Page 26 of My Heart to Find

“Bet I’ll beat you.” She gives me the cutest little smile.

“Oh, we’ll see about that,” I say.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Damien

CARA COULDN’T HAVEmade it clearer if she’d tried—the message was loud and clear. She isn’t interested in me. She didn’t even want me touching her. She’d looked positively terrified of me—her face so pale and her eyes so wide and frightened. And it was just a friendly hug—nothing more. My stomach tightens. I don’t understand. I’d thought her text had sounded flirtatious. Thought she’d been thinking about me as much as I’d been thinking about her all these years. Of course she hasn’t. Because no one else gets caught up on someone the way I apparently do.

I stare at my phone screen. For the last few hours I’ve been trying to work out if I should text her. Say I’m sorry. Because I should apologize right? I mean, we had had a good conversation at first, but then it was like she’d drifted off somewhere else. Like she kept having to remind herself that she was supposed to be talking to me. Like it was a huge effort on her part.

The rest of that walk had been so awkward. It was strange—awkward was one thing I’d never guessed it would be. Not given how well the two of us had got on in Mallorca. There, we’d just clicked almost instantly. It had given me hope that even though I’m ace, I could find someone that I’d work with romantically, someone who wouldn’t want the slightest touch to lead to sex all the time.

Because that’s the experience I’d had before. My last—and only—relationship. I was twenty-one, and I’d got involved with this woman I thought was amazing. Things were great—we clicked and hit it off. I wanted to spend all my time with her—until she was no longer satisfied with just kissing or just cuddling.

Until everything became about sex—or rather, about why we weren’t doing it as often as she wanted.

“What are you? Gay?” she’d screamed at me once. “You’re supposed to want me! You’re a man! Be a man!”

“That’s not fair,” I’d shouted back. “You know about my sexuality—”

“You said you were demisexual!” She had tears in her eyes. “You said you’d be sexually attracted to me once we’d formed a close connection, and we have, haven’t we?”

“Yes, but—”

“So why aren’t we doing it all the time then? Seriously, it’s been months, Damien.Months. Is it me? Is it just that you don’t want to sleep with me? Is it me? Am I repulsive?” Her eyes widened. “Is there someone else?”

“No!”

“Then it has to be me. You’re not attracted tome.”

“I am! I am,” I’d cried. “It’s just...”

It was just sometimes Ididwant to have sex, really felt that attraction, and I was sexually attracted to her—the only person I’d been attracted to like that. And we did have sex, those times, and when we did it was amazing. But most of the time, Ididn’tfeel like that. I didn’t feel that attraction. Maybe ‘demisexual’ was the wrong label for me to use, because doesn’t that mean you’re going to want to sleep with your partner all the time? Or have I got that wrong? I’m still not sure, and I’ve never really been brave enough to talk about it to other people. I just find aceness confusing, even—especially my own aceness.

I’d signed up for the ace retreat a few months after she and I had broken up, thought that I’d learn proper definitions there and be able to say with certainty what I was. I thought there’d be games where we’d have to match up the label with the definition. But Mrs. Mitchell never really talked about definitions. The whole time was more about getting to know each other as people, not labels. And, as Mrs. Mitchell said at several points, labels can change and you can change which ones you identify with. There’s no right or wrong way to identify. I just wish I actually understood what it meant for me.

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