'So,' I start as I set down Rishi's hot glue gun, 'how has your week gone thus far?'

Joe shrugs on the other side of the kitchen table where she shaves off bits of insulation foam to carve out the top of Glimmer's staff. 'Another week of not having any sex with any strangers. But I did rewatch all of The Bisexual so it clearly wasn't entirely unproductive.'

'Is that with Desiree Akhavan?' Caleb asks with his AAC app. 'Yeah, we watched that. It's mint.'

A minute or two passes with each of us focused on our costumes before Joe speaks again. 'I like it a lot. It's really validating, I think. Cause, you know, a lot of lesbians are really biphobic but people don't really talk about it. Is it like that with men?'

'Probably, yes.' I glue the final craft foam feather to my arrow and place it aside to pick up the next one, which is currently just a painted dowel. 'I've had a lot of one-night stands or dates be dicks about it but I learnt pretty quickly to bring it up early on. "Hi, I'm Nicolás, I'm pansexual. Do you have a problem with that?"'

We exchange smiles over our crafts.

'But I've honestly had more issues with women than men,' I continue, glueing the arrowhead in place. 'A lot of gay men are patronising about it—which isn't nice either. But most women, even queer women, are outright horrified and disgusted at the fact I've had sex with men.'

Utility knife forgotten in her hand, Joe turns to Caleb. He takes a second of staring back to realise she wants his input too. Leaving his paintbrush on the newspaper covering the table, he unlocks his phone to type.

'Oh, yeah, for sure. But I'm trans so that's usually a bigger issue than being queer. "I'm exclusively into cocks." I've actually got twelve so you should worship me then.' His facial expressions more than make up for the lack of emotion in the robotic voice.

'How are things going with Michael?' Joe asks after another beat of silence. Her fingers loop into the gold chain of her necklace.

'Mint. I'm seeing him again tomorrow. I reckon it could actually go somewhere, us.'

She offers me a smile.

Though a lot of our hangouts consist of figuring out how to turn every single game on the planet into a drinking game—or just inventing them for ourselves, like "find and infiltrate a ridiculously specific private Facebook group, like Moms Against Play-Do or A Group Where You Can Only Complain About How The Group Used To Be So Much Better, and whoever fails or gets kicked out the fastest has to buy the drinks"—we do also do regular things sometimes. Tonight we're gathered at Rishi's apartment to work on our She-Ra costumes for Halloween.

Honestly, I've never been mad for the dressing up bit—I always liked Halloween cause of the sweets and then cause of the alcohol—but it's a joy to get to spend time with friends. Couldn't think of owt better to do on a Wednesday night.

'I was definitely in those biphobic lesbian spaces for most of my queer life,' Joe confesses. 'My ex... It's just that it's nice to have spaces exclusively for women sometimes, to feel understood and safe. But they so easily become trans- and biphobic. I'd keep going, thinking that maybe they just don't know better and they'll learn. Does that make sense?'

Caleb and I both affirm that it does.

I finish my last arrow and pull the glue gun from the socket, free to look at Joe properly. A smile tugs at my mouth. 'You say that a lot. "If that makes sense", "Does that make sense?", "That doesn't make sense"...'

Joe sinks into her shoulders, dropping her stare to her insulation foam. Fuck. Dick move!

Caleb's AAC app pipes up before I can apologise. 'I think we should all make less sense. It's good for the soul.'

He tests the hinges on Entrapta's welding mask, nods at it proudly, and leaves it on the table to dry. Throwing up a peace sign as a goodbye, he leaves the kitchen, presumably to get to Rishi's sewing studio to work on the clothing of his costume. Judging by the screams of laughter, they're not doing much sewing in there right now.

Whatever Rishi's apartment lacks in structural integrity, it makes up in decadence. When Rishi wants to paint a wall, he paints a wall. When Rishi wants to craft ceiling roses and corner ornaments out of craft store plaster, he makes ceiling roses and corner ornaments out of craft store plaster. And when Rishi wants to paint a Georgian self-portrait of Duchess opposite the door so that her judging glare falls onto everyone who steps inside, he sure as fuck will do so.

There's a half-done impressionist painting on the kitchen window ledge and an out-of-order novel manuscript on top of the microwave that's been there for years. "There's no pleasure that you lot get from sex that I couldn't get from art", as he says. It'll be a nightmare if he ever wants to get a return on his deposit but I reckon Rishi gave up that possibility a long time ago.

Joe unlocks her phone to revisit the staff-making instructions from someone's cosplay channel. As guided, she fetches the sandpaper she bought earlier to smoothen the marks of the craft knife from the foam.

What's left for me is to make the armour, but it's only the first week of October: I can slack on work ethic to watch Joe. It's just the two of us in the kitchen now and Caleb won't send me murderous glares every time I look at her for longer than a second. Joe is as clumsy as I am when it comes to all this but the joy on her face has my insides fluttering.

'Do you have any plans for what you want to do after Open University?'

Who am I, her annoying aunt at the graduation party?

Joe don't seem bothered, though. 'There's one more course I want to do this winter. And, well... there's this internship I've been looking at. It's with Dr Isyana Wijaya and—gosh, she's just incredible. Her book Decolonised Sex Therapy is what made me want to study psychology in the first place. I initially started a criminology degree, have I told you that? I switched a month into uni.

'Wijaya talks a lot about how colonial legacies shape the way we think of and feel about sex and gender. I never thought about the ways that being from an immigrant family could impact something like sex, but she writes about is in such an eye-opening way. The way she combined queer, anti-colonial, and feminist perspectives just made me feel like I was seen for the first time but also like I was seeing myself for the first time. Does that make–?'

Joe catches herself. Biting down a smile, she returns her focus to her staff. Child-like joy morphs into passion as she talks. 'She's in Manchester, too. If I could get an internship in her practice, I... But it's way out of my league.'

I almost laugh. With that enthusiasm, there's no internship that's out of her league. But that's "too much" to say, so what I say instead is, 'Never hurts to apply.'

Champion. Now I sound like an entirely unhelpful career councillor.

'Just the crippling fear of rejection.' Joe tries to make it sound like a joke though it's unconvincing. 'I'm sure they've got better candidates. People with some experience. People who are more professional and don't crumble over basic tasks like answering an email.'

'I were under the impression that the point of internships were to get experience.'

'Okay, no need for the attitude.' Her grin barely blooms before it wilts again. 'It's stupid—you just don't know me well enough to know that yet. I've never been able to hold as much as an entry-level job for longer than a few months. I barely even got a passing grade on my dissertation because I was too obsessed with my ex to care about it. Last week I literally had to Google whether you're supposed to wait for the water to boil before putting in the potatoes. I'm twenty-six!'

'Twenty-six is young.'

'You're twenty-four and you've got everything figured out.'

A laugh cleaves out of me. I loathe the serrated edge of it, but I can't weed the smirk off my face. 'What exactly d'you reckon I've got figured out?'

'Everything.' Unlike mine, Joe's voice is earnest. 'You have a house. You have a car. You have two jobs that you're good at and where everyone likes you. You've got so many amazing friends. You're so good with your brother, always looking after him. I bet your parents love you.'

I pick up my arrows to check if the glue has dried. 'I do have amazing friends...'

I force myself to stitch up the creek opening in my chest. I've got good enough at doing it by now that it hardly takes conscious effort, my lungs hold their air on instinct.

'You should apply for the internship. Weren't that the point of doing the Open University courses, to have a better application?'

'Open University doesn't even count.'

'Why've you done the courses then? Course it counts. I'm sure your applications look well champion.'

Joe makes a sceptical noise. 'I went to King's College. That's the worst university in London.'

My face scrunches. 'I thought KCL were a world-renowned university.'

'It is. But the only people who go to UCL are people who didn't get into Oxford or Cambridge, and the only people who go to LSE are people who didn't get into Oxford, Cambridge, or UCL. And the only people who go to KCL are people who didn't get into Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, or LSE. And I didn't even apply to any of those but no one's going to believe me when I say that, will they?'

My jaw is slack as I stare at her. 'I highly doubt going to King's College will get in the way of ya getting a job. Not everyone goes to fucking Oxbridge. If nowt else, they'll be impressed by the mental gymnastics you do to sell yourself short.'

She huffs out a laugh. 'Easy for you to say, you got a first-class degree.'

My incredulity and amusement stutter. 'How d'you know that?'

'Eilidh told me.' Joe shrugs. 'We had lunch on Monday. It came up.'

The thought of Joe asking about me sends a whirlwind through me. One I can't tame no matter how many reminders I give myself. (Reminder: She's here to have casual sex with strangers. Reminder: She's in love with her ex. Reminder: I'm pursuing Michael.) Counterargument: She asked Eilidh about me.

'Well Manchester Met is probably a million times worse than KCL and I've still got a job.'

I pull out the gold chrome vinyl Caleb had in his scrap pile and try to figure out how to make Bow's armour from it, or top, or whatever the fuck it is that he's wearing. I've only just draped it across my chest when Rishi seizes it from me.

'What are you doing?' Rishi, who clearly has spawned in the kitchen without my notice, glares at me. 'This is not RuPaul's Hot Glue Race, you animal.'

He storms away with it, presumably to sew it for me. The kettle hisses as it starts to warm up the water Rishi just filled it with. I turn to Joe to find her smiling.

Notes

KCL: Kings College London

UCL: University College London

LSE: London School of Economics and Political Science

First-class degree: The undergraduate degree you receive when your average across all graded assessments is a first. (The grades at British universities go: 1st, 2:1, 2:2, and 3rd. @ whoever decided they should go like that, instead of 1, 2, 3, 4 I have questions.)