“I love how, whenever you tell me a story, you go backwards and forwards and tell me everything else that could possibly be happening in every direction, like an explosion. Like a flower blooming.”
Robby loves to listen to Austin's stories. He notes a kind of natural tact in Austin's way of thinking. Austin views his surroundings like an interconnected web of complex relationships, so his storytelling constantly shifts and twists from one idea to the next fluidly.
“'Do you think I'm queer, Rob?' I asked.
'I don't care if you're queer,' Robby said. Queer is just a word. Like orange. I know who you are. There's no one word for that.”'
Austin becomes deeply disturbed when he starts having feelings for Robby, not because he's afraid to love Robby but because he still loves Shann. He doesn't know how to reconcile his bisexual attractions with each other, especially when he feels torn in two between his two best friends. Robby, however, cuts straight through the insecurity and encourages his friend to focus on integrity over identity.
“History does show that nothing means a hell of a lot more than nothing when teenagers talk. In this case, Robby knew it meant that I did not want to talk about it, so he left me alone.
Robby Brees was such a good friend.”
Austin can be a bit melodramatic, but he's just participating in the sort of juvenile drama which naturally arises during adolescence. He interprets Robby's social success as a sign of his wisdom. To Austin, Robby is a magician of human interaction, somehow always intuiting the appropriate response. This is actually the feature which attracts Austin to Robby.
“Everyone on every road that crossed beneath the point of my pen was always going to do the same things over and over and over.
I was confused.
How could I be in love with a girl and a boy, at the same time?
I was trapped forever."
Austin realizes pretty quickly that if he's bisexual, his work will be taken less seriously. Although he writes well, lately he can only write about his conflicted feelings for Robby and Shann. This disappoints Austin who desires to make a difference in the world through his words, so he feels somehow constrained by these complicated feelings of attraction. He does not wish to hurt either of his friends nor to lose his voice for fear of being misunderstood.
