In Real Life ✓

11. And They Ask You How You Are And You Just Have To Say You're Fine

I'd forced my brother to get Discord, because Skype sucked. Every time I tried to call him, everything went wrong and I really couldn't deal with the lag anymore. So I spent about fifteen minutes explaining how the app worked, because he was an absolute fucking idiot, and then I finally had his face on my screen.

"Well, hello there," I said.

"Oh, hey! I can put it on fullscreen!"

I sighed.

"Okay, anyway. What did you want to tell me?"

"Well, I thought you'd like to know that that guy you forced me to tell you about the other day asked me out."

"Gilbert?"

"Yes, Gilbert."

He smirked and leaned closer to the camera to whisper, "I told you so." When I rolled my eyes, he added, "Seriously, though. You really didn't have to worry about all that stuff."

"What stuff?"

"You know, like, whether people would still want to go out with you if they know you're asexual and— Wait, he knows, right?"

"Yes, he knows."

"Okay, good."

"We'll see."

I didn't have a lot of faith in the whole situation, to be honest. Gilbert didn't even know what being asexual meant last time. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd grow bored if he found out that I really wasn't interested in a relationship with sex.

"How are you and the boyfriends?" I asked.

"Good. I thought it'd be super annoying that we couldn't just meet up whenever, but it's probably better this way. College is kicking my ass."

"Already? It's been like three weeks."

"Yes, already. I'm scared."

I snorted.

"It's your fault," he said, dragging a hand down his face. "I spend way too much time on Twitter."

"You don't even post anything."

"Yeah, that's the saddest part! I'm just watching all the stuff you talk about with your followers. It's so addictive."

As he went on to talk about Twitter and college and all the new people he was meeting, I switched windows and opened Twitter, because I just couldn't resist making fun of him.

It took him about half an hour to notice, and by then, everyone had already seen it. He literally stopped talking in the middle of a sentence and stared at his screen, before he asked, "Eve, what did you do?"

"I exposed you."

"I'm... going to deactivate my account."

"No, don't do that!"

"This is your doing."

"Fucking hell, Hugo, stop being a drama queen."

"Okay, then I'm going on hiatus."

I couldn't stop laughing when I saw his username changing from 'Duke's bro' to 'on hiatus', but then someone came into his room and I heard him clicking frantically to hide the Twitter account. He turned around to greet the guy—his roommate—and I knew that... the Twitter talk was over.

It kinda sucked that there were so few people I could talk to about DukeCockroach. My parents didn't really give a shit about it and the only other people who knew were Hugo's friends because I'd asked for their help last year during the whole Joe situation, and I obviously didn't really talk to them, because they were Hugo's friends. That only left Gilbert...

I said hello to Hugo's roommate, but we hung up soon after, because Hugo needed to work on something for school. After the call ended, I let out a sigh and asked Travis if he wanted to talk.

We didn't talk on Discord very often, because chatting on Twitter was just easier, but it was nice to see a face every now and then. He told me to wait a moment while he went to his room, because he didn't want his mom to interrupt him every three seconds, and then he came on, with his cat in his arms.

"Hey, what's up?" he asked. "Is something wrong?"

"You know me too well," I sighed.

He shrugged as he petted his cat's head. "You usually only want to talk on Discord when you're depressed."

"I'm not depressed," I replied, laughing. "I'm just... thinking about something."

"Hm?"

"I really don't want to be anonymous anymore."

"Why not?"

"It's so annoying. People online call me Duke and people in real life call me Eve, and I always have to keep those two worlds apart. Keeping it a secret is starting to get exhausting. Especially now that everyone knows what school I go to and shit."

"Makes sense. I don't really keep it my identity secret, but I don't know... People don't seem to be that interested in who I am..."

"Yeah, I guess it's just because of all that shit I used to post."

"That, and the secrecy."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know, people love unveiling secrets. Exposing stuff. Of course they wanna know who you are. It's exciting."

"True."

"I can imagine it must be a relief to finally be out, though."

"Yeah... Do you think I should do it?"

He shrugged. "It's your decision. I'm not as popular as you."

I twirled around in my chair and looked at the number of followers on my screen, which was slowly creeping towards the thirty million before I told him, "I'll think about it."

A/N: the full quote didn't fit in the title but you get the point lmao