Page 46 of Brad & Finn
“Hi, hey, hello, your best friend over here, still completely in the dark. What’s a QPR?” Brad asked, dodging around a pile of blankets to form the third point in their little sharing triangle.
“Best friend, huh?” Chloe teased.
An embarrassing knot formed in Brad’s throat, causing his words to come out a little squeaky. “You called me ‘bestie’ this morning!”
Chloe dropped the lock of hair and shook her head, a bemused smile on her face. “Because wearebesties, hon. Once a bestie, always a bestie. I mean, you and Finn arejustbesties? Really?”
Finn flapped his hand in the air, refusing to make eye contact with Brad. “Stop meddling in our relationship and explain yours.”
Brad’s stomach was on an interesting roller coaster ride, and it felt a bit like it had crested the peak of a hill and he was now at zero G’s.
Chloe looked like she was going to say more, but Finn shoved a box towards her with his foot. She dutifully took a seat, primly crossed her legs, and folded her hands on top of them, like she was gearing up for story time.
“A QPR is a queer platonic relationship,” she said. “Everyone defines their own QPR differently, but for me and Christian–”
“The guy who sews pockets into her clothes,” Finn interjected.
Chloe nodded. “The guy who sews pockets into my clothes and I define it as living together, committing to spend our lives together, and, as of later this summer, caring for my mother as she starts to get older.”
Brad understood all the words she was saying, but still felt like he was missing something. “How is that different from a standard relationship?”
“Well, as the word ‘platonic’ might imply, we’re not what allo folks would call ‘in love,’ and we don’t have sex because we’re both aroace. We do many of the things people typically think of when they think of relationships, though. We co-own our house, have shared bank accounts, and make pretty much any and every life decision together.”
Brad’s head was spinning, and he sort of wished Finn had kicked him the box to sit down on instead. “I…wow. That’s…Imean, congrats? It seems like you’re really happy, based on that dopey look on your face.”
Chloe took off her slipper and threw it at him, which he dodged easily. He had so many questions, but he wasn’t sure what he should ask first—or if he should ask anything.
“Now who’s making the dopey face?” Chloe said, gesturing at Finn to retrieve the slipper for her.
Finn did so with a huff, brushing gently against Brad’s side as he passed by. “Feel free to ask her the most invasive questions you can think of. God knows the second you leave she’ll ask me about last night.”
Chloe grinned. “I can ask both of you at the same time if you prefer?—”
“When did you know?” Brad burst out, surprised to find himself asking the same question twice in one weekend.
Chloe fell silent as Finn brought the slipper over to her. “About being aroace? I knew sophomore year after kissing this one out there,” she said, jerking her thumb at Finn and then behind herself at her mom’s backyard. “We both realized we weren’t lesbians that night, and—well, you know that for Finn, that’s because he’s actually a gay man, and for me it’s because I’m aroace.”
“But…didn’t you date Cory for several years after that?”
Chloe sighed dramatically, throwing her arms out to the side and collapsing backwards onto the box. She let her head hang over the edge, so she was speaking to the wall behind her. “Yes, which is one of the main reasons why I didn’t want to get into this with anyone from school.”
Brad’s stomach raced towards the bottom of that rollercoaster, and he rubbed his hand up and down his forearm. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
Chloe threw her slipper at him again, completely missing him and clocking Finn in the side.
“Okay, that’s quite enough of that,” Finn declared. “Me and your slipper are going downstairs to get more cookies.” He marched out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Chloe sat up and glared at Brad. “I wasn’t talking aboutyou, obviously. I meant everyone else who was going to wonder if I dated Cory as some kind of experiment, or if I denied him sex, or if maybe I ‘haven’t had the right dick yet,’ and if only I’d ‘give another dick a try,’ things would be different because, yes, I have had every one of those things said to me before.”
Brad switched from rubbing his forearm to pressing his fingers into his bicep. He had tension in all sorts of places after two sleepless nights, and he dug his finger into a particularly painful spot. “I’m really sorry, Chloe. That’s shitty and completely unacceptable. You don’t deserve to have people question you like that.”
Chloe shrugged, but her shoulders only moved an inch or so and then fell into a tense line. “Yeah, well… I guess the extra complicated part is they wouldn’t be completely off—at least about the experiment part. The thing that I wouldn’t tell any of them, and—” She pointed at him and then raised her thumb into a finger gun shape. “—what I’m only telling you on threat of death, is that itwasan experiment, but both of us were in on it.”
Brad couldn’t hide his confusion even if he tried.
“Cory, much like Finn right before we kissed, was questioning his sexuality, and we both wanted to figure out if we were queer, ace, or some other rainbow-y flavor. So, we made out a few times, and he got to second base before we both realized that we were definitely something—and that something was for sure not straight. I talked to Cory a few years ago, and turns out he’s gay and graysexual, but at the time, he thought he might be aroace as well. We ended up forming a pact to be besties who cuddled a lot—because cuddling isamazing–and toserve as each other’s beards so long as we were in this tiny, mostly close-minded town.”
Brad slowly sank to the floor as his entire high school history rewrote itself in his head. He’d spent a lot of time being jealous of Chloe and Cory. They seemed to have their lives all figured out, both independently and together, while he and Kendall were a walking disaster.
