“I hope so.”

Hennessy pulled me in for a hug that I could literally feel balming my soul. “It’s been a weird day, huh?”

“So weird,” I said. I pulled back and looked up into his eyes. “And I’m sorry. I really need you to know that. I should have stayed and talked to you, but I panicked and basically ran away. I was an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot,” he murmured. “You’re still navigating where you are with your asexuality, and that can take ages. There’s no right or wrong.”

“Not talking to you was wrong,” I replied. “Leaving you without an explanation was wrong.”

He made a face that kinda said he agreed with me. “It could have saved us both a lot of heartache.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

He gave me a kiss. “I forgive you.”

“When I thought maybe I wasn’t asexual, I panicked. You’ve said before that you don’t want to date anyone who wasn’t, and I thought I’d blown it. My stupid dick liked the attention, or something, I don’t even know.”

He snorted. “I don’t think your dick is stupid.”

“Well, I can tell you, it’s no Einstein either,” I replied, and he chuckled. “But I don’t want to have sex. I really don’t—it makes me uncomfortable even thinking about it, to be honest. I want to be able to cuddle and kiss on the couch while we watch Deep Space Nine without my dick getting any ideas.”

Hennessy kissed me again, this time with smiling lips. “That sounds perfect to me. And if your Einstein gets any bright ideas, we can cool it a bit. Or go into the bathroom and get rid of it.”

I gasped, horrified. “I’ll pass on that.”

“Would that be a hard pass?”

I gave him a playful shove. “Really? Dick jokes?”

“Yes. Dick jokes. I’m asexual, not dead. We’re allowed to joke about these things. And we’re allowed to talk about sex. And we’re allowed to get hard-ons, as inconvenient as they sometimes are. We can’t change being human.”

I pulled him against me, fitting right into that groove of his body like perfect puzzle pieces, and sighed. We stayed like that for a while, just holding each other, breathing each other in. Now for my moment of truth. “In the meeting tonight, I asked if you hated me for being such an idiot, and you said you couldn’t hate me because you loved me. And that was the single most romantic moment of my life, and it’s a gift I will never take for granted. I promise you that. And Hennessy?”

He pulled back so he could see my eyes. “Yeah?”