Page 82 of A Crazy Kind of Love
“Nope. But why is she trusting us with such a huge secret?”
He leaned his elbows on his knees, hands clasped around his coffee cup, and turned his head up toward me, squinting against the bright sunlight. “Adrianna trusts you because Micah trusts you. Simple as that.”
“And why does she trust you?”
“She doesn’t have much choice, does she? Unless she wants to spend her life locked away, sending text messages. From what she told me, she’s tried it that way, and she’s willing to take calculated risks. I’ve given her my word. I told her I didn’t care one way or the other what was going on with her, but she could tell me. Either way, I want to be with her. And she’s told me everything.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Everything?”
“Yeah. Her whole story.”
We sat in silence while a million questions processed through my brain. None of them seemed appropriate. But this was Zion. “Can I ask you something?”
“Ask me whatever.”
“Is she interested in changing?”
“Doesn’t seem to be. She joked that she’s a heterosexual girl trapped in a gay man’s body.”
I snorted.
“She’s really funny.” He didn’t laugh. Instead, he stared at his fingernails. “Turns out I must be part heterosexual guy because I like her exactly the way she is.” He must have felt as conflicted in the past week as I ever did, but he’d kept it hidden.
“And so she’s, uh—” I blew through my lips, trying to find the right way to ask it.
But Zion read my mind. “Does she identify as female?”
“Is that a terrible question?”
“She’d tell you herself if she were here. Sometimes she identifies as female. Not always.”
“Am I going to have to figure it out? Like should I refer to her with different pronouns?”
Zion laid a hand on mine and rubbed my thumb. “You don’t need to worry about anything. She’ll appreciate that you care enough to want to respect her, but she’s easygoing. People make worse mistakes than grammar.” He shook his head. “And I always thought I had things hard. I can’t even imagine dealing with that. But she just does.”
His comment reminded me of Micah’s reaction to my own burdens. And that brought home just how important this was to Zion. I could get the nuances of Adrianna straight in time. Only one thing mattered right now. “You really like her?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how strongly she feels about me, but I figure she’s taking a pretty big risk if she’s not interested in giving things a chance.”
I processed all that, shaking my head at how complicated and simple everything could be at once. “You make it look so easy, Z.” My current drama paled in comparison to what he’d been dealing with.
“Why borrow heartache?” Zion shrugged and tossed his coffee cup into the trash.
His honesty encouraged me, so I dug the snack box out of my backpack and showed it to Zion. “Would you look at this?” It was such a tiny thing. Micah hadn’t even packed it himself. Pratosh had done all the work. But it filled me with happiness.
Zion popped the lid and smiled at the finger sandwiches and cut vegetables. “He really seems to care about you.”
I debated whether or not to confess, but this was Zion, so I blurted it out. “He told me he loves me.”
Zion handed back the snack box with an inscrutable expression. “And?”
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot.” I swallowed down a lump. I’d been resisting the idea that anyone could fall in love so quickly. And Micah had been careful not to say it again, except when it slipped out in those moments of transcendence. “I mean, what does love even mean if you can feel that way in a matter of days?”
I poked around at the contents of the snack box and nibbled on a square cheese sandwich, something my mom would have made me when I was in school. I realized I was crying. And not just a wistful moistening of my eyes. Tears rolled in heavy drops down my cheeks.
Zion reached over and wiped away a tear. “Honey, do the words really matter? You’re holding evidence that you’re important to him, that he’s conscious of what you need. Isn’t that something worth considering?”
A laugh burst out because this one ridiculous thought passed through my mind. “Are you saying, the snack box is love?”
