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Lloyd was nine years old when his classmates first started dating. Girls and boys no longer called each other stupid, instead they would share notes and hold hands in the hallways. Lloyd didn't quite understand relationships back then, but his mother said he would get it soon enough.
He was twelve when the other kids started kissing in class and showing their friends cute pictures of their partners. Heart emojis, secret admirers and gossiping about crushes seemed to rule their lives. Suddenly, everyone who wasn't dating was childish, or a loser. But Lloyd was an outcast anyways, so he didn't mind.
Watching his classmates, he would wonder what it was like, a connection like that. Someone to chat with on his way home, someone to sit with on the bus. Sharing homework and going out to the movies, maybe. Of course, some kids just dated for the sake of it, but he heard it describes as a feeling of butterflies, of roses and the stars at night. He thought about having a girlfriend, some day, and making the stars at night shine a little brighter just for her. Lloyd would be a good boyfriend, he thought, if anyone had wanted him.
Lloyd was fourteen when his uncle introduced him to the secret Ninja force and he made his first real friends. As the green ninja, he saved the city from his father's crimes and worked together with the others as a team - and as Lloyd, he now got to talk to people other than his mother. The group wasn't embarrassed to talk to him in public and they actually hung out outside of school. It took them a little bit, but they soon grew inseparable.
At first, the kid thought he may have a crush on Nya. She was only a little older than him and the coolest girl he had ever met. Nya was kind to him and others, was better than all of them in training and she helped him with the first plans of his dragon mech.
But there was Jay. And Jay would talk about Nya like she hung the moon and the sun, like she was magical and the greatest person to have ever lived. He got distracted in class, sketching doodles of them together on his notepad. When Nya entered the room, his face lit up and he would stumble over his words.
Jay told Lloyd about this feeling once or twice, while they were obsessing over comics in his room. It was like straight out one of those rom-coms Koko liked to watch.
"She's the girl of my dreams," he had told Lloyd, "Literally. I keep dreaming about her."
Since then, the two of them had gotten together, which made Lloyd feel - happy, to be honest. Though he may should have felt sad at the fact that Nya was unavailable. But he was happy for his friends and soon discovered there were no feelings at all, beyond friendship, when Kai once described his sister the same way Lloyd felt about her.
Lloyd was fifteen when he wondered whether he might be broken.
Never did he experience those butterflies, never did he dream about a girl or think private stuff about a guy. Lloyd didn't care for gender, neither his own nor other people's, but as hard as he tried, he couldn't seem to grasp the feeling of a crush. He still felt lonely now, even around his friends, and he still didn't really understand relationships.
He was the only one of his friends that didn't date. Jay and Nya were going strong and Kai had one girlfriend after the other. Girls liked him well, despite being Lloyd's best friend, because he played soccer and smoked weed after school. The only reason it never lasted was that he spent too much time as a Ninja, which he couldn't tell them about.
Zane had been dating Pixal for a while now, and things were good. Cole was the only single one, even though he got a fair load of hook ups.
Between all of that, Lloyd wasn't sure how to feel. He wasn't attracted to anyone it seemed and no one was attracted to him.
Besides that one girl from his class. Her name was Harumi and she had asked him out two times. The only reason Lloyd eventually agreed to go out with her was that it seemed like the right thing to do.
When the kid told his friends about his first girlfriend, Kai nudged him in the side and Cole patted his shoulder like it was a big accomplishment.
Dramatically, Nya teased him, "They grow up so fast, I can't believe it."
Zane even pulled him aside to talk about safe sex - a very awkward conversation that Lloyd never wanted to have again.
It were these little gestures that made Lloyd feel alienated in a way he hadn't before. Because although he was dating now, there weren't any butterflies. The stars didn't appear brighter and kissing wasn't as great as it was made out to be. Harumi had these little personality traits, things that made her special, but unlike Jay, Lloyd couldn't seem to appreciate them. He felt like an asshole when he finally broke up with her.
Before Harumi, he would think about love as a thing that was far away. He acted as a spectator to other people's relationships, since no one really saw him that way. She honestly did, though.
But if it wasn't being unloved that made himself unable to love, then what was it? Why didn't he feel like everyone else did?
The day after breaking up with Harumi, Lloyd went to talk to Cole in private. He wasn't feeling sad about losing his girlfriend, only about breaking her heart.
"How do I know if I'm gay?" he asked Cole; his expression serious.
Cole simply narrowed his eyebrows at the unexpected question. "What?"
Lloyd swallowed. It was weird to talk about it outloud. "I don't- I don’t think I feel anything for girls. How do I figure out if I'm gay?"
Surprisingly, Cole thought about his words. Then, he nodded to himself. "I'm not sure, dude," he said genuinely, "For me, it just sorta- clicked? I just knew, somehow."
"And what do I do if it doesn't click?"
"Well, if I was you, I'd reflect on your thought process about guys." Cole crossed his arms in front of his chest, a little awkward. "Or maybe try to go out with someone and see if you feel anything."
Lloyd agreed, thoughtful. Yeah, maybe a proper date with a dude would help him sort things out like Harumi did. He hesitated.
"Would you-"
"No way, kid," Cole laughed, "I don't do that kind of stuff."
That was the next problem: Finding someone that was actually willing to go out with him. He didn't have many friends and asking any of them out seemed honest to God weird. Especially because Zane and Jay both had a girlfriend.
With Cole being off the table, the only other option was Kai. His best friend was usually open for anything. And well enough, after explaining the situation and asking him on a "sorta kinda friendship date", he agreed. On the compromise that, would anything happen emotionally, they wouldn't actually start something.
Lloyd tried to stick to a program once it came to the actual date. Pretty clothes, flowers (Kai laughed at him for that) and holding hands on the street (this time, both of them had to laugh). They went for ice cream and then laid down on the grass in a park to watch the sky for a while.
As he watched the clouds, between rounds of "I spy with my little eye" and sips of his coffee, Lloyd tried to think. Reflect on his thought process, as Cole had said. He was having fun, but simply in the way you enjoyed yourself with a friend.
Which was odd, he thought. Because Kai was great. He was smart and charismatic and handsome. He was good at sports and told funny jokes - all those girls liked him, so why didn't Lloyd?
"I don't feel anything," he spoke after some time, interrupting the comfortable silence.
"Are we doing something wrong? It should work by now, right? What if I messed it up?"
Kai chuckled at his choice of words. "Calm down, bro. Maybe I'm not the right person. Or maybe you're just not gay."
He said that with a shrug, like it was nothing.
It didn't feel like nothing to Lloyd.
"But if I don't like girls and don't like boys - who exactly do I like?" he wanted to know, a little choked up, "I have to like somebody, right?"
Looking away from the sky, Lloyd turned his head to glance at Kai.
"What if there's something wrong with me?"
Kai shook his head and made eye-contact. "There's nothing wrong with you, Lloyd. Give it some time, maybe your feelings will change."
"And what if they don't?"
"Then that's okay," Kai stated, thinking, "Why shouldn't it be?"
Lloyd swallowed. He didn't quite know how to respond. "It feels- like a part of me is missing," he admitted. "In movies, they kiss at the end. At school, people date and make out. And older people, they have families and marriages. It seems like everything is built around love."
"It doesn't have to be," Kai responded, halting Lloyd's cycle of thoughts. "Romance isn't everything. I don't date, sometimes, because I don't want to. We're our own person." He sat up on the grass and waited for his friend to follow suit.
Maybe, just maybe, that made sense, Lloyd thought. He was still a little unsure, but he was contemplating it.
"You have friends and family, you have interests, you don't necessarily need a relationship to be happy. If that changes some day, you'll know, I think."
Lloyd nodded. "Yeah, maybe you're right. I like how things are right now. Without a partner."
Laughing, Kai commented, "I'm always right, you know that."
The athmosphere changed, then, and he was glad about it. It felt less heavy. They went back to playing silly games and making jokes, unbothered by the deep talk.
So, also at age 15, Lloyd figured out that he was fine the way he was.
Sometimes, he would still feel alienated, different to all the people around him, but it slowly got better. Couples in the halls didn't seem unattainable anymore, they were just couples in the halls. Lloyd was his own, complete person. And he was happy the way it was. No matter the future; for today and tomorrow and the day after that, he would be okay.