AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m trading gossip for labor as Seth helps me take inventory of the lighting gels in the light lab. He’s got a few folders of all the shades of green gels we have, and he’s supposed to be seeing if any of them are burned through, but he hasn’t touched them since I started telling my story. I recounted the one-act rehearsal and then the offer Jade made me at the end, and now Seth is staring at me like a deer in headlights.
“Could you please look through those gels?” I point to the pile in front of him, and he starts to sort.
“Sorry, sorry,” he says, shuffling through the small colored squares. “What do these do again?”
“Are you kidding me?” I ask. Now it’s my turn to stare slack-jawed.
“I know you put them in the little metal sleeves . . .”
“You know, it’s a good thing you’re pretty,” I say.
He scowls at me. Seth is not a tech kid—he loves acting too much for that—but he’s been on a lighting crew with me before, so I know he knows what to look for.
“The gels are what make the light change color. You stick them in front of the lens,” I say, gesturing like I’m actually putting the gel in place.
“Oh yeah . . .”
I shake my head at him so he knows I’m disappointed, but it barely fazes him.
“So what are you going to do about Jade? Because if I remember correctly . . . you haven’t slept with anyone yet,” Seth says gently.
He’s right. I haven’t. And not because I’ve never had the opportunity either.
“If you don’t mind me asking . . . what’s the big deal?” he asks. “Like, are you waiting for marriage or something? It’s cool if you are. I’m just wondering what’s stopping you.”
“No, I’m not waiting for marriage. It’s just . . . It’s hard to explain,” I mumble as I open yet another drawer to grab more folders of gels.
I am not a hookup guy. I have no interest in kissing and touching and all that just for the sake of doing it. I do tend to have an interest in those things once I’ve gotten to know someone and formed a connection with them, but every time I’ve explained that to someone in the past, they’ve been less than understanding.
“Are you asexual?” Seth asks.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a sexual orientation for people who aren’t, like, sexually attracted to others. Or just, like, very little.”
I set a pile of folders next to Seth for him to look through—shades of pink this time—but he’s taking his time with the greens, so I might have to help him sort.
“No. I’ve done stuff in relationships before. And it’s not like I don’t want to have sex or that I’m not attracted to anyone. I think Jade is pretty,” I say. And I mean it. Jadeispretty, but in the same way most girls are pretty. They all smell nice, and their hair is shiny.
“But you don’t want to hook up with her?” Seth asks.
“I just don’t know her.”
The idea of getting naked with someone who doesn’t really know me or care about me has always been terrifying. I know that makes me different from my friends, who don’t need any of that to hook up with them. I don’t think Seth would understand, which is why I’ve never talked to him about it. Even now, I shift my weight and chew on the inside of my lip to relieve some of that nervous energy building inside of me. I start flipping through the pink gels just to give my hands something to do.
“Have you only ever hooked up with people you knew? Like, who you were in a relationship with?” Seth asks.
“Pretty much.”
“So what are you going to do about tonight? Are you going to cancel?”
“I can’t cancel. We have to build chemistry for our show,” I say. “But surely you can build chemistry with someone without putting your tongues in each other’s mouths.”
“Probably. I’ve never had bad stage chemistry with someone, so I wouldn’t know,” Seth says.
“Way to brag about it,” I say, and Seth guffaws.
“I don’t have much else going for me. Let me have this,” he says.
