And a part of me wants to tell em about the Diary because I don’t have anyone else to talk to, and it’s not like there’s any reason I should feel like I can’t trust em. Hell, e’s like the sweetest person I’ve ever met, and at the very least, I feel like I owe em some sort of explanation for why I’ve been such a terrible friend.

“It’s a really long story,” I say.

E nods. “I get that.”

“I want to tell you about it, though. I just—well, it’s gonna be super awkward to cut off halfway through when the kids come in.”

Devin looks at me with wide eyes like e never thought I’d actually take em up on eir offer. “You can tell me after work if you want.”

I nod, a small smile on my face. “Yeah, I’d like that. Thanks.” Silence falls over us for a second before I say, “So, I take it the party went well?”

“It would’ve been better if you were there,” Devin says before turning to look down at eir hands. “I mean, um, well, you know I don’t really have a lot of friends, so it was mostly my parents’ friends and just some people from camp who work with my mom.”

“Oh,” I say. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

Devin smiles. “No, I mean, it wasn’t. We made some cool stuff. Wait, I’ll show you pictures.”

E reaches for eir phone, pulling up a photo album of little paper crafts and passing it to me. Some of eir attendees were obviously better than others. There are some kids holding little flowers made out of book pages, bound notebooks crafted from newspaper, a plastic bottle turned vase.

I sigh, passing the phone back. “Sorry I missed it.”

Devin smiles. “It’s okay, really. I mostly hosted it for the kids anyway. Their parents work with my mom and are always looking for fun activities for them.”

“Where does your mom work?” I ask.

“The high school that runs the camp. She teaches Spanish,” e says.

And wow, there feels like so much more I should ask em about—how e learned eir artistic skill, how long eir mom has been a teacher, all the little things I guess we never really talk about—but I can already hear the kids clambering down the hall for the day, so I guess it’s time to get to work.

As the kids spill into the room, I do my best to push my personal problems out of my head even though it’s really not that easy. I’m already starting to get nervous about talking to Devin—what if I made a mistake thinking I can trust em?—which only feeds into more nerves about how my DMs might look.