'Next time I say that being aromantic don't mean I can't have kids, shoot me in the head.'

Though Daisy's Halloween Friday consisted of preparing for actual Halloween with her kids and obviously no alcohol, I reckon she's most tired of all of us. Burritoed in a blanket, she collapses onto the sofa beside Rishi, having finally got Leslie to sleep. Sachiko looks over them in the kitchen while she prepares us lunch.

'Don't worry, I'd shoot you no criteria needed,' Caleb responds. He groans into the sofa cushion crammed over his face. 'I'm never drinking again. Until next weekend when we go that ball in Liverpool.'

Though Caleb and Daisy are both Japanese-Ethiopian, their mums each wanted to be pregnant once and they've not got much physical resemblance. No one who's ever been in a room with both of them could ever question that they're siblings, though, not with the way they bicker. Their heads slump against the sofa's backrest at identical angles. They both yawn into the folds of their elbows and rub their eyes with their knuckles.

Caleb invited us all over to his mum's—Sachiko's, now that Behati has officially moved out—to nurse our hangovers. I might've not drunk owt but I did only get home at half five so I'm completely done in: we've been here for over an hour and I've no clue what the series playing on the telly is.

All our phones ping, the cacophony of notifications followed by groaning. Because I don't have the energy to dig out my own phone, I peer over Allan's shoulder to see his. He angles the screen so I can see better.

Jolopeño: I couldn't do it. I don't know, I panicked! 😫😫😫

I have to read the previous message Caleb sent after the rest of us arrived to understand, asking her how "it" went. Joe left Spectrum with Mistress Ching last night—which I have no sort of feelings about cause it's got nowt to do with me. He sends another now.

Calabari: Come over!!!! We're all at my mums' :p

Calabari: Mum's*

Too tired to type the address, he shares his location.

Calabari: You have no excuse if you're not having morning sex XD

Rishi di Mare: It's three in the afternoon.

Calabari: STFU!! >:@ That is morning

The pair continue arguing about it in the chat, either too hungover to use their voices or too hungover to notice they're sitting beside each other on the sofa.

I lift my focus from Allan's screen to his face. 'Why've you got such weird contact names?'

He laughs. 'The first time I got a phone, it autocorrected "Ollie" to "olives" so now everyone is foodstuffs.'

I'm about to ask what my name is when Harper runs in, squealing in a way that grates even my non-hungover brain. They're overwhelmed by all the people they find, which only makes them more excitable and they run back and forth in front of the telly before they clamber onto Daisy. 'Mummy! Mummy! Come play!'

'Harper, Mummy is knackered. I need a kip. Is it okay if I play with you after lunch?' She nods at Caleb. 'I think your Uncle well wants to play.'

Caleb has only started to gather his groan when I stand from the floor. 'I'll play.' After a lazy morning– afternoon, I don't feel too bad and Harper gets distracted so easily, it won't be ten minutes till they'll wanna do summat else.

Daisy reaches a hand from the depths of her blanket to squeeze my shoulder. 'I love you so much, Nicolás. You're my best friend.'

Caleb smacks her with a cushion. 'Get your own best friend.' I've ushered Harper out of the room when the thwack of Daisy's retaliation echoes behind us. Caleb gasps. 'You're not allowed to hit me, I'm disabled! I'll cancel you on Twitter.'

Harper bounds up the stairs and I follow them to what were once a library and Behati's prayer room (Sachiko, though also raised Catholic, were never particularly devoted) and got the third function of a nursery when Daisy decided to have kids.

Four moving boxes balance in the corner, "books T-Z" scrawled across the top one. The shelves are empty of Behati's Ethiopian jazzrecords. The wedding photo—not the photos from Behati and Sachiko's legal wedding in 2014 but the one where they exchanged rings and vows for the first time in 1981—is gone, a nail and the sun-bleached outline on the wallpaper all that's left. Dozens of family photos still hang in their places.

I worried absence would echo but the home is just as full of love as it always was. Caleb's mums still love their kids and their grandkids as much as they always have. Still love each other, really, it's just not romantic anymore. I won't say it to Caleb yet—he's still angry, which he has the right to be—but I think there's summat brave in them daring to let each other go, in recognising that this routine has run its course.

'You can have this one, Uncle Nikki.' Harper pulls me out of my thoughts by jabbing a sauropod into my leg. 'It's Giraffatitan brancai. You're both tall and eat plants.'

            Half an hour later, Harper has lost interest in our dinosaur city. Sitting on the floor beside the play table that I used with Caleb twenty years ago, I watch them scratch green into a dinosaur-themed colouring book. A tap against the open door pulls my blurred eyes away.

My heart skips at the same time that it cinches. Joe smiles at me. 'Mrs F– Sachiko,' she corrects herself, 'asked me to bring you some tea.' She lifts the mug in one of her hands but don't step into the room before I invite her to.

I place the Giraffatitan brancai that I've been idly rotating in my hands onto the table to accept the cup of gobocha. 'Thank you.' I'm not even hungover but the first sip of Sachiko's burdock root tea cures it. My glasses fog up from the steam.

'Hi, Harper, I'm Joe. Can I sit down?'

Harper scans her for a moment. 'Okay. If you're Uncle Nikki's friend.'

Joe places her mug on the play table and sits, also on the floor because the table is far too low for adult legs to fit under it if we try to balance on the animal stools. Harper bores of their colouring and moves to the dollhouse in the corner of the room, happy to play by themself.

'Alright?' I lower my voice to the hoarse periphery of a whisper. Maybe so I don't disturb Joe's hangover, maybe so Harper won't listen though I doubt they're remotely interested in owt we could say when they're, by the looks of it, currently overthrowing an authoritarian Hamataro government.

Still, Joe mirrors the volume. 'I drank way too much yesterday.' She smiles at me over the rim of her mug. 'Nice tiara.'

I feel my head for the plastic crown I completely forgot about. 'I've been crowned president of Saurotopia. But the carnivorous dinosaurs were well disappointed I only let them eat leaves that they chased me out of office.'

'Ah, well, I'm sure you can still make good money if you write an autobiography.'

'I'll get right on that.'

We exchange smiles. Rain patters against the window. Laughter echoes from downstairs, then Leslie's crying from the kitchen. The earthy bitterness of the gobocha is enhanced by the scent of wet grass that seeps through the windows. A sweet aftertaste washes it down. Joe kindles sunlight in my chest.

This is the first time I've seen her without colourful eyeliner and the cognac of her eyes brightens with nowt to steal its spotlight. She has hidden her morning-after hair under a printed scarf, dressed in a bulky jumper and denim overalls.

Why do I still want to kiss her when she's lost in such unyielding textiles? Last night... Anyone sexually attracted to women would've wanted to kiss her last night. But this outfit is not "sexy" by any stretch of the word.

'Caleb said you ended things with Michael... I'm sorry.'

I shake my head to dismiss the condolences. 'Better out of it, turns out.' Turns out, I'm not as good at identifying the assimilationist panphobic ones as I'd thought.

I said I wouldn't do it. I don't have feelings for her. She's my friend and I'm sexually attracted to her but that's it! This is her being my friend.

But we're both on shift tonight and I'm terrified what all that time together will do to me. It's sensory-friendly night—a night that Sasha arranges once a month with a silent disco, no lasers, and a lower maximum capacity to ensure people can move around without touching. It means it'll be chill but it also means I'll have fewer distractions.

Trolley Problem: Oh no! You have unreciprocated feelings for your friend. You can pull a lever and still have feelings for your friend but you tell her about it and freak her out. Or you can pull another lever and still have feelings for your friends but just pretend you don't. All tracks lead to a cement wall.

'It weren't so bad with the pirate, I hope.'

'No, she was lovely. I'm the problem.' Joe stares at Behati's crucifix, left on the wall even when the rest of her things are tucked into boxes. 'I don't understand what's wrong with me.'

I watch the last sip of amber tea at the bottom of my mug, swirling it around. The earthy aroma encourages me to find her gaze again. 'Why is it so important to you?

'Because after a breakup, you're supposed to–' a glance at Harper and she drops her voice that has accidentally risen '–sleep with all the people you couldn't while you were in a relationship.'

'You aren't supposed to force yourself to hook up with strangers. That's not what sex positivity is.'

Joe shrugs, thoughts too big to share.

Her eyes stutter to mine. 'About last night... I'm sorry. I was drunk. Obviously that's no excuse: I shouldn't have danced with you like that, certainly not without asking. I didn't mean to confuse–'

'I ain't confused. Don't worry about it. I– uh... just a lapse in judgement.'

'A lapse in judgement,' Joe echoes, cradling her tea. I turn to watch Harper play.

I am not confused. I'm fully aware it had nowt to do with me, Joe just wanted to dance, could've been anyone else—she were probably too drunk to realise it weren't anyone else.

I might've been a bit confused last night with the whole "let me find Joe and confess my feelings" thing. I don't have feelings for her. I just... had too much Red Bull. It were some reverse psychology thing that Joe probably has a word for, distracting myself from Michael's rejection by acting like I rejected him first.

That said, I reckon I'll take a break from dating. Clearly not working out for me, is it? Sure, Michael turned out to be a careculo but if he hadn't, wouldn't I have been the arsehole entirely for stringing him along? And if he hadn't, would I have been able to hack it? I've been waiting for someone to come along who will let me prove that I can do it, that I can love someone the right way if given the chance, if they're just patient enough to let me try a few times. I'll grow love and it won't be deficient.

But... maybe it's time to accept that I can't.

Notes

Half five: Half past five, 5:30. (For my European homies, it does not mean 4:30.)

Gobocha: Japanese burdock root tea.