“If you’re admitting to me that Niall Horan was eight-year-old Wyatt’s gay awakening, I might leave this table right now.”

Wyatt bites at his bottom lip. “Then I guess I’ll see you back at the room. And I was seven, for your information.”

“Oh my God!”

“He wasn’t … it wasn’t my gay-wakening or whatever you want to call it. But looking back, things start to add up.”

“Like?”

“Like me picking up the guitar because I thought girls would scream at me like they were screaming at Niall or Harry.”

Girls?

“I was always more partial to Harry than the rest,” I interject.

Wyatt plays with his food for a bit. “But my moms thought it would be a good outlet for me, so they let me sign up for lessons at the community center in town.”

“So did it help you get girls?”

He shakes his head. “No way, not with my stage fright. Besides, I’ve had to spend the last few years unpacking whether I wanted to be Niall singing to all those girls or if I wanted to be one of those girls Niall was singing to.”

I stare at him, taken aback by the shift in conversation.

“Sorry,” he says when he notices my expression. “That probably doesn’t really make sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” I say to him. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

I glare at him, so he knows that he isn’t funny.

Wyatt grins, taking another bite of his food and talking through a piece of baked potato. “Go for it.”

“What do you identify with?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like … sexuality wise, I guess?” God, I couldn’t have asked that in a weirder way. “Like your labels.”

“You know, I haven’t really thought about it a lot.”

“Really?”

“No, I think about it all the time.” Wyatt sets down his fork and covers his forehead with his hands, and then he leans back and lets out a huff of air. “Sometimes I think about just not identifying with anything at all, just being myself.”

“You can do that.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’d still like to have something, you know? Even if it’s just for myself.”

“Who are you attracted to?”

“I don’t know; I don’t think it really matters,” he says. “Like I’ve had crushes before. Girls, boys, people whose pronouns I didn’t know, plenty of out nonbinary people.”

“It sounds like you’re pansexual.”

“Maybe.” He picks up his fork and starts playing with his food again. “And don’t even get me started on the whole gender thing.”

“What about gender?”

He smiles. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Wyatt looks away at a different table. “I just … I don’t think I’m quite ready to have those conversations. Even with myself.”