After seeing off the last of the guests—at least, the guests who would be leaving tonight—I retired to the drawing room. As soon as I stepped inside, I was greeted by a chorus of, “Bella!”

“Hullo again, everyone,” I said, putting on a tired smile.

Tina reached me first, wrapping her arms around me and snuggling her head against my neck. “You were just wonderful,” she said, her soft voice tickling my skin.

“Fabulous,” Mattie said.

Stressing every syllable, Ella said, “Incredible.”

And last, but certainly not least, Stef finished by saying, “Stunning.”

The others apart from Stef had crowded me by now, hugging me from all angles. I chuckled, giving them all a little rub on the back, then prised them off so we could join Stef on the couches.

“Congratulations, you are now an adult,” Stef said.

It had extra weight coming from her. She was married, a socialite, composed. “Thank you,” I said.

There was a moment of silence as it felt like everyone let out the breath they’d held all evening. Honestly, the last few months had made it seem like they cared more about my grande debutto than I did. Not that that was hard. For others, it was a first chance to meet suitors. For me, well, the men weren’t who I was interested in.

“Say, what are your plans now?” Stef asked.

Again, there was a heavy weight to her words, but not the pleasant kind. “This is something more… imagined than planned, but I am thinking of taking my dowry and retiring to a city. I cannot see myself being with a man for even a night, never mind a superficial marriage.”

Although it was called a dowry, it wasn’t quite the same. Now that I was an adult woman, my family would give me ownership of some properties and businesses, sort of an early inheritance, my brother getting the rest when my father eventually retired. It would be enough for me to live a good life, try out some companions.

But I was quickly pulled from my idle thoughts.

“What are you saying? If you do not wish to marry, then stay with me,” Mattie said, puffing up at the end. Certainly, her father was rather doting and there was an unspoken rule not to meddle with the affairs of your “betters”; now I was an adult, what business of my parents was it if I stayed at a duke’s manor?

“Or with me,” Ella said, at the same time as Tina said, “Or me.”

I looked at them each in turn, giving a soft smile. “Thank you for your concern, but I really couldn’t impose,” I said.

Not thinking, I ended up looking at Stef as well, subconsciously expecting her to chime in, yet she had stayed silent, even now saying nothing. Saying nothing, but her eyes said so much. I just couldn’t understand what.

As if she knew that, she finally broke her silence and reached over to hold my hand. “I did not wish to make a fuss on your big day, but I am with child,” she said, at the end bringing my hand to her stomach—to a slight bump.

My eyes widened. “You are?” I asked, trying to be quiet like I was afraid I’d scare the baby, but still full of excitement.

“I am,” she said, her smile blooming and hand holding mine clenching ever so slightly.

“Congratulations,” I—everyone—said, the matter of a moment ago nearly entirely forgotten as they all crowded around, eager for a turn to feel the bump.

But the previous topic had only been nearly forgotten.

“Ella, I wished to wait until at least your marriage; however, given what you have said, I suppose now is as good a time as any,” Stef said, her voice again heavy, this time confusing me.

“Pray tell, what have you been waiting for?” I asked.

Her hand still held mine, now her other one came over, clutching my hand. “Won’t you be my lover? There is nothing I would love more than your support and comfort through this time, and I would want no one else to be aunty to my child.”

“What are you saying?” I asked with a nervous chuckle, confused through and through—not that I didn’t understand her words, just felt like I was missing something to make sense of them.

“I am deeply in love with you, mia sorellina,” she said, punctuating her pet name for me with a kiss on my hand that she had claimed.

I froze, broke, a silent cry cursing that stupid god. No one was supposed to fall in love with me, I just wanted to look beautiful for easier hook-ups! Besides, there weren’t any signs, were there?

“What about me? I wanted Bella to be my lover!” Tina said, pushing herself between me and Stef, clamping on to me.

“Actually, she was supposed to be my lover,” Ella said, standing to the side with crossed arms and a righteous scowl.

As for Mattie… she didn’t say a word, but spoke very loudly with her actions, embracing me from behind and kissing my neck.

Strange didn’t do my current situation justice. After all, a day ago, they were just my friends. Sure, they did some weird things, but….

Actually, there was no but. Or rather, the but was me—the old me. The ugly me who didn’t dare think women were flirting with her, had been burned so many times. If she hugged me, that was how she was with all her friends. If she complimented me, if she was kind to me, if she liked to hang around with me—that was how she was with all her friends.

Did Tina act so affectionate with the others? No, she didn’t. Did Mattie kiss them on the cheek and hug them like she hugged me? No, she didn’t. Did Ella tease them? No, she didn’t. Did Stef recommend lesbian stories set in Catholic-like girls’ schools where new students were assigned an “older sister”? No, she didn’t… as far as I knew.

Fuck. Love was hard, especially when I was basically blind.

I managed to calm everyone down enough to have them sit down again. No clue how, I just muttered something and stepped back. They had probably noticed how freaked out I was.

Whatever the reason, I at least had the room to think for a moment, then to tell them what I’d put together.

“I greatly appreciate all of your feelings, and I feel so very honoured that you each wish to take me as a lover,” I said, speaking carefully. “However, I… cannot return your feelings.”

Stef asked, “You mean to tell us you are neither inclined towards men or women?”

I winced, looking down and fidgeting, this conversation hard enough in my old world where queer women usually were at least aware of asexuals. “No, I am very much inclined towards women. It is that I cannot fall in love.”

“What does that mean?” Mattie asked.

I weakly smiled. “For example, I do not have the urge to kiss or ever have the feeling of butterflies in my stomach. While I enjoy each of your embraces, it does not make my heart race.”

Stef frowned with a smirk. “What of those books, then? You enjoyed them for the close friendship between women?” she asked, tone like she was chiding me.

Wincing again, I resisted the guilty urge to turn away. “While I cannot fall in love, I desire… intimacy. However, I would hate to… hurt you, any of you, by behaving dishonestly, to make you think I feel things I do not. Rather, I would cherish you as friends and have a companion to satisfy those hollow desires.”

No snappy comeback this time, I dared raise my head, finally seeing their disgust—

Or not?

They didn’t look at me like I was weird or broken or some kind of pervert. No, they just looked at me with a focused expression, like they were trying to understand something difficult.

Like they were trying to understand me.

“I feel as if there is a hole in what you told us,” Mattie said slowly, still thinking as she spoke. “Why is it that we cannot love you if you do not love us?”

Not expecting that question, I took a moment to switch mental gears. “Well, it is that… you would surely feel lonely. Pouring out all of your love and having no one to return it, draining you.”

Tina’s face scrunched up. “You say that, but I have never felt lonely being with you.”

“Because I have been with you as a friend,” I said, stressing the word. “How would you feel being with a lover who never kisses you first?”

Ella asked, “Is giving kisses all you lack?” I felt frustrated by the question and it probably showed, Ella quickly saying, “I am not teasing you, but curious. It is hard to imagine what you are telling us.”

“Imagine how hard it is for me, trying to imagine something I cannot feel, that I can read in books and see between others, yet am unable to comprehend. So I cannot tell you what it feels like to lack something, only try to give the effects it causes,” I said, barely keeping my voice from becoming sharp.

It really was such a hard conversation without revealing my previous life where I’d been repeatedly told how empty it was to date me. I didn’t want to be treated special for that, though, so it had been my secret, enjoying this peaceful life.

Well, I guessed this was the price of that happiness. Still, it was much more than I’d had in my last life, worth suffering through all those dull lessons and being treated like a child. Enough happy memories to last me a lifetime. Late at night, after my companion falls asleep, I could think back to these days with a smile.

However, I may have fallen into despair too soon. Stef stood up to hug me—as a friend.

“Thank you for sharing with us. It must have been hard keeping this to yourself all this time,” she whispered.

I knew she was talking about me being aromantic, but it resonated with my last thought, soothing me. “It was,” I whispered back.

The others stepped up too, gently encircling me in hugs.

“Allow me to speak for all of us in apologising for any discomfort we have caused you, and I hope you will think of this as the start of the discussion, not the end, on what relationship we wish to have with each other going forwards,” Stef said.

I almost laughed, Stef so smoothly telling me that she wasn’t giving up on being my lover.

“Thank you, and sure,” I said.

Honestly, I didn’t know if I would even be able to see them as women. I’d known them since we were toddlers. Even if I did change how I saw them, I was more like forty-something than eighteen, but I couldn’t exactly give that as a reason. Maybe that wasn’t even a reason—what was the point of being reborn if I kept track?

There was so much for me to consider and it had already been such a long day. I felt thoroughly exhausted, inside and out. So I really did appreciate Stef’s calming influence, maturity not necessarily tied to age, her words giving me hope.

It wasn’t an answer I was looking for, but a process. A slow and delicate process to find a solution. Not a compromise, but a relationship both I and each of them were happy with. That sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but it was the difference between finding the middle ground and finding common ground. Subtle, but different.

Perhaps Stef didn’t intend her words to be so deep. Perhaps she simply gave an illusion of maturity and composure, carefully practised, honed. Well, that part was true—she had trained to be an elegant socialite.

Did that make the comfort she brought me any less real?