled. ‘The nothing sexuality.’

‘It’s not nothing. It’s … well it’s two different things. Aromantic is when you don’t feel romantic attraction and asexual is when you don’t feel sexual attraction. Some people are just one or the other, but I’m both, so I’m … aromantic asexual.’

That wasn’t the first time I’d said those words. But every time I said them, they felt a little more at home in the air around me.

Ellis considered this. ‘Two things. Hm. Two in one. Buy one get one free. Love that.’

I snorted, which made her genuinely laugh, and all the nerves that had been constricting my chest eased.

‘Who told you about those, then?’ she asked.

‘Someone at uni,’ I said. But Sunil wasn’t just someone, was he? ‘One of my friends.’

‘Are they also …?’

‘They’re asexual too.’

‘Wow.’ Ellis grinned. ‘Well, that makes three of us.’

‘There are more,’ I said. ‘A lot more. Out there. In the world.’