Page 79 of The Sun and the Star

Nico let the silence grow before he spoke. ‘It happened to me once, a long time ago,’ he said. ‘All because of a harmless thing I said about my Mythomagic cards.’

‘Wait, really?’ Will asked. ‘You never told me this.’

One side of Nico’s lip curled up. ‘Well, I have to start sharing sometime, right? I can’t keep my whole past a mystery from you.’

‘Nico, you don’t –’

He raised a hand. ‘I actually want to tell you.’

Will scooted closer. ‘Okay.’

‘It was right after we’d moved to the States from Italy,’ Nico said. ‘We were living in Washington, DC, and I had a deck of Mythomagic cards with me at school –’

‘You had Mythomagic cards back in the 1940s?’

Nico sighed. ‘Yes, Will. We didn’t have mobile phones or the Internet, but wedidhave Mythomagic cards.’

‘Wow, Grandpa.’

‘Shut up.’

Will chuckled, snuggling closer.

‘Anyway,’ Nico continued, ‘thinking about it now, I don’t even know that I recognized my own feelings about being gay. It just … happened? But I was playing with this kid, Henry Whittaker, and I made a comment about how pretty Ares looked on his card.’

‘Ares?’ Will raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’

Nico rolled his eyes. ‘I was, like, eight years old, Will.’

‘At least I had the foresight to find Hermes attractive.’

‘Hermes?Are you kidding me? Who goes forHermes?’

‘I do,’ said Will.

‘Wow, you really do like underdogs,’ muttered Nico.

‘Boys …’ said Gorgyra, bowing her head towards them in a slight admonishment.

‘Sorry,’ said Nico, but then he shook his head at Will. ‘Hermes.’

‘I thought this was a safe space,’ Will said, smiling.

‘Hmph.’ Nico was glad to see Will smile, but his heart still fluttered with nerves. ‘So, once I said that about Ares, Henry looked at me funny. He told me I was weird. He didn’t call me names or anything, but he never hung out with me again. I got the message loud and clear: Don’t do that. Don’t feel that. Don’t eventhinkthat.’

‘Wow,’ said Will. ‘I had no idea.’

Nico let out his tension in a long breath. Anytime someone suspected that Nico wasn’t straight or every time he shared too much about himself, he felt like this – like a ticking bomb, or a draught of air that teased at a fire.

But with Will … he was safe. Will wouldn’t turn on him, or abandon him, or start saying nasty things behind his back.

Thinking about that, Nico made a connection. For the first time, he realized something about a part of himself, and instead of stamping it out, instead of shoving it down into the darkness to fester, he shared it.

‘That’s why I had such a negative reaction to Cupid,’ he said.

He gave Gorgyra a brief summary of what had happened a couple of years earlier, how Cupid had forced Nico to come out as some twisted form of honesty. ‘I was terrified that Jason was going to leave me there in Croatia,’ he said. ‘I completely believed it, too. Why wouldn’t he? In that moment, I think Jason knew more about me than any other person on Earth.’

‘But he stayed,’ said Will softly. ‘He stayed, and so did the rest of us.’

---