"I love you," he whispers to Marlo's shirt.

"I love you," he whispers to Lev's hair, and holds him closer. 

It would be so easy to lift up his head and kiss Marlo and tell him Lev made a mistake, the date was nice but being with Marlo is so much better than nice and it would be worth it to give up everything and be with him--

"People who are sexually broken one way," Christine says in his head, "are more likely to be sexually broken in other ways too."

He curls up on Marlo's chest and doesn't say anything at all.

"More than light," he whispers into Lev's hair, and adjusts the way he's holding him so Lev will be more comfortable. "I've got you." 

Two days later, Christine calls Marlo in for his one-on-one.

"I don't know what you want to do in this session," she says. "I can bring you a book, if you like."

"I have books. Mostly I wanted to say thank you for helping me help Ghost." 

"You're welcome. I told Serena that Harriet shouldn't participate in this step, but she overruled me."

"...not that I'm not sympathetic to having to wrangle Harriet, but that sounds like a very obviously bad decision. — that being the overrule." 

"Yes. I agree. But Serena has the final say on the girls, as I do on the boys." 

He has some doubts about whether Serena should have final say on anything, if she thought having Harriet date people was a good plan. 

"...speaking of Serena, does anyone actually date like that, because if so I'm very concerned about straight girls." 

"I believe the intention is less to give you the infallible rules of dating and more to give you a set of rules that work well enough for inexperienced people."

"...'remember that a feminine woman says yes to almost all dates'?" 

"Most of the time, the worst case scenario is an awkward and boring night, and it's not at all uncommon for women to discover they like the man once they have a chance to get to know him."

"...probably with dating pools that don't have Harriet or Harriet-equivalents in them it's less of an issue, it just seems salient, given. And I would not have wanted anyone to say yes to me because that's what they were supposed to do." 

He is well aware of how hypocritical this statement is. 

"And yet."

"And yet," he agrees. "You see why I think it's not the best advice." 

"If you tell same-sex-attracted women to say no unless they want to go out on a date with the man half of them will never say 'yes' to their first date."

"...I think a world where I never dated Melissa would have been better for us both." 

"Well. You don't want to be straight."

"That's true. But even if I did, she still deserved better than someone who didn't actually want to be there." 

"Jan and Lev seem to be getting along."

"They do! He talks about her all the time, it's sweet." 

"Sometimes when same-sex-attracted people give heterosexuality a chance they wind up being capable of it."

"And sometimes they wind up kissing someone they don't want to be kissing for two years, and sometimes they wind up sobbing in the bathroom. I didn't say it was wrong for everyone."