by Siera Maley
“How many girls have you said that one to?” I asked flatly before I could stop myself, and immediately regretted it. But Chelsea just let out a quiet sigh and squeezed my fingers gently with hers.
“You’re the first. Really,” she said, and I almost believed it.
“You’ve only known me for a few weeks,” I reminded her.
She shook her head. “No, I’ve known you since middle school.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s still different,” she insisted. “You were always a good memory. I don’t want to mess that up.”
“So why do this at all?” I asked her. “Why not just say ‘hey, thanks for the memories’ when we ran into each other and then leave it at that?”
She seemed to genuinely consider my question. “I guess…it was just because I liked talking to you that night. And every day after. Why stop?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, so I asked her something else instead. “So I’m only different because you had a crush on me in middle school? Take that away and then what?”
She shrugged and shook her head. “Zoey, I like you a lot. But there’s no way to answer that.”
I stared at her. “How did you treat the other girls you’ve dated, then?”
She clammed up, then, and glanced toward the hallway, as though hoping Marie and Gina would be headed back to us soon. Then she sighed. “You really want to know?”
“You move quickly. You like too many people. Cole’s seen you with a lot of different girls,” I listed tiredly. “I’d just rather hear it all from you.” I wondered how honest she’d be with me.
She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, like she was preparing herself for what she was going to say next. “Okay.” And then, finally, we heard Marie and Gina descending the basement stairs. I knew I looked frustrated. Chelsea amended, “Tonight. We’ll talk.”
The four of us played video games and exchanged stories late into the night. We watched Carol, finally, Marie fell asleep against Gina for a while, and when the movie was over and Marie had been shaken awake, we passed around what was left of the pizza and just talked for a little while longer. I was antsy to get Chelsea alone, but Gina insisted on interrogating me about “The Girl,” a phenomenon I was immediately confused about even though she said it like I should know exactly what she meant.
“You know. The Girl. Everyone has one.” I blinked at her. “C’mon! Like, The Girl! The big one. The one you had some intense whirlwind romance with. It probably involved coming out or realizing you were into girls. We’ve all had one.”
“I haven’t,” Chelsea interjected, and Gina scoffed at her.
“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you know you’re gay before you finish puberty. I’m talking about the rest of us.” She fixed her gaze to me again. “So, who was it? Who gave you the big epiphany?”
“Um…” I began, and then looked away from her shyly.
“Ha!” She pointed victoriously at Chelsea. “Told you! Everyone else has one.”
“Who was yours, then?” I accused. Gina gave Marie an affectionate look.
“They were each other’s,” Chelsea clarified, though I didn’t really need it. She sounded bored. “And now I’m going to have to sit through this story again.”
“Shut up; it’s cute,” said Marie, and beside her, Gina launched into the tale of the beginning of their relationship.
Gina and Chelsea had met during the first semester of their freshman year. Around the time Gina was agreeing to date Cole, they were becoming fast friends. And then, during their second semester, Chelsea wound up in a science class with Marie. Two became three, and the way Gina talked about it, it sounded like a story fit for the kinds of novels I’d used to devour. They knew they liked each other, but of course there was Cole, and then Chelsea, who was out and proud and had a few rude comments thrown her way every now and then as a result, which of course was something they knew they’d have to deal with if they ever dated a girl. And then there was the added confusion of being sure that they were attracted to boys, which of course meant they couldn’t possibly like girls.
Then Chelsea, having had enough of the tiptoeing, sat them down with each other and forced them to talk it out. Which mostly just turned into them making out. It was no longer surprising to me that Cole—in all his immaturity—had blamed her and still hated her so much.
“And voila!” Gina finished. “Here we are, three years later.”
“Your turn,” said Marie, a teasing edge to her tone.
“I don’t think I can top that,” I warned, trying to wriggle my way out of it.
“And you don’t have to,” Chelsea added sharply. “C’mon, leave her alone.”
“We’re just trying to get to know her,” Gina replied. She shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry, it’s cool if you don’t share.” It seemed to dawn on her that mine didn’t have a happy ending, given where I was now, and she looked a little embarrassed. “I’m really tired, anyway. Aren’t you?” She looked to Marie, who got the hint and nodded.
“Oh, yeah. I was falling asleep earlier.”
“You passed out for like an hour,” Chelsea told her, laughing.
“Right. Well, I guess we’ll go to bed.” They stood and Marie stretched, then let Gina tug her toward the hallway.
“Don’t make me wash the sheets tomorrow!” Chelsea called after them.
“We’ll be good!” Gina called back, already halfway through a yawn.
And then it was just the two of us. Chelsea stood and picked up the pizza boxes on the coffee table. “I’m gonna go throw these away. Do you want anything? A drink?”
“Water would be great,” I said. She nodded and headed upstairs.
A few pillows, sheets, and two large blankets had been folded and placed on top of the pool table, so I set to work making my bed on one of the couches. It took a few minutes, and when I was done and Chelsea still hadn’t returned, I fixed hers up, too. Then I sat down and waited.
Chelsea came back a few minutes later with a bottle of water in her hand and handed it to me. I thanked her quietly.
“Hey, you made my bed,” she noticed. I followed her with my eyes as she clicked on a lamp and then turned the overhead light off. The room was dark, then, save for the small amount of lamplight.
“Yeah. You were gone for a while.”
“Sorry about that. Gina wanted to talk.”
I nodded and took a sip of my water as Chelsea arranged herself on her couch. She sat cross-legged on top of the blankets, clearly not planning on sleeping anytime soon, and I matched her.
“You two are pretty close?” I asked.
“Don’t be jealous,” she deflected, grinning. I remembered Skylar back in my room on Prom night, giving me grief about deflecting with humor. Chelsea really did remind me of myself sometimes. “Yeah; she’s my best friend. She knows me better than anyone. But that’s all it’s ever been. Not that she’d want to, but I don’t date my friends.”
“Smart,” I complimented, and something in my expression must’ve given me away, because Chelsea suddenly looked curious. “And we said we’d talk about you,” I cut in quickly. She laughed.
“Maybe we can make a deal, here,” she proposed, still smiling. “You did say that next time it’d be your turn to tell me about yourself.”
She had me there. “That’s fair.” I hesitated, and then got up and moved to sit beside her. She looked serious when I faced her again.
“You really don’t have to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with,” she warned me, but I shook my head.
“No, it’s okay. I want to tell you.” I did. We needed to open up to each other. It was the only way to make this real enough to hurt her.
I closed my eyes and distracted myself with thoughts of Alex. I couldn’t think about hurting Chelsea right now.
I started from the beginning. I told her about questioning my sexuality right up until fall, when I’d finally owned up to it and made the first mov
e with Alex—“my friend,” I called her, avoiding her name. I skirted the intimate details and instead told her about how we’d snuck around for about a month, avoiding my homophobic parents and our clueless friends, the latter of whom knew we were both attracted to girls but never thought we’d go there with each other. Then I got to the end of it all.
“Eventually, one of our friends caught us, and that was the end of it.”
Chelsea looked surprised. “Just like that?”
“Well, there was a lot of fallout,” I added. “I decided it was time to come out to my parents, and that went about as well as you could imagine. They blamed her at first. Eventually they decided it was a phase I’d grow out of.”
“So your parents don’t let you see her?” she asked. She looked concerned, and I knew it was for more than one reason. I didn’t blame her; I wouldn’t have wanted to get involved with someone who had an ex that was only an ex because they’d been forced apart, either.
“The opposite, actually,” I explained, which only made her more confused. “They let me do what I wanted. They still do. I guess they think I’ll get it all out of my system soon or something.” I looked down at my lap. “No, we don’t talk because I ended things and she hates me for it.”
“Why’d you break up?” she asked.
“Because the friend who caught us loved her,” I said. “I didn’t want to lose any of my friends. I don’t have a family that’s…” I paused, struggling. “My family isn’t like yours, you know?” She nodded wordlessly and reached out to squeeze my hand. “So my friends meant a lot to me. It’s complicated, but I was still an idiot. I thought the best thing to do was to tell her it didn’t mean anything. I said it was fun but that we should go back to being friends so that things could get back to normal. So now she hates me.”
I shrugged, hoping to diffuse the tension, and when I looked up I saw she was wincing. “I’d hate you, too.”
I laughed dryly. “Yeah. I kind of hate me sometimes.”
She reached out and touched my knee. “You should be more selfish, you know. You deserve to be happy just as much as anyone else.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Is that how you are? Selfish?”
“I don’t know.” She paused. “I don’t understand myself sometimes. So imagine how scary it is to try to ask you to understand me.”
“I’ll give it my best shot,” I said, meaning it.
She took a deep breath. “Well…I guess I’ll start with ninth grade. That was when everyone else started to catch up—other girls started to come out, and suddenly having a girlfriend was this real thing that could actually happen. Only I was this shy nerd weirdo that had no idea what to say or do and had only ever kissed one girl.” She flashed me a small smile and I returned it. “I got a girlfriend eventually and it didn’t work out. Then I got another. Same thing. I was doing the breaking up as soon as things went wrong because I was scared to get beat to the punch. I didn’t have any confidence.”
She paused there, and I could see her struggling with the next part. I moved closer, torn between listening to her and wrapping my head around the similarities I could already see between us. After what had happened with Alex and me, I’d sworn off having deeper feelings for anyone. The thought of getting hurt again terrified me.
“Eventually, I figured out how to act to make sure girls liked me. I just studied it, like it was a school assignment or something.” She laughed. “I was still fourteen and had this whole, like, false bravado thing going on, and it worked because I guess it seemed like I knew what I was doing. And I sort of just got better at it as time went on. But then I’d really like a girl, and she’d only like me because of my bullshit, and I was too afraid to be honest about who I really was. It was easier to just end it and move on and promise I’d do better next time. Of course there really was no next time; I just got better at faking it. Until one day it didn’t even feel fake anymore. I started thinking that maybe I really am just that asshole.”
She stopped again, there. I didn’t say anything, sensing she was just psyching herself up to keep going. “So. Then I met a girl who kind of reminded me of me. Old me, I mean, or like…me when I’m not trying to impress a girl. I tried extra hard with her; I mean, I really wanted her to like me.” She didn’t say it kindly, and I sensed she didn’t mean it kindly. I grit my teeth for a moment and then forced myself to relax a little before she noticed. “I guess I thought…if I can really make this girl like me, if she can fall for me, then that’ll prove that I’m really better this way. If this girl that’s so much like the old me is more into me than I’m into her, that’ll prove somehow that faking it was the right choice and I’m the best version of myself.”
“That’s horrible,” I couldn’t help but interject, and she swallowed hard and shot me a look that seemed stuck somewhere between guilt and hurt. I regretted opening my mouth.
“Yeah. I did like her. And she liked me. She went to your school, so on the night of your Prom, a few hours before we were supposed to go, Gina told me she was asking for advice about officially being my girlfriend and going to this hotel after the dance. I saw how far she really wanted to take things, and I guess it was kind of a reality check. I realized how much I was leading her on and I thought about how that could’ve been me in another life. I didn’t handle ending things in the best way; I’m sure you can relate. I basically hit the eject button and ended it as quickly as I could instead of going to Prom with her.”
“You could’ve at least gone to the dance,” I pointed out, feeling like I owed it to Skylar to say something.
“I know. I really should have. I just panicked and thought maybe it was better to not even get her hopes up.” She looked saddened by the thought. “But I was right to end it.”
“Why not just tell her the truth?” I wondered. “Everything that you’re telling me now.”
“I hardly knew her,” Chelsea said. “I hardly knew any of them. And they didn’t know me at all. I’ve never had a relationship last longer than a few months.” She inhaled sharply. “So after the last girl, the plan was to go to a party and move on. Probably tell myself that I’d be honest with the next one, like always. Then I ran into you. And you knew me before, so it felt different. Not because you’d liked me or anything, but we’d kissed and you were always nice to me. Then it seemed like you were seeing through things that other girls didn’t. I knew if I ever wanted a real relationship I’d have to be myself, but I was scared if I did that I’d be a disappointment. But it’s harder to pretend in the first place with you. I think that’s why I believe this can actually work. It feels real.”
Her hand was still in mine, our fingers interlocked and resting on her knee. I felt hers squeeze a little tighter and then release.
I looked at her and said, “I was going to kiss you in your bedroom last week.”
She let out a quiet breath, and her eyes seemed to dance a little in the lamplight. She was visibly relieved. “I know.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “I didn’t like that shit you pulled.”
At that, she smiled and nodded quickly. She seemed almost thankful. “I thought so.”
“You know you can be whoever you want to be, right?” I said next. “There must be things you like about the person you show to people. You can take those things and still be yourself. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive.” I smiled at her. “I mean, you got close to me on this couch at your birthday party and you were touching me and I wanted to kiss you.” She held back a smile and I continued, trying to power through without thinking too hard about whether or not what I was saying was the truth, “and then ten minutes later, I watched you geek out over a coin, and I wanted to kiss you then, too. What I didn’t like was when it stopped feeling natural. I think you should just do what feels natural.”
“Sometimes I forget what’s natural,” she admitted. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“Well, I don’t know New Chelsea that well yet,” I said. “But I know Ch
elsea from middle school, and I’ve been around the block a few times myself. So you have me to keep you in check.”
“I—” she started to say, but the words died on her lips when she saw me uncross my legs and shift closer to her.
“I want to try this again,” I explained, ignoring the reappearance of my stomach butterflies as I pulled her close and settled onto her lap. My knees pressed into the couch on either side of her thighs and I placed my hands on her neck and cheek.
Chelsea’s eyes were half-lidded as we sat together face to face, inches apart. “Okay,” she whispered.
“I don’t do this with just anyone,” I warned, hoping the joke would ease my nerves. Chelsea breathed a short laugh and I could hear Skylar in my head, telling me that I wasn’t cut out for this like she’d thought, warning me not to like Chelsea back. Maybe I only thought I was winning this game we were playing. Maybe Chelsea had me right where she wanted me. But I couldn’t turn back now even if I’d wanted to.
Chelsea’s hands went to my waist and slid up my back to my shoulders, and she pulled me into her. I closed my eyes when our noses touched and leaned in the rest of the way of my own volition.
We kissed slowly at first, and it felt familiar in a way that was more comforting than I’d expected it be. I felt her pulse thrum rapidly under my palm, listened to her unsteady breathing in the short moments when we parted, and shivered when her arms encircled me just above my waist and pulled my body flush against hers.
We stayed just like that for a while, touching and learning how we fit together. She was a great kisser now; I could feel myself getting warmer the longer we stayed pressed together and I couldn’t tell if it was her closeness or her mouth bringing heat to every inch of me, if I was hot on the outside or on the inside, but soon I couldn’t think clearly enough for it to matter.
My hand slid down her front of its own volition and dipped beneath the hem of her shirt, and then suddenly I was touching soft skin and we were kissing harder. Chelsea leaned back and pulled me down on top of her and I felt her stretch her legs out beneath me. Her body was warm below mine and I could feel the fabric of her bra beneath my fingertips and her breathing was labored and shaky when she moved her lips to kiss almost hungrily at my neck.