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“You haven’t seen thispart of me.”

Arlene’s throat bobbed. “You know I don’t care about that.”

“I know.” I nodded. We wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it with every fiber of my heart. “But I think it’s really important for me to do this.”

“Okay,” she agreed, “I understand.”

They were words that meant nothing, but they meant everything at the same time. I pulled up some much-needed air before I continued.

“This goes back to the cursed video we don’t talk about.”

“Please tell me you’re not going to start singing the Encanto song.” Arlene blurted out before she caught herself, heat pooling up her cheeks. “I mean, you can if it’s part of your process or something, but…”

I scoffed. “Do you have anything to say about my singing voice, gorgeous?”

I’d never claimed to be a singer. I’d never attempted to be one, either. I was the first one to admit taking me to a karaoke bar was the worst thing you could do. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy teasing her about it, though.

All was fair in love and war or whatever.

“No.” She gulped. “Please continue.”

I grinned. The short-lived banter had given me what I’d needed—the breathing room to forget what I was doing, or what state I was in.

It was easy to continue when I wasn’t hyper-aware of the air brushing against my skin.

“There are many things I did wrong when I posted that video,” I started. I’d already said that, but it bore repeating. “I was getting to a point where I felt stuck, and… stagnant. I wasn’t growing. Everyone just saw me as Ben’s sidekick, I was getting less and less offers from companies to place their products…”

I sighed, running a hand through my hair.

“I’m not trying to excuse it, because I should’ve one hundred percent known better, but back then, I was just burned out, and hyper-focused on numbers, and going viral, and… Yeah.”

“That makes sense.”

I supposed it did. My therapist had insisted for the longest time on me having more grace for myself or something along those lines. Needless to say, I was still working on it.

“I shouldn’t have used a clickbait title. I shouldn’t have kept up the clickbait shit for the first five minutes of that video.” I’d counted it, back then. “I grabbed the community that had supported me from the start, and I threw their support under the bus, regardless of what my intention had been. There’s no excuse for it.

“The content, though… After those five minutes, it was all true. It was the most honest thing I’d ever posted online. Hell, not even Ben knew a thing about it. He learned about it when he watched the video live along with everyone else.”

Arlene grimaced. “You did sound sincere, once you sat down.”

I nodded. I remembered walking all over the house when I was recording it, trying to find the perfect angle, the perfect rhythm to keep people engaged.

“I’m still asexual. Maybe gray-sexual, if we’re super technical about it, but I stopped worrying about that exact distinction a while ago.”

“Right.”

“But, figuring out I was not sex-repulsed? That was… the biggest mindfuck I’d gone through in… forever.” I snorted, aware the irony was lost on anyone but me. “No, seriously, figuring out I was non-binary was easier than that shit. I’d proudly bought a million ace flags and screamed it in everyone’s face from the second I hit puberty. No hesitation. In a way, I was asexual first and non-binary second.”

I didn’t want to have to digress into the way gender and sexual orientation would always be linked in my head. I’d had to do it with way more people than I dared to count. Thankfully, though, Arlene seemed to be aware of that line of thought, or she just didn’t care, or she somehow understood what I was saying. Whatever it was, I’d take it.

“I ignored it for so long. I mean, I was an educator on all things non-binary and ace. It felt embarrassing to admit, even to myself, that I’d missed the fact that I had so much gender dysphoria it was blocking everything else.” I snorted. “Still working through that with my therapist.”

“Sounds really tough.” Of course, Arlene ignored my attempt to make a joke.

Classic.

So unfair, too.