We Could Be So Good

by Cat Sebastian

Instead he’s left believing that it’s just him. That he’s in some way insufficient—which is, of course, true.

We no longer have the energy to hide. You can’t know the strain on a person in always pretending.

Cornelia Street

He wonders if this is one of his deficiencies; maybe he just doesn’t feel things the right way.

He doesn’t want to be queer at work, which sounds asinine, but there it is. Everything is so much safer if he draws a line between those parts of his life.

But Nick’s tired of dead queers. Nick’s tired of people like him having to suffer in order to provide the right kind of ending.

He doesn’t care if the world wants to give him space to make a life. He’s going to push and shove until he and Nick have the space they need and then he’s going to build the kind of life they want.

Suddenly, he knows exactly what he’d tell his fourteen-year-old self: You’ll be loved by the best person you know.

“We’re friends,” Andy says. And it doesn’t feel like an understatement or a euphemism; it feels like the bedrock of the truth, the inescapable fact of who they are.

Sometimes when Andy looks at him, it’s like the radio has tuned in to the right station, the static dropping away and everything going momentarily clear.