Cute Mutants Deluxe by SJ Whitby

Author:SJ Whitby [Whitby, SJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SJ Whitby

I’m almost pathetically relieved when I get home and Pear is there. They’re on the couch reading some old sci-fi paperback with their glasses on. I slump on the couch beside them, almost touching.

“Dilly.” The way they say my name has been a magic charm since childhood. It still works, but I wonder if it will ever wear off. “I feel like we’ve been missing each other lately.”

“Busy bees, us two. No Sarah tonight?”

“I love her,” Pear says absently, “but sometimes it’s exhausting.”

“Ha.” I nudge them with my elbow. “You love her.”

“You’re a remarkably immature child.” They smile and touch my hair. I lean back against them.

“I had a fight with Lou.” I recap the worst of it. It’s hard to skirt the edges of my new mutancy, but I manage to. I talk about how he thinks I’m in love with Alyse and how his jealousy is incredibly annoying and how he thinks I like girls, when as far as I’m concerned, I like people.

Pear grunts. They don’t really get Lou’s obsession with gender, even though they should because they’ve spent their life trying to carve a space outside of it.

“In an ideal world, none of it should matter,” Pear says eventually.

“It does to Lou,” I point out.

Pear sighs. “We’re out of my territory. Sarah being a woman doesn’t really mean anything to me. It’s not anything about her looks that makes me like her.” Which is ridiculous, because I know Sarah’s in her thirties and a Mum and everything, but she is seriously good looking. “She’s the kindest person I’ve ever met, and her smile lights up the world and that’s what I love.”

“So fucking sappy.” I laugh because it’s sweet and I adore it. Pear wasn’t happy for a really long time, and it’s not like they’re a ray of sunshine now, but it’s a lot better and a lot easier.

“So what should I do about Lou?” I ask.

“Do you love him?”

I nod. I think so. Love doesn’t make any sense, but the knot of emotion I feel is complicated enough to be love, isn’t it?

“And you’re attracted to him?”

“Definitely,” I say. That’s not the problem.

“And he’s kind to you.”

I start picking at the band of their smartwatch. When did they get a smartwatch?

“Yes,” I say eventually, but it’s too close to the conversation I had with Alyse. Kindness is a hard thing to figure out. Sometimes people are kind when you don’t expect it, like Dani checking in with me after my failure, when I was sure she’d dismiss me with the full power of weaponised snootiness. I remember her hand, tentatively reaching out to touch my face.

I want to tell Pear everything. About my powers, about everyone else. About my failure. Yet even though we’re so close, there’s a point we hit the parent/child divide. They still see me as a kid, and they care so much I can’t see the edges of it. If I slit my heart down the middle and spill out all my loneliness and self-loathing, they’ll buckle under the weight of it.

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