Demi or An Overly Extensive Courtship

JOSHUA has a great date with LAURA, but refuses to kiss her as he still doesn’t have any special feelings for her even though they’ve been going out or months. She dumps him. Sad, he consults with his gothy, non-binary friend NORMAN who tells him to consider he might be a demiromantic: Someone who needs to form a deep intellectual and/or emotional bond before falling in love. With this in mind, he sets out to have a new dating life focused on patience. But his attempts all fail, until he meets KAYLA at one of Norman’s poetry readings. They end up having a great time together, but Kayla asks for a kiss. Joshua tells her about him being a demiromantic and decides she will also be patient with him in order to make it work.

But as time goes by, Kayla’s patience grows thin. Her older sister MAYRA pushes her to see that Joshua is not the right guy for her, citing that her biological clock is ticking and that soon, she might not be able to form the family she wants. On top of that, Kayla also becomes frustrated with the lack of deeper physical affection and sex in her relationship with Joshua. All of this comes to a boiling point and they decide to break up. Kayla has dates with men who she finds interesting and who are more than ready to get physical, but she doesn’t have any deeper feelings for them, and doesn’t have that same bond as she did with Joshua.

She opts to go back to Joshua but in a more platonic way, not wanting to fully abandon him. He proposes that they should have a trip together to Rocky Point, Sonora. They have a great time along the way, culminating with the two of them going on a sailing trip. During the sail, Kayla gets seasick and Joshua looks after her. The experience brings them closer and they end up having sex. Once on shore, Joshua confesses he’s still scared and unclear if he wants a future with Kayla. But Kayla tells him to “take themselves one second at a time”, and both commit to each other.