I’ve known Kyle since he was a junior in high school and even back then he was something of an unusual guy when it came to girls. Not only had he not had a girlfriend, which was not unusual for the likes of us, but he had neither actively pursued a girl or longed for one that he didn’t have the guts to pursue. That put him in a special category of odd. If I’d had any indication that he was gay — even something as flimsy as a slightly high-pitched voice or strong support or opposition to homosexuality — I might have just assumed that he was. But nothing, so the ongoing joke was that he was an asexual.

The first girl that Kyle ever expressed interest in was a friend of Hubert’s, Chloe. Chloe was a fellow Southern Tech student in the Greenwood Hall dormitory. I can’t remember how exactly she became a part of our group, but she did and though I never got to know her all that well myself, she was a fixture around our dorm. Kyle didn’t have the money to go off to college when he graduated, so he took some classes at the local community college and knocked around Colosse trying to get the grades to get into the University of Delosa. I was trying to recruit him to go to Southern Tech instead and thus invited him up to the dorms quite frequently. And thus he met Chloe.

I honestly think that Hubert and I were more excited about the date than he was. Our little asexual friend was going on a date! Awesome! I won’t go into what happened on their first date, but Hubert ended up intruding on it and ruining the mood. The weekend after that date, my best friend Clint rolled into town. Hubert and I invited him to stay with us at the dorms in part because he was my friend (and Hubert wanted him to be his as well) but also for the same reason as Kyle: we were trying to recruit him to transfer out of Southern Cross, where he was unhappily attending school. And just like with Kyle, this lead to his meeting and hitting it off with Chloe.

Now under any other circumstances I would have been thrilled for Clint. After all, not only had he met someone but he met someone that could bring him back to Colosse. That would make recruitment so much easier. But she had just gone out with Kyle and he was fixing to completely ruin Kyle’s first relationship. Good heavens, who knew how long it would take for him to find another? I expressed my concerns to Clint, who was quite understanding and told me that he’d back off. He didn’t, though, because he’s incapable of backing off a cute girl that might be interested in him. Besides, he reasoned, Kyle was my friend and not really his so he had no loyalty to him.

As expected, Clint won Chloe over and Kyle was left in the cold. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because Chloe was a butt-awful girlfriend and put Clint through hell. I wanted to be mad at Clint, but I don’t know that I would have done any differently in his shoes and Kyle wasn’t the slightest bit upset by it all. In fact, it was during all this that he and Clint got to know one another and became really good friends. The worse things got between Clint and Chloe, the better friends they became.

-{Note: In the past I’ve referred to Kyle as “Quen” and “Quenton”. I’ve found myself getting Quen/Quenton/Clint/Clinton mixed up, so I’m changing it to Kyle Quindlen}-