"I've been wondering this for a while," Jo asked, retracting his hand, "but who gave you my name?"

"Umm, I guess...I just...got it," I mumbled. It was important for me to protect Bullwinkle, a man who I hardly knew but on whom we were all dependent as the ingress of operating funds.

"I notice you're using it pretty comfortably," Jo continued, more amused than disappointed (but still distinctly disappointed). "When someone has never introduced themselves, and you haven't introduced yourself to them, don't you think it's the height of awkwardness to gibe at them, and to make remarks?"

"So-rry." I kept my voice low, and stared at my feet as I said this, to disguise the involuntary curl of my mouth. He really was an old curmudgeon, and I couldn't wait to tell Amelia all about it tomorrow, when he was out of earshot. 

"If you know who I am and what I do, then you should understand that I have reservations about people trying to get close to me. People whose livelihoods are supported by me, for a start."

"Right." Wow. What was I going to say to that? 

A pause. "...So, what's your name?"

I glanced up, and my eyes fluttered several times in disbelief. "You're...wanting that detail to, um...complain to my manager?"

Jo shook his head. It was the first time that he did it so emphatically. As he did so, a few strands of tightened waterlogged curls escaped from rain hat jail, and tumbled around his face - like those little twists of confetti you only ever see when people really want to knock your socks off. 

"In case I decide I also want to get close to you."

No, he really did say that. 

If I wasn't a simple, guile-free, 20-something person of the world desperately seeking any kind of home, I might have reacted differently. Instead, I experienced a sensation that felt like all the supporting machinery in my chest suddenly seized up, and my heart hit my diaphragm like it was a trampoline.

"I'm Elliott," I replied, the words ejecting violently. 

"Okay, Elliott," Jo returned, "is that a first name or a last name?"

"It's a, um, preferred name," I added, and now the words nearly flowed as I rediscovered my dignity. "And, I go by they/them, and it's important. If we're getting closer and all."

He hummed.

"Do pronouns weird you out?"

"No," he said, and I could tell that he was being honest.

"Okay."

"I last used the singular they a couple hundred years ago, so it'll just take me a minute."

Well, shit.

He nodded at me as if he hadn't made that incomprehensible joke, said some other words that I failed to register, and then went on his way, trudging through the rain that fell heavy as snow. 

Was he one of those guys who was self-conscious about his age? By the time I escaped my own unravelling thoughts, he was gone, and I had been standing outside for...well, an indeterminate period, I don't know how long it was. Time lost its contours. It seemed to spread endlessly in all directions and double back on itself. I was distinctly aware of the key to my private apartment, which felt warm and peculiar in the palm of my hand. 

I backed up under the awning, freshly soaked and suddenly very cold, and breathed in as hard as I could. 

I don't remember much about the rest of that day. All I knew with certainty, amidst the crush and churn of the waves and the wind, was that the person I was obsessed with didn't think I was strange, that he was infinitely stranger than anyone I knew, and if we ever locked hands and walked out in public together, he would be the spectacle and I would get to feel weightless next to him.   

Destiny. 

Or so I thought. Then Jo disappeared for a week. And when he returned, he'd brought a girl with him.