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“People can also be on the ace spectrum,” Cassidy mumbles into her drink. Romy rolls her eyes in solidarity.

“Maybe your boyfriend isn’t good in the sack?” Wyatt chides.

Rain smiles. “Yeah, sure.” Rain turns to me. “Luna, was Wyatt here good in bed?”

I’m not drunk enough for the truth. In any sense. “He got the job done.”

Wyatt relaxes as Romy flicks me in the back. I ignore her. She can burn Wyatt’s lack of skills in bed another time.

“They have the right idea,” Jared says. “I started hooking up with Andrew in literary, and it’s the best decision I ever made.”

“Jesus, when are you doing it?” Romy asks. “You’re all at that fucking office until midnight.”

Jared grins. “Any break I have. Lunch. That weird sort of dinner break. Before, right after. It’s like a miracle cure.”

Yeah, hah, who cares, right? I might be losing my job and livelihood tonight, and I’m yet again the only virgin at the table, but life’s good, right? I sink back to the position I’ve been in since I was a teenager. Friends grin and shriek and pile on story after story of sexual escapades—good, bad, and everything in between. Everyone nods in easy recognition, creating a laser barrier I can never cross. They use words like everyone knows, and I bite my tongue, knowing I don’t know. Knowing if I say anything, I’ll get pity at best—furrowed brows and it’ll happen someday, when they can’t guarantee anything—straight-up mockery at worst. So, I stay quiet, waiting for the conversation to veer away like I’m waiting for a cavity filling to end. Try not to think about the technically possible scenario where I’m in this position for the rest of my life.

Even today, it’s only the sickly sweet drink in my hand that’s allowed my brain to move into thoughts of sex without the spiraling feeling.

I glance at Wyatt, my brain shifting over to Valeria. I’ve gone back through her filmography since seeing the western, and watching her act in the Oscar film is what truly hooked me. Her work is so visceral. When I got to her second indie and discovered that she had a (straight) sex scene…I can’t get the tilt of her head into the kiss, the curves of her silhouette against the otheractor, the sound of her character coming, out of my mind.

That little spark of excitement is back, but it fades as quickly as it came.

It’s a crush. On a person I’ll never see again. I’m twenty-four, and the closest I’ve gotten to someone inside me is imagining it.

“What about you, Romy?” Rain asks. “They do say sapphic sex is the best sex.”

Romy smirks. “You’re on the wrong team, Rain. Anything a man can do, I can do ten times better while improving your self-esteem.”

I find myself longing for Romy’s confidence as she speaks. Romy could have not had sex in months and she can still blow these straight people out of the water. Nearly every sapphic person I’ve ever met has said the same thing she’s saying. Queer sex is killer. And even when Romy is casually talking about sex in a roomful of almost all allocishet people, she’s royalty.

“Um, Romy, I think you’re forgetting a big piece of missing equipment,” Trevor says.

Romy just keeps smiling. “Strap-on. You pick the size and the shape, and no pregnancy in sight.” Her voice lowers as she speaks, making me shiver. “And non-cis men can actually find the G-spot. I’ve been intimately familiar with the clit since I was twelve. And get this—both parties are primed for multiple orgasms. And I know that tongue is much more of an accent flavor in kissing than the main event.”

I watch Romy as she speaks, the curve of her lips, the way her index finger is drawing little circles on the table surface. We’ve cuddled over the years. I know the feeling of a body pinning me down from Wyatt. But I also know what a non-man’s body heat feels like. And right then, I’d give anything for her to keep talking. For a non-man to move their hand off the table and slip it onto my leg. Draw circles on my thigh, our lips doing their own dance. For them to pin me to the ground with their hips.

I think about Valeria’s lips. The weight of her, the firmness of her arms that, at least according to that movie, have power behind them. Her fingers doing the same circle motion Romy’s are doing. Hearing her moan like in that movie. On my thigh then inward…

“Honestly, if I were bi, I’d date only women,” Rain says. “Men suck.”

Romy shrugs. “You don’t have to identify as bi to hook up with a non-man.”

Rain suddenly reaches over and slaps me on the back. “Take your chance while you have it, Lunes. You’re the tensest among us, and Romy’s available twenty-four seven for you.”

I imagine playing along with Rain, joining in on Romy’s little pro–queer sex bit. Agreeing with Romy’s points, pretending to flirt with Romy, say exactly what we’re gonna do to each other when we get back to K-Town. Get a taste of that ruler-of-the-table feeling. Pretend I have that secret key to love, sex, and happiness everyone else here has.

But it’d be a lie. Just like my lies about sleeping with Wyatt.

“Rain, come on,” I say. “Rom’s my roommate. Just because we’re not a guy and a girl doesn’t mean hooking up couldn’t fuck up our platonic relationship.”

Romy laughs, glancing at me. A muscle in her throat twitches as she speaks. “Yeah, shit, Rain, respect the inherent value of friendship. Anyone can eat me out; only Luna knows how to convince our landlord to keep fixing our toilet for free.”

Even something as small as the way Romy twitched settles uncomfortably inside me, that she’s that awkward even at the prospect of us together. Not that I want it, but…I’m clearly not drunk enough to be having this double crisis in an adult Chuck E. Cheese. I pick up my drink and knock it back, peering over the rim to see Romy slam her drained glass down too. I turn to her as the burn sizzles inside me. “Wanna go play games?”

Romy breaks from the others as if she’d been waiting for me to say those exact words. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Highlights, in the form of potential shots I would’ve used, to describe the next two hours of my life: