Maybe Lee is too sleepy to talk about this. Maybe it isn’t the right time. But it’s not like Michael has a lot of choices about when he says certain things—and it’s not like any other time would be much better, for that matter. It’s quiet and slow here in California, at noon, in this moment, underneath Lee. If he’s going to have a conversation he never wanted to have, he might as well have it in a pleasant atmosphere.
“Well,” he says, “I kind of understand that, because you’re you, right? But I don’t understand about me. People think I’m one thing or another thing, they look at me in all these different ways, it’s weird, it’s confusing. I guess they do that to you too, I see it, they look at both of us.”
He pauses for a moment, uncomfortable.
“We’re not the same, though, it’s not the same, is it?” He doesn’t like saying something like that out loud, it sounds wrong. It makes him feel too distant from her, like he’s trying to get away from something. Why does it sound that way? His fingers flex nervously against her back.
“Someone like me, it’s different, so I mean… even if you're not, am I?”