Love Is What You Make It

6. Going Public Faster Than Lightning

          Shre becomes a part of their lives all at once.   One day shre's a stranger and the next shre's literally calling to ask them to her BPNQ support group—technically the Poly-Mono Allegiance, but that's mostly to give bi, pan, poly, nonbinary, and various other queer folk a cover in case their polyphobic/mononormative friends ask.

          It becomes a weekly event, every Saturday from three to four.   It's the first place Jack and Thomas ever go in t-shirts without putting on make-up first—Lacey actually has to buy them t-shirts just so they can say they've done it—and it's also the first place that they dare hold hands with Lacey.

          Lacey is bisexual, and they think they are, too, but after a few weeks Thomas discovers he's not.  The question "Are you poly?" becomes easy for him, because he is in all things poly—amorous, ygamous, sexual, romantic, theist—but it's harder for Jack, who's monotheistic and eventually calls himself pansexual, though he finds it embarrassing and can barely tell Thomas and Lacey.  They worry about it for a while, but he insists that he just isn't in a place where he can think about labels—the only labels he really cares about are the ones on his wrist, and they accept that, Thomas with more understanding but Lacey with a great (almost overbearing) show of distance and respect.

          Lacey's friends are already aware of Jack and Thomas, and while socio-economically they all come from higher places, they do their best to seem accommodating when the duo are around.  Lacey fears no one and nothing and has already told the world—even shrer family and friends back home through the facebook account shre still keeps under the name "Lassiter Jaqueline Aborwie."  

          (The fact that her middle name is basically "Jack" is not lost on any of them; Thomas starts joking about Amanda's middle name being Jackette, predicting that he'll be the only one of them that's "Jack-less."  When Jack eventually tells Lacey that Thomas's middle name is "Jonathan," shre has a field day explaining that Jonathan begets the name John, which was diminutized to Jankin in the Middle Ages, from which was derived the origin for the name "Jack."

          At that point Thomas leaves the room, possibly to reevaluate his life choices.)

          But shre's patient, for the most part, and waits until Jack and Thomas are ready before meeting their friends.  "Ready" is a relative term, and "necessary" is more the one they'd use--they can't hide shrer forever, and Connie and Alby are already worried about their weekend disappearances and lack of time to study.

          So they sit them down in their dorm room in the late afternoon on a Friday in early December and pass out pizza and beer—which Lacey can buy legally—as they explain who Lacey is and why shre's there.  They expect bad reactions (Thomas's grip on Jack's wrist is like a vice, and Jack can hardly speak without cringing--Lacey thinks it's ridiculous that they're more afraid of their friends than they are of strangers, but since shrer family never taught her to hide shrerself from others, shrer gentle chiding is ignored), so when Alby smushes his pizza into the carpet and walks out it stings, but it's an expected sting.

          It's less expected that Connie, Glenora, Tony, and Asteroid don't mind--Asteroid doesn't even look surprised.  

          "God, Alby's such a pissbaby," Tony groans, rolling his eyes as Connie moves to shake Lacey's hand and Glenora motions for Thomas's arm. 

          "Show me show me show me, I wanna see!  Wait.  Is--"  Glenora pauses, looking to Lacey to reaffirm.  "Shre?  Is shre the reason you withheld candy from me on Halloween?"

          "Oh, that's right!" Lacey exclaims, eyebrows lifting, "we've met before, haven't we?  You're the one that thinks library is an insult in Spanish."