Page 30 of Sad Girl Hours

Chapter Thirty

Nell

I’m about to turn to Jenna and say some of this aloud, say how nice it is to talk about something we share, but I’m interrupted by a single stray giggle from her. A giggle that’s then superseded by many other giggles, and then an outright cackle that doesn’t seem to want to stop.

“What?” I say. “Why are you laughing?”

“Because it’s objectively hilarious,” Jenna says between cackles. “We’ve been doing what everyone else has done to us for all these years – making assumptions about each other – when if we’d just talked to each other—”

“We wouldn’t have made the other one feel like they were an alien and could actually have been bonding over this the whole time? I can see the irony now, yes.”

“Irony’s the word. Dumbassery’s another.”

“Sure,” I say, starting to laugh now too. And then the laugh grows. And grows. We’ve both been so vulnerable, I feel like my guard is completely down. Soon the room is just full of laughter, and we’ve taken turns collapsing forward on to each other.

When I’ve got my grasp of the English language back (a good few minutes later), I manage to finally say, “We’re silly geese, aren’t we?”

“The silliest.”

“I have one question to ask you if that’s OK? A non-silly-goose one. A serious-duck one if you will.”

She laughs again at that before waving her hand with her usual theatrical flair for me to go on.

“Do you not like Casper back in any way? I know not in the sexual way that I think we definitely know he ’s capable of feeling from some of his stories—”

Jenna grimaces. “Everything I’ve learnt about his time at his all-boys’ school has been against my will.”

“ Exactly . But if that wasn’t a thing, would you want to be with him?”

I don’t mean the question to be impertinent, I’m just curious.

He loves her. We all see it. I guess I’m just interested in whether she returns any of his feelings.

She’s much harder to read than he is. I don’t think Casper’s capable of not showing what he’s feeling on his face.

Jenna’s a closed book, but Casper is a pop-up one, practically poking you in the eye with his feelings.

“Sex is a thing, though,” Jenna says, and I’m acutely aware now of the lack of laughter in the room. “In this world, I doubt I’ll ever be able to forget that it is.”

“But do you love him?” I ask.

“He’s always going to want things I can’t give him. That’s not fair to him.”

“But do you love him ?”

She wraps her arms across her chest, looking frustrated, though I’m not sure whether it’s with me and my questions, or with something else entirely.

Her lack of a response tells me almost more than a verbal answer would have. “Have you ever asked him whether he’d want to be with you without all that? Have you told him how you feel?”

“I’ve never told him I’m ace, no. He’s said things before, though, that make me think he might suspect.

He’s said that if he loved someone he could live without sex, that the love would be more than enough.

I think he was trying to be subtle, but you know Casp.

Subtlety isn’t exactly his strong point. ”

“Not exactly. But also, there you go! It sounds like he would be happy—”

“Maybe at first.” Jenna’s words burst out with a great deal of force.

“But not forever. You know how sex and wanting are everywhere, in every story, in every fucking perfume ad , in every assumption about relationships we’ve ever had to fight against. And if I let myself get drawn in, and then he decided he couldn’t live without it, I don’t think I could cope with losing him like that. ”

“Hmm.”

“That was a judgemental-sounding ‘hmm’.” She looks rankled now. “Elaborate, please.”

“Do you not think that maybe you’re doing what we’ve both admitted we hate other people doing? Assuming you know how Casper feels better than he does?”

Jenna’s mouth drops open slightly, and silence draws over both of us. When it breaks, she doesn’t address what I said.

“What about you and Saffron, though? You clearly know that romantic attraction and sexual attraction can be two separate things on some level. Are you applying that to yourself?”

“Hmm,” I say again, and this time it doesn’t mean, I think you’re being silly . This time it means, I didn’t know I did know that actually.

“You know, I’ve never really thought about it like that.”

“And if you do? You might not be sure about feeling physical things towards Saffron, but are you feeling romantic ones?”

I think about everything that we’ve done these past couple of months.

Every time I’ve managed to make her smile and felt satisfied that it was a real one, that I’d actually made her happy.

I think about how I’ve woken up some mornings thinking about new ways I can make her smile again, hopefully for a little longer than the last time.

I think about how I’ve spent more time with her this year than I ever have before, and how it’s still not been enough.

I think about how desperately I want her to air out whatever she’s keeping stored inside her so that I can help her – or try at least. I don’t know yet whether I want her.

But I definitely want her to be happy. I want her to search for me in every room she enters and be glad when she sees me, already watching.

“Yes,” I say. “I am.”

“There we go then,” Jenna says. “Are you going to tell her?”

I think about it, I really do. But… “No. Not yet. Not because I’m waiting for anything on my end – not any more. Today’s been … interesting. And I’m really glad we had this talk.”

Jenna nods with a gracious smile that lets me know she’s glad too, even if I did piss her off with my harsh truths.

“I just don’t think it’s fair on Saffron right now to complicate her life further. She’s got some things to figure out, and I don’t want to put any more pressure on her.”

“You really do like her, don’t you?” Jenna prods me in the arm.

“Yes. God, I really do.”

Jenna smirks, making me mock glare at her, but then she says something else that provokes an entirely different reaction.

“She likes you back, by the way. Everyone can see it.”

Jenna’s words water the hope that’s been blooming inside me for a while now.

She likes me back.

We don’t talk about anything else serious for the rest of the evening, but when Jenna falls asleep, drooling a bit on my arm, I use my other hand to pick up my phone.

Ace-spectrum identities , I type into the search bar, casting my eyes over all the millions of results that pop up.

I read about how some asexual people are completely sex-repulsed and don’t want to have sex with anyone ever – like Jenna, I guess.

But then, a few scrolls down, I come across another word.

Demisexual. A person who only feels sexual attraction towards someone after they’ve first formed an intense emotional connection.

People talk about their heart skipping a beat but,

when I read that definition, it feels as though my entire body lurches both back and forward in time.

It makes sense. And not only that, it makes a lot of experiences I’ve had in my life make sense.

My lack of crushes on anyone that I don’t know, my intense first crush on Anya in primary school after we became best friends, my confusion at the concept of one-night stands or at Lord Byron’s whole existence.

It also explains how I think I’m starting to feel some things towards Saffron now, after we’ve spent so much time together, after I’ve seen so many aspects of her person and loved each one.

The more I see, the more I’ve been getting thoughts about physical things.

About her body, about my body in her eyes.

I’m not ready to do anything other than think (and maybe write some vaguely sexually charged poetry), but maybe one day…

Maybe if she ever lets me see her without putting up a filter first.

Maybe. I clasp the word to my chest as I drift towards sleep too, along with all the other words I’ve been given today and decided belong to me.