Felix Ever After(82)

Leah texts me, asking me if I’m sure I don’t want to come. She plans to meet up with Ezra. She says she’d told Ezra about Austin—everyone knows now, I guess, since Austin was kicked out of St. Catherine’s. She says Ezra feels responsible, somehow, for Austin’s gallery and his trolling; feels guilty for not figuring it out himself when the two of them were dating.

God, of course it isn’t his fault.

Maybe you should come to the march and tell him that yourself. He won’t admit it, but I’m pretty sure he misses you.

The idea of seeing Ezra at the march fills me with nerves. No, not just nerves. Outright fear. The last time I saw him was when he said he needed space after our huge fight, and we haven’t spoken since. I love Ezra. I know that I do. It’s been a slower realization, since Ezra told me he has feelings for me—a realization that just as long as Ezra’s been in love with me, I’ve probably been in love with him. The sort of love I have for Ez—it’s the kind of love that fills me so much that I can’t stop thinking about him. It’s the sort of love that makes me wish that I could touch him, hug him, kiss him again. It’s the kind of love where it almost feels like I’m not just Felix, and he’s not just Ezra, but we’re connected in a way that I’ve never been connected with anyone else before, like our spirits have somehow mingled together to create one, and . . . Shit, that kind of love is downright terrifying.

I can see myself a little more clearly now. I’ve been too afraid to let myself love Ezra, but I was willing to put up with Marisol. I told myself I wanted her to realize that I’m worthy of love and respect, but I knew she would never understand that. I was willing to let myself love Declan, knowing that he only loved the idea of me—loved Lucky. I knew our relationship wasn’t going to work, but I let myself fall for him anyway. I was willing to reach out to my mom, knowing that she wouldn’t reach back to me. She still hasn’t responded, and I know that she never will. It’s almost like I was looking for the pain and the hurt, because it was easier to live with the idea that, even though I want love, I’m not the kind of person who deserves to be loved.

I’m sitting cross-legged in the living room in my favorite chair, Captain curled up in the corner of the seat. My dad sits on the sofa, crossword puzzle book out, TV on some reality show neither of us is watching. I hold my laptop, skimming through the drafts of hundreds of emails I’d written to my mom. Why do I keep writing these emails to her, knowing that she’ll never love me—not in the way that I need her to?

I click on select all.

I hesitate, pause—then click on delete.

There’re so many that it takes a second for my laptop to reload. As it does, and as I see the emails disappearing page by page, I can feel a lightening. Something I’d been holding in my chest, anger and hurt and pain, starts to fade away. It wasn’t anger and hurt and pain I’d had for my mom. Though I’ve got plenty of that, too, this was anger and hurt and pain I’d had for myself, for writing all those fucking emails in the first place—for refusing to let go.

Would it feel this good, to go to Pride like Leah suggested? I imagine walking through the streets—finding Ezra covered in rainbow-colored paint and glitter—telling him that I’m sorry, and that he was right. That I love him, too. Anxiety pricks my chest. What if he doesn’t accept my apology? What if he says that he doesn’t love me anymore?

God—what the hell should I do?

“What’s going on, kid?” my dad asks.

I look up at my dad, who frowns down at his crossword puzzle.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re pretty quiet,” he says, glancing over at me. I don’t answer him—proving his point, I guess. “Things still not going well with Ezra?”

It’s a little weird how easily my dad can read my mind sometimes. “Not really,” I admit. “He hasn’t spoken to me in over a week.” We used to speak every day, multiple times a day—we’d eat our chicken, drink our wine, curl up on his mattress, smoke weed out on his fire escape, run through the sprinklers at the park and pass out in the grass. I’m in love with him, but even if he doesn’t feel the same way about me anymore, I just miss him so fucking much. The loss is a physical pain, a cramp in my side.

“Have you tried speaking to him?”

“He won’t answer my texts.” He didn’t answer my texts, anyway, for the first few days after our fight. Leah says that he wants to apologize, but he’s too afraid and embarrassed to talk to me. Would he answer my texts now?

“Well, fights happen, and people move on eventually,” my dad tells me. “Maybe he just needs some time to cool off.”

We go back to sitting in silence. I wasn’t planning on saying it—wasn’t planning on telling him anything about my identity, not when he can’t even say my name, can barely remember my right pronouns—but the words are out of my mouth before I’ve even registered that I’m speaking.

“I went to the LGBT Center the other day,” I say.

He doesn’t answer. He scribbles something down on his crossword.

“I went to a gender-identity group discussion.”

“Okay,” he says. Erases, brushes the page with his hand.

“It was a good discussion,” I tell him. I’m just stalling now, unsure if I even want to keep going. I suddenly feel like I’m coming out all over again. What if he thinks I’m just confused, or making my identity up? Not a lot of people even know that demiboys exist. The first time I told my dad that I was trans, he didn’t exactly react well. Why would this time be any different?