He smiled and touched my hand, which was still on his knee. “Byron’s not the first man I’ve been with, but he was the first person I trusted enough to talk about some of my struggles. It’s not easy being a gay man in Ethiopia. So many times I feel like a fraud. I’m out there talking about oppression, how our power lies in not being silenced, and yet I’m too scared to tell some of my best friends who I really am. Because I don’t want them to look at me differently.” He grimaced at his words, and the urge to soothe him was almost overwhelming. “Which isn’t even fair, because I know some of them want LGBTQ rights in Ethiopia as much as I do, but I’m still afraid. It’s one thing to want something in theory, and quite another to have to confront it.”

He took another sip of his water and looked toward the stage, where one of the women setting up was waving at him. After lifting his hand to her, he turned back to me. “For some of them I would no longer be Elias, their friend. I’d be the type of person they want to believe doesn’t even exist in Ethiopia. There are people who think I’m the very symbol of the worst that colonialism did to our countries. They don’t want to hear that we were always here.” He looked weary, so different from the passionate, fiery man I’d grown accustomed to. “I shared those fears with Byron, and he used them as reasons to look down on me.”

I had no idea why Elias was telling me all this, but I knew it couldn’t be easy for him. I felt so fucking slighted for him. That asshole Byron had taken his secrets and used them to humiliate him. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, but I’m glad you didn’t waste more of your time on someone who clearly didn’t deserve you.”

He dipped his head before he spoke. “Thank you. I felt so silly afterwards, like I should’ve known better. But I just wanted so much to have found someone that could see me.”

I let out a long exhale, feeling his words in my bones. “I can relate to that on so many levels.”

He raised his eyebrow at that and pushed his foot under the table so the tips of our shoes were pressed together. It was ridiculous and adorable how many ways he found to be close without really touching.