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“Have you just casually hooked up with anyone before?” Jade interrupts my stuttering, and thank god, because it was getting weird.
I shake my head to answer her question, dropping my gaze to the floor. “Not really. There’s just not . . . like, I have no interest in it. Not until I know them and have some kind of authentic interest in them as a person.”
“Are you demi?” Jade asks like she’s putting some puzzle pieces together.
“Demi?”
“Demisexual.”
I almost roll my eyes at the second label someone has thrown at me in two days, but there’s no need to be rude. Jade, like Seth,is just trying to understand me, and I have to remember that is not a bad thing.
“I don’t know what that is,” I say. “Is it like asexual?”
“It’s like what you’re describing. It’s an orientation like asexual. For someone who identifies as demisexual, the sexual attraction follows an emotional bond.”
Unlike when Seth shared the definition of asexuality, this definition lands.
There’s a word for this?
“So it’s not . . . it’s not just me? I’m not weird.”
“Well, you might be weird, but everyone is a little weird. And being demisexual isn’t the thing that makes you weird. There are a ton of people who identify as demi.”
I feel like my world just got flipped on its head. I’ve been thinking I’m the oddball, that everyone else experiences attraction in a “normal” way and I’m the only one who doesn’t, but Jade has given me a new word to explore. Now isn’t the time to do a deep dive and figure out if I really might be demisexual, but this certainly has given me something to think about.
“I don’t know if I am demisexual,” I say, trying out the word. It feels foreign on my tongue but not wrong. “But either way, I—I’m sorry I can’t just casually hook up with you to help us build chemistry.” I walk over to lean against her bed next to her. “What if we just . . . hang out? Become friends. Anastasia isn’t asking us to fall in love, right?”
Jade chuckles. “That’s probably too far even for her.”
“And if we share a few meals, maybe do whatever else friends do, we’ll build a connection—a friendly one—and then our stage chemistry will get better, right? Theoretically.”
“Theoretically,” she says with a reluctant nod.
“We . . . sort of tried it your way. It didn’t work for me, so what if we tried it my way?”
“And what if it doesn’t work for me?” Jade asks, being more impertinent than rude.
“We quit and tell Anastasia to go fuck herself,” I say.
This makes Jade properly laugh, and something stirs in my stomach. I like the way her eyes come to life when she laughs.
“Deal,” Jade says, and we shake on it.
I text Seth once I’m back in my car to tell him the night ended in a handshake and nothing more. He sends a series of GIFs that portray both his disappointment and that he’s proud of me. I don’t tell him about the demisexuality conversation. It doesn’t feel right yet. Right now, it feels like a word just for me. Something I can swim around in and decide if it feels right.
Maybe Jade and I will become friends or maybe we’re only able to tolerate each other until the one-act is over at the end of the semester. Either way, she’s given me a gift tonight, and I only hope one day I can return the kindness.
6
JADE
“We will meet, and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously.”Act I, Scene II
“Mac threw out your flowers this afternoon,” Jessie says as she approaches the theater, where I’m waiting outside for her.
I haven’t been back to the apartment all day and my phone battery is hanging on by a thread, so I bribed Jessie to bring me my charger since I have to meet up with a study group for a Spanish project after rehearsal.
“Well, they were two weeks old and dying. Such a shame. I should have dried them and put them in a shadow box,” I say.
