But hindsight is twenty-twenty. And I’m an idiot who decided to tell her while we were half-naked in bed together, completely vulnerable. In my head, being vulnerable was a great thing! I wanted to be totally open, honest, accessible to her. I realize now that maybe she would not have wanted to be fully vulnerable for that conversation. Finding out that there are people in the world with magical abilities is maybe not a revelation you want to have when you don’t have your clothes on.

“Hey,” I started softly, brushing her hair back from her forehead as she lay in my arms. “I have something to tell you.”

“Okay,” she said, snuggling in closer to me. She had this beautiful, gentle smile on her face, open and hopeful. Thinking about it now, I wonder … did she think I was going to tell her I love her? That would be the natural thing to assume. We’ve been dating for the past six months and whenever we’re together it feels really serious. Yeah, we’ve been seeing each other kind of sporadically because, well, my life is what it is, but we’re exclusive and … yeah, I do love her. I think. I want to let myself love her. It’s just … it feels like I don’t have room in my heart or my brain to be that open, especially when Emily doesn’t know the full, real me.

So even though it seemed like she was expecting some kind of declaration I figured, hey, if this goes well, we’ll get to that! I still thought that it might go well! So I just barreled forward! Like a total idiot!

“I have…” I started. “I have a kind of big secret.”

She leaned back, propping herself on her elbow so she could look straight into my face, her curls falling back over her forehead.

“Okay…” she said again, a small smile on her face, but I could hear the hesitation in her voice, could feel the pulse in her wrist, still draped over my stomach, pick up.

“I’m…” I hadn’t planned this out at all, had only hazily imagined her big smile once she realized she was dating a superhuman. In that moment I was really wishing I had decided how I was going to explain Atypicals, even thinking that I should have talked to Aaron or my parents about it.

“So, there are these people,” I said. “They’re called Atypicals.”

“Atypicals,” she said, eyes narrowing.

“Yeah,” I said. “And we’re … well, it’s a secret thing. Like, a whole secret group in humanity.”

“What, like a secret coven of witches?” She smiled, her eyes going wide in mock-surprise.

“No, not really,” I said, even though I knew she was making a joke. “It’s not … organized, really. It’s more like … okay, you know how a certain portion of the human population is gay?”