Page 10 of Shapes of Love
“I—” My heart squeezes. I don’t know where to start.Sorry I couldn’t love you in the way you needed me to?Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner?
“Sasha, I’m sorry.” Kai picks at a napkin until it’s nothing but shreds, his eyes blazing with an intensity that startles me. “For the way I ended things. I was hurt.” I blink. Is he apologizing? Why? “I should have heard you out. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, I…” My voice shakes. “I shouldn’t have agreed to date you when I wasn’t sure of… I just didn’t know better. I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel. I hurt you.”
“But you were hurting, too. I failed to see that.” He glances at me, his gaze sharp. “I guess… a part of me was upset that you didn’t tell me. About what you were going through. I was still your best friend.”
“I was afraid to lose you if I told you.”
And I did.
A few months after our falling out, I started posting my music online, the songs I had written before, and new ones. I guess it was my way of dissociating after losing my best friend.
I wonder… In a universe where I’m not aroace, what are we? What are we doing right now? Would we still be here, having ice cream together? Except, maybe, in that universe, we go home together. In that universe, we’re in love, and I never have to say goodbye.
Kai smiles sadly, and my heart drops like a boulder. I want to tell him that I never did anything I didn’t want to do. And I loved him. I really did.
I’ve always hated the expressionmore than friends, as if romantic love were one step above friendship. If you ask me, friendship is just as valid as romance. It’s steady, reliable, unconditional.
Us not dating will never mean I love him any less.
We eat our frozen treats, quietly talking about a show we’re both watching. I don’t know where this leaves us, or ifthis is the last time we’ll ever speak. But I’m glad that at least he doesn’t hate me anymore.
“So, you stayed in LA for college?” I ask, noting the pin on his jacket. I trail my fingers across its surface, a flicker of anxiety still coursing through me. Why was he at our school today?
“Yeah.” He lets out a long sigh, sweeping his hair back with a faraway look. Something’s off with him, but I don’t know what it is, or how to ask him.
“What’s your major?”
“Computer science.” He presses his lips into a hard line.
“Oh.” I must have made a face, because Kai’s eyebrows rise in surprise.
“What, you didn’t think I’d make the cut?”
“No, it’s just…” I bite my lip. “Don’t you draw anymore?”
It never occurred to me that Kai would go to college for something other than art or creative writing, the same way that I couldn’t picture my life if it didn’t revolve around music. I still remember when Mamá got me my first keyboard. I spent an entire summer teaching myself how to play piano through video tutorials, and I would skip sleep to learn about song production. The happiness it brought me was all-consuming, unavoidable.
It always happens when I’m about to go intothe thing.
The thing isn’t something I enter willingly. It possesses me, and I’m at its creative mercy. I don’t know exactly how it works, but whenever I like something a lot, it brings me somuch joy, it consumes my every thought, and the only outlet I have for it is to turn it into music, notes, lyrics.
It’s the same for Kai and art. Or at least it used to be.
“It’s okay.” He winces. “I… I don’t draw much these days, not like before. It just made more sense. I want to be able to help out my grandpa when he retires. Art was going to be a dead end anyway.”
A thread of guilt unravels through me. Maybe not everyone gets to follow their dreams, but it hurts to see the disappointment in his eyes. Mia used to joke that Kai came with a notebook, as if it was a natural extension of his body. One time he got the flu and stopped attending school for a week. When he came back, he had written ten chapters of a fantasy novel and drawn the first chapter from scratch. He was the one who got me into anime, actually. He used to look so happy talking about his favorite characters and plot theories.
Used to.Because the Kai in front of you is not the Kai you used to know anymore, I remind myself.
“I just wanted to see you.” Kai’s voice is barely a whisper, but it booms with the force of a hundred cannonballs. “You asked me why I came to our old school today. I guess I was worried. I saw your name trending this morning, the whole aroace thing…”
“And you got war flashbacks?”
He rolls his eyes, but his lips twitch with laughter. “You’re still such an idiot.”
“You shouldn’t be surprised.”
