To Be Alone With You

4. personal

CHAPTER FOUR

PERSONAL

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Turns out, Rowan's idea of a game was 'Let's ask each other personal questions, and make ourselves uncomfortable.'

It was working, Kaspian was incredibly uncomfortable.

So far, Kaspian found out that Rowan listened to all types of music except electronic, he was adopted, his favourite colour was indigo, and that he had three surgical scars from an appendectomy gone wrong.

"Have you been in a relationship before?" Rowan asked Kaspian, fiddling with a button on his denim jacket.

Kaspian pondered upon the question for a minute, before replying, "I don't exactly know what a relationship consists of."

"Neither do I, to be honest. Hand holding? Maybe kissing. Hugging. Sex, if you're into that. Maybe no sex, if you're not. Dates, I guess," Rowan mused, mostly to himself.

"Then I guess I've been in one relationship. It was pretty shit though. She was an okay-ish person. But I don't think we worked too well together," Kaspian said, shrugging. He didn't mention that the reason they didn't work out was because she didn't understand what pansexuality meant, and she thought Kaspian would end up cheating on her with someone else. "Have you?"

"Been in a relationship? No. I fall for people way too fast, and end up fucking shit up pretty early in the process," Rowan stated, but Kaspian could hear the slight strain in his voice.

"Oh."

"Anyway. You have the choice to change one thing in the world, just one thing. What are you changing?" Rowan questioned.

Kaspian noticed that Rowan had a habit of asking oddly deep questions, and then completely irrelevant questions right after.

"Just one thing? I can't just say racism or homophobia or something because everything else will still exist, and everything will still be shitty. So I guess I would change people's mindsets? Even though that's physically impossible for a single person to do. But yeah, I'd want to change that if I could."

Rowan stared at him, a look in his eyes that Kaspian couldn't really make out. "That's a good answer," he finally said.

"Okay, okay, I have a question for you." Kaspian's mood was picking up, and for that, he was grateful to Rowan. Even though the guy was unnaturally loud, causing everyone in the library to constantly stare at them. "It's slightly personal though, so don't answer if you don't want to."

Rowan chuckled. "Yeah, and I haven't asked you a single invasive question? Ask away."

He wasn't wrong. Rowan had asked Kaspian about his religion, his relationships, and he'd even asked him about his sexuality.

"What happened to your biological parents?" As soon as he said it, he wanted to take it back. "You don't have to answer!" Kaspian immediately added.

Rowan laughed. "Chill. I don't know anything about them, and I don't really want to. I've never met them. It was a little weird at first. Both my parents are white, and they adopted a child who's clearly Black. People used to stare all the time, and the kids in middle school were fucking ruthless. I didn't really have many friends; I wasn't accepted by any of the kids because I didn't have biological parents like they did."

He exhaled softly, and then continued. "But honestly, I was really fucking privileged. My parents have money, they're super well-off compared to the parents a lot of people whom I studied with. So like, I'm pretty privileged in that aspect, I guess."