Page 116 of The Edge of Never

“Talk about what?”

He turned the volume down and looked at me. While I had mostly taken after my mother, I had my father’s blue eyes. He didn’t always make eye contact, but when he did, I knew it was serious.

“Whatever it is that’s been bothering you since you got back from Scotland.”

It didn’t surprise me that he’d noticed I wasn’t happy. Dad could pick up on my emotions quite easily, just as I could with his. Affective empathy did that to a person.

“For instance, you haven’t mentioned Sienna,” he continued when I didn’t speak. “Is that a part of it?”

“Sienna and I aren’t friends anymore.”

His face remained impassive at my declaration. My eyes darted to my hands as I fiddled with the hem of my jumper.

I hadn’t thought about her in the past three weeks. While I mourned the loss of a life-long friendship, I didn’t miss Sienna herself. I thought about all the ways I had sacrificed my own morals to be friends with her. How I would ignore the discomfort I felt at her meanness towards other people. And I wasn’t willing to do that any longer. Not having her around to make me feel bad was freeing.

“She isn’t a very nice person. I didn’t see that before, but I do now… Thane helped me see it. She came up to Scotland while I was there, said some really horrible shit to me before Thane told her off and kicked her out of his house. I haven’t seen her since, and I don’t want to.”

“Thane’s the bloke you got stuck with?”

I hadn’t talked about him a great deal to my dad. Even saying his name made my chest ache.

“Yeah. No one has ever defended me the way he did. He’s a good person.”

I let out yet another sigh and rubbed my fingers together.

“Is he the reason you’re so down in the dumps?”

“Dad…”

“I’m not trying to pry, but since you’ve sacked off Sienna, who else are you going to discuss this with?”

He had a point, even if I didn’t like it. I had other friends, but we weren’t that close. I sometimes found friendships with allistic people difficult to manage. We got our wires crossed too often. I guess that’s one of the reasons I was so close to my dad. Our brains worked in the same way, which made it easier to communicate and understand each other. It didn’t matter if we didn’t share all the same autistic traits. There was enough common ground between us.

“I don’t think I could have talked to Sienna about Thane even if we were still friends.”

“Then I really am the only person you can talk to.”

“It’s just hard to put into words.”

“Tell me what happened between you, and we’ll go from there, okay?”

I nodded. When I got back, I’d given Dad the bare minimum details of what went down in Scotland. I left out all the stuff about how my relationship with Thane developed and kept to the facts. This time I told him everything except for the sex parts. No matter how open I was with my dad, I wasn’t willing to discuss that. And I was vague about Thane’s relationship with Jenna since that wasn’t my story to tell.

“So you love this man, and you didn’t tell him that?” Dad asked when I finished.

“Yes.”

“Are you scared he doesn’t feel the same way?”

I shrugged. Thane liked me, but love wasn’t something I allowed myself to hope for under the circumstances. Whether or not someone loved you was out of your control, so I tried not to worry about it.

“Even if he did, I don’t think he’s ready for another relationship. I didn’t want to pressure him. And he didn’t say anything about his feelings, so what was I supposed to do?”

Dad gave me a look.

“Maybe he was scared you didn’t feel the same way too. You didn’t give him all the facts. How was he meant to make a decision about the two of you without knowing you love him? Did you think of that?”

“No… but even if I did tell him, what was that going to do? I can’t do a long-distance relationship. I’m not built for that. One of us would have to uproot our life for the other person, and that’s a huge commitment to make.”

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