Cuba drops his keys on the hallway table and sighs. He grips the sides of the table and steps out of his shoes. He turns his head to the living room and sees the blue, flickering light of the TV bouncing across the faces of two of his roommates, one leaned into the crook of the other’s neck.

“Honey, you’re home,” says the one who’s sitting up straight.

“If he’s Home, who’s Honey?” says the leaning one, giggling.

The two have pulled that bit every single time Cuba has walked in the door during his month of living here. He loves every bit of it. A smile stretches across his face and he scratches the back of his neck. “Hi Mollie, hi Ro.”

Cuba always finds Mollie and Ro up late at night, watching bad reality TV shows about the wives of men who never appear on the show.

Cuba lets out an exaggerated groan and drops face first onto the couch beside two of his seven roommates. They all live together in Mountain View, in this big, pink house that’s almost a mansion. Cuba had gone his whole life being alone. He was an only child and lived by himself in an off-campus apartment throughout his four years of college. When he found the online ad about the girls who lived in a self-proclaimed mini-commune, he thought it was exactly what he needed for the fresh start that brought him to California.

On Cuba’s first night in the house, he sat at the kitchen island eating cereal, gawking at the sheer force of personality behind all seven of them. They didn’t lay down the house rules, instead, they spoke about how they were affiliated. Mollie and Ro are queer-platonic life partners, as dedicated to each other as lovers but without the sex. Carter and Elizabeth and Violet were all best friends since middle school, and Carter and Violet are lovers with the sex. Brennan and KJ let Cuba know that while they were very excited to live with him, they are ghosts and will never be seen.

He forgot nearly all of it as soon as he heard it.

“Hey Cuba?” Ro says.

“We’ve been meaning to ask you,” Mollie follows in tandem. The two of them do that sometimes.

“Did you leave anyone back home in Miami?” Ro asks. “Guy? Girl? Gender non-binary?”

Cuba lifts his face out of the upholstery, He breathes as he adjusts to the smooth air around him. “Didn’t leave anyone behind,” he says. “Never had anyone.”

“Ever?” Mollie and Ro ask in unison. They also do that sometimes.

Cuba shakes his head.

“But you’re not …” Mollie says. She twists her face up like he’s an abstract painting she’s trying to understand. “A virgin?”

Cuba’s first instinct is to be silent, like he would at college parties when acquaintances would ask him about all the women he’d been with. They’d mistake his silence for quiet confidence, slap him on the back, and call him a stud. Instead of silence, Cuba nods.

“But why?” Mollie asks. “You’re so cute.”

“It’s my personality,” Cuba answers.

Ro and Mollie snap their heads toward each other in perfect sync. Smiles pop onto their faces as they burst into laughter. After a while, Cuba smiles too.

Ro pedals her feet on the ground like she’s trying to shake herself into composure. “Okay, so assuming you had a better personality, which sex would you want to have sex with?”

Cuba chews the inside of his cheek. “I don’t know.”

“Bullshit,” says Ro.

“That’s a total cop-out,” says Mollie. She leans forward on the couch and tents her fingers like she’s at a business meeting. “When magnets attract, there’s a reason why they say they’re charged. It’s a force—no, a law—of nature, not something you can think your way around. You’re either attracted or you’re not.” Mollie leans back and stretches her arms across the back of the couch. “Look, you don’t have to tell us, but you can’t say that you don’t know.”

Cuba’s heart shakes. He thinks about the full-body thrill he felt that day when he packed the last of his belongings that had only ever known his childhood room and his shitty college apartment—his knitting needles, a milk-crate of 2000s-era rap CDs, and a few bottles of hair product that finally worked to maintain his kinks and curls. All the things his dad would say weren’t doing him any good. Cuba just kept picturing himself on the rainbow roads of Castro Street. No one would know him, and he wouldn’t be overwhelmed with grief—he could take a chance at being whoever he wanted. Cuba came to California because it was his one chance to be true to himself.

“I’m attracted to men,” he says.

And that was the first time he’d ever admitted that to anyone besides himself.

“Cool. How was the party?” Ro says, in a way that makes Cuba feel like the biggest confession he’d ever made wasn’t that big of a deal. She reaches a hand out to twist her fingers through his curls. He leans into the feeling, the way he did when he was a kid and he’d ask his mom to scratch his back until he fell asleep.

“It was nice. There was this man.”

“Was he cute?” Ro asks in a sing-song voice, like a sixth-grader.

Cuba sticks the knuckle of his thumb into his mouth and bites it. He nods.

“Did you like him?” Mollie asks coolly.

“I don’t know.”

Cuba can see Mollie’s stern look in the glow of the TV light.

“Yes,” Cuba corrects himself. “It was like he was radiating this … energy. I was drawn to it.”

“Did you get his number?” Ro asks.

Cuba shakes his head and turns onto his side.

“There was some guy he was kissing. Kept calling him babe,” he says. “I don’t know, I think it was his boyfriend.”

Mollie scoffs. “Come on, Cuba, it’s the twenty-first century. Sure, that might be his boyfriend, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be his boyfriend too.” Mollie swings a foot over Ro and tickles at Cuba’s hairy calf with her manicured toes.

Cuba’s laughter is silent but rocks through the couch. “I don’t know if I could handle that.”

Mollie shrugs. “Just saying. The door isn’t closed, it’s cracked.”

Cuba responds with a shrug of his own. “I probably won’t ever see him again anyway.”

Silence falls, then Cuba asks about the relationship dynamics of the wives on the TV show. Mollie and Ro know the ins and outs of them all, and Cuba is more entertained by their interpretations than he is by the show. After a few minutes, he sits up and slaps his thighs.

“I’m heading to bed. Goodnight,” he says.

“Goodnight,” Ro and Mollie reply.

“Also,” Ro says, stopping him in his path with her foot. “There’s a ton of mail for you, we shoved it under your door.”

Cuba nods and walks to his room. As he pushes the door open, the letters smear across the floor in an arc. He gathers them together and picks them up. A few of the white envelopes are covered in yellow postal stickers. They forward any mail he still gets in Miami to his place here. He set it up that way so his dad wouldn’t have to see his name in the house and be reminded of his absence. Especially since Cuba couldn’t bring himself to call him. He doesn’t know what to say.

Cuba drops the mail in the trash. It’s all junk—offers for credit cards and promises that he’s won a car in a scratch off.