Page 24 of Crosswind

"They're writing things about a person they've decided exists," Jan says. "That person isn't me. I find it's easier to read if I remember that."

I look at him. At Jan having thought about something carefully and arrived somewhere useful. He has had the entire flight home to read things written about a version of him that doesn't exist, and somehow he has already found a way to hold it without falling apart.

I turn to face him properly. He is looking at the canal, his hand in mine, his jaw set in the way it is when he is thinking something he has already resolved.

"I need to say something," I say. "Publicly."

He nods slowly. "I know." He doesn't look surprised. He has been waiting for this.

"It affects you," I say.

He turns to look at me then. The full Jan attention — steady, direct, no performance in it. "Yes." A pause. "And I trust you."

I look at him. At the canal. At his hand in mine.

I trust you.

Three words, delivered with the same directness Jan delivers everything, and they land somewhere in my chest and stay there.

Jan's apartment. Sunday afternoon.

I sit on the sofa with my phone and I read it all again. Jan is at the kitchen table with his laptop — working, or at least near his laptop, which for Jan is the same thing. Occasionally I hear him move, the particular sounds of him in his own space — the kettle, a cup, the chair when he shifts. He doesn't ask what I'm doing. He knows what I'm doing. He is giving me the room to do it.

Patrick should address this

Jan Novak has no public social media btw, checked

we don't know that's what happened

people don't owe explanations to their audience

parasocial much

I just think if you build a following around your personal life you have a responsibility

I put the phone face down on the cushion.

Jan appears from the kitchen with two cups. Tea for me. He puts it on the table and I reach out and catch his wrist before he can go back.

He looks at me.

I don't say anything. I just hold his wrist for a moment, his pulse under my fingers, the warmth of him, and then I let go.

He goes back to his laptop. I watch him settle, the Jan posture of someone absorbed in something, and I think about the comments and his name in them and the story they've decided about him, and I feel something that isn't quite anger — something quieter and more structural than anger. The feeling of wanting to stand between someone you love and the thing coming toward them.

I pick up my tea.

I think about what I want to say.

Not the full story — that's mine and Maya's and nobody else's, and Maya has been nothing but dignified and I will not repay that by dragging her into a comment thread. Not a defence of Jan, because defending Jan against people who don't know him makes Jan a subject, and Jan is not a subject. Not an explanation of my sexuality because I don't owe anyone a chapter breakdown of how I got here.

Just the truth. The relevant part of it.

Maya and I ended before any of this started. That's a fact. Everything after that is its own thing. Anyone who wants to be angry at me for the fact of it is welcome to be angry, but they are angry at the wrong story.

Before I open the notes app I open my messages.

Maya.