The Double Agent's Apology

I owe both of you one, and I'd like to pay it now that the guide is done and there's nobody left to perform for.

To the Blue room: I'm sorry for the vests and the totes and the "I just want to gently push back." I'm sorry I can still hear the upturn at the end of your sentences and the workshop in your patient little nod. I did all of it. I meant all of it. I winced at the same things you wince at, and some nights I still do.

To the Red room: I'm sorry for the other vest and the apocalypse tumbler and the "at the end of the day, it's common sense." I'm sorry I can still hear the downbeat landing hard on your last word and the parking lot in your easy "howdy." I did all of that too. I meant it too. I felt the same 3 a.m. fears you feel, in the same dark, in a different house.

That's the part the book is really about, the part I dressed up in jokes about fleece because you wouldn't have sat still for it straight. You are so much more alike than either of you can stand. The costumes are opposite and the animal underneath is the same animal — wanting to be safe, wanting to be good, wanting to be seen as both, performing its little tells with complete sincerity, certain it's just being itself.

I learned to read all of you because I was all of you. That's not a boast anymore. By the end it mostly just felt like grief, and a little like love, which I'm told are frequently the same tell.

So: read the costumes. Enjoy the click. I gave you a whole book to do it with and I don't regret a page. Just leave each other room to be more than the vest. That's the only thing I actually came back across the line to say.

I could tell, from the first page, that you'd understand it by the last.

Thanks for reading. Every word, free, no login — that part I meant most of all.

— The Double Agent

---

The end. Now go look at somebody, and let them surprise you.