"You wanna go hang at Ryan’s?" Victoria asked suddenly.

Roman glanced up in surprise, then down again. "Can it wait?"

"Til when?"

"Later in the afternoon. I was actually planning to head over there anyway. He’s giving me an old soundcard for this thing." Roman gestured to the laptop husk in front of him. The job of fitting the visuals card was complete, and he reached for the hologram projection card, avoiding his sister’s eyes.

Roman knew Victoria would see right through the excuse. A lifetime of living with him was certain to have taught her by now that "later" in his terms always meant "never," and simultaneously, "leave me alone," and hoped that it would finally be cemented into his sister’s mind. It wasn’t that Roman didn’t want to hang out with Nimbus—Victoria only called him by his real name because she found the nickname stupid—or that he didn’t want to leave the house at all. The problem was Mary, Nimbus’s girlfriend, who for some reason was protective of Roman and acted coldly toward anyone who gave him problems on account of his condition.

In short, if he showed up with Victoria, especially the way she was acting today, it would mean enduring hours of sniping put-downs, heat-seeking missiles of passive aggression, covertly-placed landmines, and other means of feminine warfare.

—And it also went without saying that if he tried to explain this to Victoria, it would launch another tirade, and, well—fuck that.

For a while, the room was silent again. He could no longer hear the rain outside, and assumed it had stopped. The only indication his sister hadn’t left was the chair creaking from time to time. He thought she was looking at him, but didn’t want to look up. Then came the question, seemingly out of the blue: "So, how’s Kyrie doing? It’s been a while since you brought her up."

This time Roman looked up too abruptly to have even the slightest hope of feigning normalcy.

"Oh, Kyrie?" he stammered. "She’s fine." He added, in words feeling more to himself than his sister, "She’s got a show tonight at the Old Brewery."

Too late he realized what he had admitted.

"In Brewster?" Victoria was looking at him sideways. "Are you going?"

“I—.” He paused to erase the despondence he felt creeping in. “I don’t know.”

“What?” It was practically a shriek, dissolving into nervous, halting laughter. “You’re kidding, right, Roman? You don’t know?”

This time, Roman made no effort to suppress his gloom. “No.”

To his surprise, he could feel Victoria’s heightened charge from across the room. “And why not? You guys have been talking about meeting for years! You guys are practically dating already! She joined that band to meet you, you know!”

Aodh, too, now having ascertained the reason for Roman’s withdrawal, chimed in. “Man, how come I didn’t know ‘bout dis?”

Victoria marveled at him. “You didn’t even tell Aodh? Damn, Roman…”

“We talked about it over texts,” Roman whispered. He knew now that he’d trapped himself. “She only told me about it a month ago.”

“A month, huh? Well, that explains a lot.” Victoria rested her ankle on her knee and leaned back. “I thought this was strike three for you. What’s the big dilemma, huh?”

Roman didn’t answer right away. The origin of his friendship with Kyrie Kapoor was fairly simple: they’d met in a chatroom the day Roman had finished his first computer.

From the moment he became aware of her in the chat, Roman had known in that way he often knew with people he encountered on the ‘Trop that they would get along if they spoke. That initial feeling was something he couldn’t explain with words, but with a fluidic mixture of energies stemming from her typing and usage of emotes. They had been much younger then—he, thirteen, and Kyrie, twelve—making a physical meeting problematic. Even though they were only a few towns apart, with only one county line between them, both were too young to take the commuter rail by themselves, and their parents were apprehensive about driving the other to the nearest mall.

“Come on,” Victoria insisted, “dish.”

“You know why,” snapped Roman.

“Well, I can make an assumption if you want me to.”

A hot anger was growing in the space just above Roman’s collarbones. His charge had once again begun to gnaw on the sleeve of his gloves. “Assume away,” he growled.

It had begun with conversations about life—about Roman’s computers and Kyrie’s soccer games, how he thought the Backwoods Bandette’s lyrics sounded whiny and obnoxious, what a dumb shit she’d discovered Kate Marcy was, or how why they hadn’t been on at 17am like they’d promised was because a sibling was being an asshat and hogging the computer. They talked about things that years later would seem inconsequential and childish, but in those days, were their boots for the wet, puddle-strewn sidewalks of the lives they had led.

For years it had been a part of their friendship they hadn’t questioned.

“Well then, let’s see,” said Victoria haughtily, raising a finger to count off. “You don’t whine as much you used to,”—already, Roman was rolling his eyes—“So you can’t be afraid of scaring her away with your gushy bullshit. You’re not fat anymore, so you don’t worry about crushing her when you guys do it.” A light in her eyes flicked on. “Oh—so that’s it.”

“What else do you think it—” Roman began in dry relief, but Victoria’s interrupted him in a manner far too triumphant for her words.

“You can’t get it up, can you.”

Aodh howled. Roman glared at her acidly, his face hot with embarrassment.

“And what the fuck would make you make that assump—.” He cut himself off as he felt the bastion of the gloves break strain and little tendrils of static rippled over them.

“Oh, Roman, you know what I’m talking about.” Victoria adapted a sympathetic look, which with her lack of eyebrows seemed to empty her face completely. “Seriously, don’t worry. Just tell her.” Her voice perked matter-of-factly. “After all that time you guys have been friends, I’m sure she’ll understand. And you’ve never been the physical type anyway—.”

He cut her off with a grunt—the only thing he could manage without rendering the gloves completely useless. His hearts thundering, Roman sucked in a deep breath—the start of a breathing exercise a doctor had once taught him, but gave it up halfway through. Instead he held it inside penitently.

He didn’t know when Kyrie had figured it out. If she had, he wondered how she could have guessed—if it had been something in how he had typed, or maybe something he’d said, or the way. Whatever it had been—suddenly, one day, she knew. And what was more—she seemed to understand.

There were no questions like, “what’s it like??? o_o” or “is it any better??” and not even “does it hurt at all??”—questions that had been hurled at him since he was old enough to know. With Kyrie, it was always, “how was today?” and “hey, roman, what’s happening? :o)” Any implications in the questions were parenthetical, as were Roman’s answers. They left it at that, and as far as Roman could tell, her understanding was genuine.

Out of the corner of his eye, Roman saw his sister get to her feet.

“Come on, Roman,” Victoria chided, moving toward him, probably to shake him playfully. Her hands only came within eight inches before they were stopped by static sparks, and she had to recoil, her expression like a child who’d just had their knuckles rapped by a newspaper. She glanced at the rubber carpeting, then at him with a look of concealed fury.

“You know what?” she said quietly. “Fine. Stay here. Just sit here, tinkering with your fucking motherboards. I’m sure you’ll feel great when the only sane girl to waste more than an hour on your reclusive ass ditches you because you didn’t have the balls.” Victoria stopped, and Roman looked up at her expectantly, stung. She didn’t meet his eyes—the fight in her seemed momentarily gone. He could have told her the reasons, but the words would have come in anger and frustration. It had been years since Roman had allowed himself a fight with his sister. Whenever the opportunity arose—and after all her goading, now was certainly a good one—he was always stopped by the feeling that he was about to lay into a child he didn’t even know.

“Girls can’t wait around forever,” Victoria resumed. “Don’t you think she’s waited long enough at the hands of your—whatever the hell your problem actually is?”

Now her eyes expected an answer. He’d have told her then, just to shake the feeling of the static brimming inside him like an ocean of prickling snow, but his rage wouldn’t allow it. He could have brushed her off the way he always did, but phrases like “you wouldn’t understand” didn’t digest with his sister.

“Alright,” Roman said instead, “I’ll be downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sensed Victoria marveling at him. With the abrupt pop of a jack-in-the-box, she rose, headed probably for the door. Tensely Roman waited for the last word he knew would be coming. The slamming of the door greeted him instead.