seem to be that you’re not interested in this person, but that you still are.”
While Drew was sorting through that, Sanee steepled his fingers like a supervillain. “Dude, are you gay?” There was a pause. “Like, it’s okay if you are.”
Drew glared at him. “I think I’d have noticed.”
Tinuviel raised a hand. “I suspect you’ll think this is a weird question, but what would you have noticed?”
“Well . . .” Drew hated it when T did this. She’d ask you something to which the answer was so screamingly obvious that you’d immediately start second-guessing yourself. And, right now, that was the last thing he needed. “Fancying guys for a start?”
“Maybe you just haven’t met any guys you fancy. I mean, I’m pretty sure you’re not attracted to Sanee . . .”
Sanee made a valiant attempt not to look horrified. “You’re not, right?”
Drew made no such attempt. “I’m really not.”
“Okay,” Tinuviel went on. “And you don’t fancy me either.”
“Jesus, just because I don’t fancy every girl I meet, that doesn’t make me gay.”
She looked smug. “And, by the same argument, not fancying every boy you meet doesn’t make you straight.”
There was a really long silence.
“Holy shit,” gasped Sanee. “That’s a really scary thought.”
“I can imagine it would be to a lot of people, but actually there’s nothing scary about rejecting heteronormative notions of binary sexuality.”
“So you’re saying,” said Drew slowly, “I could be gay and not know it? Because that sort of sounds like bollocks.”
Tinuviel pushed her hair out of her eyes. “No, I’m not saying that, Andrew. I’m saying that, for many people, sexuality is more fluid and less clear-cut than they’re taught to assume. You might, in fact, be completely straight, but it’s also possible that you’re not. And, even if you aren’t, you might have gone your whole life completely happy and not caring and not knowing. And that’s fine. But it seems to me that right now you have an opportunity to have something with somebody, and it might work or it might not, but if your only reason for not trying is that you’re scared of the idea of being gay, then that’s probably quite silly and a little bit sad.”
Drew frowned. “Is this your idea of cheering me up?”
“Dude.” Sanee spread his hands in a beats me sort of way. “She’s got a point. I think. Somewhere in there. If you still like this guy, even though he’s a guy, then you should probably at least talk to him. I mean, dude, you drew him fanart. And you’ve kind of been all happy and annoying for the last week.”
“Okay.” Drew pulled his duvet back over his head. “This has been very helpful. Now will you please go away? I want to continue freaking out, and I’d like to do it in private.”
He felt Tinuviel uncurl. “I’m just down the hall if you want anything.”
Sanee slapped him somewhere in the region of his arm. “It’s all right, mate. We’ll still be friends. Even if you do get a taste for dick.”
“Thanks,” mumbled Drew.
And then he heard the door swing closed behind them.
Once he was sure they’d gone, he made a futile attempt to get back into Hawkeye, but it was no good. He had too much stuff in his brain. The one thing he was pretty sure he didn’t want to do was lie here trying to work out if he was gay or not. If that was even possible. So he tried to break the whole mess down into manageable chunks, like he’d do with a design project or a maths problem. Chunk one was “Am I gay or what?” but there was nothing he could do with that on his own. Tinuviel might have been all sexuality is fluid blah, but that didn’t really mean anything if he couldn’t hold hands with a boy or kiss a boy or fall in love with a boy. Even if the boy was Solace.
Chunk two was being lied to, or if not lied to, then misled. Or whatever it was that made him feel bad about everything. Thinking back, and trying to be as objective as possible given the circumstances, he could sort of see that he hadn’t really given Solace a chance. It had been hard enough psyching himself up to ask someone out on the internet. He had no idea how you’d slip, “Hey, you know I’m not a girl, right?” into the conversation. But while some part of Drew understood that side of it,