“No,” I say. “Not like the way people say it when they’re just trying to be nice to you but then they’re bullshitting you, you know? You move out of state and they don’t give a fuck but they probably never really gave a fuck, and . . .” I stare at the smoke spiraling up into the black. I shake my head and blink. This is not what I was trying to say; it’s not what I want to talk about with him. “Like in a different way.”
His fingers start trailing up my back and down, bumping over my spine, scratching my skin. “Like a friend you fuck?”
I laugh and the dark swallows it. “Sure,” I say.
Jonah’s quiet. He’s mostly quiet, I guess.
That’s not exactly what I’m trying to communicate either, but I don’t know how to phrase it or even if I should. Like if I say it too clearly, he’ll think I’m confessing love to him. Like I want something more than exactly this, than exactly what we have right here, right now, and I shut my mouth.
I take another hit, and open my mouth again to say, “A friend you fuck. Like a boyfriend. I don’t know, I don’t think you’re like a boyfriend either.”
“Not like a boyfriend,” he says.
“No?” I turn over to look up at him and he pulls me closer; I didn’t know we could be closer, but I guess we can.
“I don’t know,” he says, dragging and blowing the smoke over my head. He’s looking into the depth of the cave, shadows and light playing all over his face. His jaw has stubble on it that I felt, I guess, but I never really noticed it until now. “It’s like . . . it’s like people think friendship and sex are these two things that only go together in romance, you know? Like it’s shallow.”
“I guess.”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“Who else would you tell?”
The dark feels vast and empty and suffocating and close all at once.
“No one,” he says.
“It’s the end of the world, Jonah.”
He blinks, and his eyelashes are so long, and I feel a little like I’m floating. A little like I’m not tethered to anything here at all, because Jonah is floating along with me.
Then he speaks and his muscles curl and tighten around me in such a different way than they curled or tightened just a few minutes ago, and I am grounded again.
He says, not looking at me, “It’s like . . . people talk about this magical thing. This thing they’re always running for, falling in love with someone.”
“Yeah. Love is a pretty normal pursuit—not a concept I myself have heard of, but the humans do occasionally speak of it.”
He grins and pulls back to shove me just a little, then pins me against him. I sigh into his chest.
“I’ve had best friends and I’ve had people I’ve fucked and I’ve fucked my best friends and I just don’t think . . .” He waits. I wonder if he will ever finish the sentence. I find myself often wondering if Jonah will ever speak again. He finally says, “I don’t think there’s anything more for me. I don’t want there to be. Like romance or whatever everyone, fucking everyone seems to want, I don’t even want it. I can’t tell anyone this shit because I’ve tried to talk about it. To a couple friends. To this girl I was seeing freshman year. To Jaxon, even. And they just always look either offended or like, Don’t worry, man, you’ll find them. And that’s not what I’m trying to say; I’m not trying to say I’ve never been in love. I’ll never find love. I’m trying to say I’ve found it before in people, in relationships I care so goddamn much about, and it never looked like wanting to slip my arms around someone and whisper in their ear while we make breakfast.”
I am actually nervous to talk. Nervous to react. Nervous to do so much as make it clear that I’m awake, because I just want to keep listening.
“This probably doesn’t even make sense,” he says.
“It doesn’t sound stupid.”
“It’s called aromantic. I guess. I don’t know, it sounds even stupider to say it, like I need all these labels to define who I am when all I’m trying to do is exist. There’s some ways I love people. There’s some ways I don’t. And it just . . . god, just because I don’t want to gently forehead kiss someone and whisper that they’re my world doesn’t mean there aren’t people I wouldn’t fucking die for.”
“It feels like we’re fighting,” I say on a nervous laugh.
“Sorry,” he says, but he kind of spits it. Then I feel his breathing deepen and even, his arms tighten, then relax. “Sorry,” he says again, but this time it doesn’t feel like he’s yelling at me. “It’s just like so many people have said I’m broken or something. That I’m not capable of love. And that’s stupid. Like fuck you, I’ve loved more people than any of you assholes, and I’ve done it better.”
I laugh. “I don’t think you’re incapable of love.”
“Nah? You don’t think I’m a robot?”
“The thought has not crossed my mind. I can give you one of those Recaptcha tests when we get off the mountain if you really wanna prove it, though.”
“I ace the shit out of them.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
He sighs in my ear, exaggerated and playful, and tickle my ribs. I kick at him and his huge hands span my back.
“How about you, hmm?”
“How about me?”
“Love and all that shit. Give me your deepest and darkest, kid; we’ve only got all night.”
I shut my eyes and feel the warmth of his skin, the heat on my shoulders from the fire and the bite of the wind whispering down into the blanket to touch my neck. I experience every single thing I can—his fingertips and every hair on his legs tickling over mine. Every pulse in his veins.
I say, “I’ve never been in love either. I don’t think for the same reason.”
“Have you ever said it to anyone?”
I shake my head. “Never. Not unless I mean it; I don’t want to say it unless I do. How about you?”
“Oh god, yeah.”
“What?” I say.
He shrugs. “I’ve said it so many times, it’s lost all its meaning. I just figured people said it when they felt what I was feeling and then I got a little older, realized I was wrong, and whoops. Whatever. Like nineteen people are fucking welcome for my lies.”
“Nineteen!”
“I’m kinda slutty, Jacob.”
“I noticed.”
He laughs and actually sticks his tongue out when he does. Like this smug skater cackle. And says, “Yeah you did.”
“Oh my god,” I say, and I can’t believe the situation is this intensely serious and neither of us can stop laughing.
“Nineteen,” I mutter. “How have you even had the time; you’re nineteen.”
He says, “One: I’m almost twenty. And two: it’s easier to rack it up to nineteen when you don’t date one person at a time, my friend.”
If I had a mouthful of water, and god I wish I had a mouthful of water, I would have spit it out. “You just . . . cheat?”