‘Oh my God, yes,’ said Ellis, dunking the plastic spoon into her McFlurry. ‘This is what Christmas Day has always been missing.’

‘Agreed,’ I said, already halfway through my chips.

‘McDonald’s. She never lets me down.’

‘I’m not sure that’s the slogan.’

‘It should be.’

We were parked in the restaurant’s car park, which was almost entirely empty apart from us. I’d messaged Mum and Dad about where I was, and Dad sent back a thumbs-up emoji, so they probably weren’t bothered. Being in the car in my pyjamas and dressing gown did feel a bit wrong, though.

Ellis had chatted to me the whole way there about the most mundane topics. It was only a fifteen-minute drive, but for that whole fifteen minutes I hadn’t been able to get in much more than a ‘yeah’ or an ‘mmhm’ of agreement. I hadn’t been able to ask anything I really wanted to ask.

Are you like me? Are we the same?

‘So,’ I was finally able to say while she was mid-spoonful of ice cream, ‘your parents.’

She made a grunting noise. ‘Oh, yeah. Jesus, sorry you had to hear any of that. It’s very embarrassing that they still treat me like I’m fifteen. No offence to all the fifteen-year-olds out there. Even fifteen-year-olds don’t deserve to be spoken to like that.’

‘They sounded …’ I searched for the word. ‘… unreasonable.’

Ellis laughed. ‘Yeah. Yes, they did.’

‘Do they get at you about that stuff a lot?’

‘Whenever I see them, yeah,’ said Ellis. ‘Which is less and less these days, to be honest.’

I couldn’t imagine seeing Mum and Dad less and less. But maybe that’s what would happen to me, if I never got married or had children. I would just be phased out of my family. A ghost. Only popping up at occasional family gatherings.

If I came out to them, would they make me get therapy, like Ellis’s parents had?

‘Do you ever believe them?’ I asked.

Ellis was clearly not expecting this question. She took a long breath in, staring at her ice cream.

‘You mean, do I ever feel like my life is worthless because I won’t ever have a partner or children?’ she asked.

It sounded worse when she put it like that. But I wanted to know.

I needed to know whether I would always feel uncomfortable with this part of myself.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Well, firstly, I can have children whenever I want. Adoption exists.’

‘But what about having a partner?’

She paused.

And then she said, ‘Yes, I do feel like that occasionally.’

Oh.

So maybe I was always going to feel like this.

Maybe I would never feel comfortable with this.

Maybe –

‘But that’s just a feeling,’ she continued. ‘And I know it’s untrue.’

I blinked up at her.

‘Having a partner is what some people want. For others, it’s not. It took me a long, long time to figure out that that’s not what I want. In fact …’ She hesitated. But only for a moment. ‘It took me a long time to realise that it’s not even something I can want. It’s not a choice for me. It’s a part of me that I can’t change.’

I was holding my breath.

‘How did you realise?’ I asked eventually, my heart in my mouth.

She laughed. ‘It’s … well, are you in the mood for me to condense my entire life into one conversation over a Christmas Day McDonald’s?’

‘… Yes.’

‘Ha. OK.’ She took a spoonful of ice cream. ‘So … I never had any crushes when I was a child. Not any real ones, anyway. Sometimes I confused friendship for them, or just thinking a guy was really cool. But I never really fancied anyone. Even celebrities or musicians or whatever.’

She raised her eyebrows and huffed out a sigh as if this was all a minor inconvenience.

‘But the thing was,’ she said, ‘everybody else I knew got crushes. They dated. All my friends talked about hot boys. They all got boyfriends. Our family has always been big and loving – you know, your parents and my parents and our grandparents and everyone else – so that was always what I saw as the norm. That was all I knew. In my eyes, dating and relationships were just … what people did. It was human. So that’s what I tried to do too.’

Tried.

She had tried too.

‘And this continued into my late teens, and then into my twenties. Especially when I got into modelling, because everyone was getting with each other in modelling. So I would force myself to do it too, just to be involved and not be left out.’ She blinked. ‘But … I hated it. I hated every fucking second of it.’

There was a pause. I didn’t know what to say.

‘I don’t know when I started to realise that I hated it. For a long time, I was just dating and having sex because that’s what people did. And I wanted to feel like those people. I wanted the fun, exciting beauty of romance and sex. But there was always this underlying feeling of wrongness. Almost disgust. It just felt wrong on a fundamental level.’

I felt a wave of relief that I had never let myself go that far.

Maybe I was a little stronger than I thought.

‘And yet, I kept trying to like it. I kept thinking, maybe I’m just picky. Maybe I haven’t met the right guy. Maybe I like girls instead. Maybe, maybe, maybe.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe never came. It never got here.’

She leant back into the driver’s seat, staring ahead at the soft glow of McDonald’s.

‘There was the fear too. I didn’t know how I was going to function in this world alone. Not just alone now, but endlessly alone. Partnerless until I die. You know why people pair up into couples? Because being a human is fucking terrifying. But it’s a hell of a lot easier if you’re not doing it by yourself.’

I guessed that was the crux of it.

I could, on a base level, accept that I was like this. But I didn’t know how I was going to deal with that for the rest of my life. Twenty years from now. Forty. Sixty.

Then Ellis said, ‘But I’m older now. I’ve learnt some things.’

‘Like what?’ I asked.

‘Like the way friendship can be just as intense, beautiful and endless as romance. Like the way there’s love everywhere around me – there’s love for my friends, there’s love in my paintings, there’s love for myself. There’s even love for my parents in there somewhere. Deep down.’ She laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile. ‘I have a lot more love than some people in the world. Even if I’ll never have a wedding.’ She took a big spoonful of ice cream. ‘There’s definitely love for ice cream, let me tell you that.’

I laughed and she grinned at me.

‘I was hopeless about being like this for a long time,’ she said, and then shook her head. ‘But I’m not any more. Finally. Finally I’m not hopeless any more.’

‘I wish I could be like that,’ I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Ellis raised a curious eyebrow at me. ‘Yeah?’

I took a breath. OK. Now or never.

‘I think I’m … like you,’ I said. ‘I don’t like anyone either. Romance-wise, I mean. Dating and stuff. It’s … I just can’t feel any of it. I used to want it – I mean, I still think I do want it sometimes. But I can never really want it, because I don’t feel that way for anyone. If that makes sense.’

I could feel myself going redder and redder the more I spoke.

Ellis said nothing for a moment. Then she ate another spoonful of ice cream.

‘That’s why you got in the car, isn’t it?’ she said.

I nodded.

‘Well,’ she said. She seemed to realise the magnitude of what I’d admitted. ‘Well.’

‘It’s a real sexuality,’ I said. I didn’t even know if Ellis knew it was a sexuality. ‘Just like being gay or straight or bi.’

Ellis chuckled. ‘The nothing sexuality.’

‘It’s not nothing. It’s … well it’s two different things. Aromantic is when you don’t feel romantic attraction and asexual is when you don’t feel sexual attraction. Some people are just one or the other, but I’m both, so I’m … aromantic asexual.’

That wasn’t the first time I’d said those words. But every time I said them, they felt a little more at home in the air around me.

Ellis considered this. ‘Two things. Hm. Two in one. Buy one get one free. Love that.’

I snorted, which made her genuinely laugh, and all the nerves that had been constricting my chest eased.

‘Who told you about those, then?’ she asked.

‘Someone at uni,’ I said. But Sunil wasn’t just someone, was he? ‘One of my friends.’

‘Are they also …?’

‘They’re asexual too.’

‘Wow.’ Ellis grinned. ‘Well, that makes three of us.’

‘There are more,’ I said. ‘A lot more. Out there. In the world.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

Ellis stared out of the window, smiling. ‘That would be nice. If there were lots out there.’

We sat in silence for a moment. I finished eating my chips.

There were more of us out there.

Neither of us were alone in this.

‘You’re … very lucky to know all of this,’ said Ellis suddenly. ‘I’m …’ She shook her head. ‘Ha. I guess I’m a bit jealous.’

‘Why?’ I asked, confused.

She looked at me. ‘I just wasted a lot of time. That’s all.’

She chucked her empty McFlurry pot into the back seat and turned on the ignition.

‘I don’t feel lucky,’ I said.

‘What do you feel?’

‘I don’t know. Lost.’ I thought of Sunil. ‘My friend said I don’t have to do anything. He said all I need to do is be.’

‘Your friend sounds like a wise old sage.’

‘That just about sums him up.’

Ellis started driving us out of the car park.

‘I don’t like doing nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s boring.’

‘So what do you think I should do?’

She gave this some thought for a moment.

Then she said. ‘Give your friendships the magic you would give a romance. Because they’re just as important. Actually, for us, they’re way more important.’ She glanced to one side at me. ‘There. Was that sage-like enough for you?’

I grinned. ‘Very sage-like.’

‘I can be profound. I am an artist.’

‘You should put this in a painting.’

‘You know what? Maybe I will.’ She raised a hand and twinkled her fingers. ‘I’ll call it Platonic Magic. And no one who isn’t like us – wait, what was it? Aro …?’

‘Aromantic asexual?’

‘Yes. No one who isn’t aromantic asexual will understand it.’

‘Can I have it?’

‘Do you have two thousand pounds?’

‘Your paintings are selling for two thousand pounds?’

‘They sure are. I’m pretty good at my job.’

‘Can I get student discount?’

‘Maybe. Just because you’re my cousin. Student cousin discount.’

And then we were laughing as we reached the motorway and I thought about the magic that I could find, maybe, if I looked a little harder.