"Because Claire asked you to and you felt bad about being gone for six months. I'll be right here the whole time, if there are questions you don't want to answer I can pretend I thought they were for me." 

"Also because I don't want some creepy journalist from Gawker digging around in my garbage to try to prove I'm gay. I like the current level of creepy reporters in my life, which is zero."

"Also that, yes. I'll still be there." 

They go in.

Lev is holding onto Sasha's hand very tightly. 

Interviews are terrible, but Sasha is good, and that works out as... still terrible actually.

"It's nice to meet you, Alexander, Lev!" the journalist says, shaking their hands. "Do you mind if I record this interview for accuracy?"

"Go ahead."

"Not at all!" He's got his customer service smile on but his voice is real. 

The journalist is totally used to customer service smiles! 

"So, Lev, I understand you're speaking publicly about your sexual orientation for the first time?"

"Yes, I'm bi."

He does not want to be here.

"What prompted that decision?"

"I met Sasha. We're going to get married."

He hates this. He hates this so much. Why did he agree to do this.

He squeezes Lev's hand. "Being in the public eye's a little new, but Lev is worth it." 

"What did you do before you were with Lev, Alexander?"

"I was working as a bartender, and now I'm hoping to be able to go back to school." He elides everything else about his life pre-Lev, of course. 

"It sounds like you come from very different social circles! How did you two meet?"

"We met on Yenta, actually!" he says, and smiles like it's mildly ironic rather than a straight up lie and squeezes Lev's hand again. 

Yenta is a subject Lev is more comfortable with. 

"I think one of the advantages of Yenta's algorithm," Lev says, "compared to meeting through your social circle or on other online dating sites, is that we match people based on the things they actually care about, rather than on lossy proxies for those things, like social class. Lots of people wind up never meeting the love of their life because they're broke and the person they love is rich and they never have an opportunity to meet, and Yenta can fix that."

The journalist has the face of a person whose only usable quote is a Yenta advertisement. 

She looks down at her paper. "So, how long have you two known each other?"

Poor journalist. 

"We've been dating for a while — the engagement's pretty new but we've been thinking about getting married for about six months now." The smile is real, now, and aimed at Lev. 

Smiles about getting married! 

Lev is totally happy to let Sasha take all the questions while Lev beams at him. 

The journalist is less of a fan of this plan. 

"Lev, do you think your bisexuality gave you a new perspective that's related to Yenta's success as a dating site?"

"No. Yenta's success is related to the fact that I made a good product, not my sexual orientation."

"It is unusually inclusive for a dating site — or for any site at all — and has been from the beginning; Lev being bi probably didn't hurt with that, although of course it's not the main reason for it." 

"That's not because I'm bi, that's just because I thought about my userbase. Straight people are also capable of good app design."

"I have not known many straight people who would have thought to make the gender question a list of checkboxes, but yes, it's a good product for reasons that have nothing to do with your list of identity labels." 

Please help me throw the interviewer a bone, he doesn't say.