Chapter 2

I needed my best friend. There were too many things floating around in my head, crashing against each other like bumper cars at the state fair. Marie was the one person I could trust to help me sort through everything. In addition to trying to stay motivated for school even though I'd already gotten into college, getting used to being out, and all the little personal stuff I had to juggle, I now had Kate Monroe on my mind. And not in the way she had been on my mind before: a rainbow-colored dream where she had held my hand and given me kisses as we walked the streets of Paris searching for the perfect pastry, my fantasy always coming to an inevitable end when I would wake up to a few seconds of disappointment that it all wasn’t real.

Now it was all too real. Kate Monroe was talking to me, giving me smiles, asking me for favors in real life. It was a long way from Parisian strolls, but it was still more than I had ever thought I would have with her. And what if, by some weird cosmic alignment of the stars, she wanted more? What if she was flirting with me? What would I do?

I was not sure about the answer to that. I would have liked to think I would be brave and bold and meet any attraction head-on, but what was more likely was that I would run and avoid and hide in my room until college started. But how could I live the rest of my life knowing that I’d had a chance with Kate Monroe but had passed on it because I was afraid? That was what it would come down to. Fear.

Of rejection, of heartbreak, of what other people would think.

Though I was probably way off. More likely there was no flirting going on, and all my interactions with Kate Monroe today had just been a coincidence.

I was home now, sitting in my room. I barely remembered the rest of the day, or even how I’d gotten home from school. Everything after I handed Kate Monroe my notes was a fog. Did I go to my other classes? No idea. Did I drive home with my sister? Did she catch a ride with someone else? Was she walking along the side of the road, cursing me for leaving her behind? Any of those things could have happened and I'd have no clue. My mind was trying to make sense of what had happened today, and it was having trouble processing it all.

I needed to talk to Marie. Marie Gills and I had been friends ever since her mom had moved her and her younger brother Bob to our town in the ninth grade. That had been a tough time for both of us, Marie coming to a school where all of us had been together since kindergarten, and me slowly (very, very slowly, in fact) realizing that while the girls were gushing over the football players in their jerseys during game day, I was sneaking peeks at the cheerleaders in their uniforms. Those short skirts had played a large part in my sexual awakening.

Marie and I had solidified our friendship during junior varsity volleyball tryouts. To this day, I don’t remember the reason I had tried out for volleyball. I had never been athletic. I was actually pretty lazy. I had asked my mom later why I’d wanted to play volleyball, and she had said she’d wondered that herself.

At least Marie had had a reason. She’d been trying to make friends at a new school and had gone out for what seemed to be the easiest sport in which to meet people. What she hadn’t known was that our school was known for its sports programs. Everyone was super competitive, and they had been training since the womb to get on one of the sports teams. And the parents were scary supportive, since athletic scholarships to universities were at stake.

We’d been by far the worst two players on the court, so Marie and I had been the first ones cut. As we’d stood away from the rest of the team, silently gathering up our things in relieved shame, she’d asked in a whisper whether I wanted to go get a cheeseburger. She must have sensed a kindred spirit. I had quickly agreed, and we’d bonded over our shared failures and greasy fast food.

I unlocked my phone and opened the messaging app. Marie's name wasn't there, but Princess Bananahammock was. Too many Friends reruns a few months ago had led to my best friend commandeering my phone and changing some settings. My sister Eddy was now Regina Falange, and I had never loved Marie more.

I pressed on Princess Bananahammock and started typing.

Me: something happened today

It was only a few seconds before she replied. Marie was probably at home, babysitting her little brother. She picked him up from after-school care when she was done for the day and watched him until their mom came home from work. Marie liked the arrangement since it meant she couldn't stay after school for clubs or sports. The volleyball disaster and her general apathy had soured her on extracurriculars.

PB: let me guess

PB: ok I give up

PB: TELL ME!!!!!!!

Thank goodness she was also impatient, because I didn't think I could take any guessing games today.

Me: Kate Monroe talked to me

Me: and she borrowed my notes

Me: and our fingers almost touched

Me: it was the best moment of my life

That last one was probably an exaggeration, but in that moment it felt like the truth.

Marie knew about my crush on Kate Monroe. Right after I had semiaccidentally come out, she’d shown up at my house with an overnight bag and pulled out the spare bedding for a sleepover. I think it had been her way to show that things weren’t going to change between us just because everyone knew I liked girls. One of the fears that I’d had about coming out was how people would react. I was so stupid for thinking Marie would treat me any differently; she was the best. So we’d sat and talked and watched ten minutes of fifteen different movies on Netflix, and at one point Marie had asked me who I thought the prettiest girl in school was. And before I could think about it, I’d said, “Kate Monroe, of course.”

This had just gotten Marie fired up, and she’d asked me probably a hundred questions that night about Kate Monroe and girls in general. I’d answered all her questions, except for the ones that had made me blush. Instead, I’d hit her with a pillow for asking them in the first place.

So Marie knew how I thought Kate Monroe was basically perfection, and because she was an awesome best friend, she had hardly ever brought up Kate Monroe since that night. I think she knew that I was self-conscious about talking about my crush, and so she hadn’t pushed.

But now I was voluntarily bringing up the subject for further discussion.

During those few minutes it took for Marie to answer my last text, I pictured her jumping around her room, making that weird high-pitched noise she always made when she was excited about something. I’d seen her do it a dozen times before when a boy she liked acknowledged her or looked extra cute that day. Truthfully, I’d always thought it was silly, the way she reacted to the smallest thing her crush did. But now that it was happening to me, I totally understood where she was coming from. It was both nerve-racking and exhilarating when the person you dreamed of sweeping you away to a private island getaway actually knew your name.

PB: I AM COMING OVER!!!

I was texting to ask if she was going to bring Bob over too—I hoped she didn’t leave him by himself in her rush to get over here, he was only seven years old—when she said: right after I drop bob off at a friends house.

I grinned. Okay, that mind-melding was a little creepy, but I was glad that Bob was going to be taken care of. I loved that little guy. He had an old soul to go with his old-man name. While Marie could be a little excitable, Bob was that rare kid who was almost always calm. I’d never seen him throw a tantrum, and I’d been at their house a lot over the years.

I usually didn’t mind if Marie brought him over, but I was glad he had gone to a friend’s house. Marie and I probably needed a few hours of best-friend time to get through all my Kate Monroe-related anxieties.

On the surface, it seemed like the best thing that had ever happened to me, but my pounding heart and nervous stomach were telling me otherwise. Was Kate Monroe potentially flirting with me really a problem?

I went downstairs with the idea of watching some TV in the living room while I waited for Marie to show up, but the sound of my parents making dinner led me to detour to the kitchen instead. Sometimes they liked to cook together, which meant my mom telling my dad he wasn't cutting the vegetables correctly, while my dad said my mom was ruining the meat with too much seasoning. They seemed to get upset, but I thought they secretly liked the bickering. Everyone’s relationship was different, though I didn’t know that personally, since I’d never been in a relationship before.

Could Kate Monroe be my first relationship?

I slapped my hands to the sides of my head and let out a frustrated groan as I entered the kitchen. Did all my thoughts have to go to Kate Monroe? Couldn’t I have one whole Kate Monroe-free minute?

Over the chopping of the carrots, I heard my mom say, “That’s not a good sound. The world getting you down, sweetheart?”

I threw myself onto one of the stools at the breakfast nook. I felt I was entitled to act like a petulant teenager today—it had been that rough—so I buried my face in my arms across the table. “I hate everything and nothing makes any sense. I can’t wait until I’m not a teenager anymore.”

My muffled voice must have carried. My dad stopped his chopping, and I could hear a smile when he spoke. “Sorry to disappoint, Haley, but if you’re waiting for your twenties to make sense, you’ll be extremely disappointed. It’s the thirties where life begins to really get settled.”

“Late thirties,” my mom chimed in. She was stirring something at the stove, and the smells of garlic and cumin made my stomach rumble. At least my appetite hadn’t deserted me during my time of internal turmoil. I might combust, but I wouldn’t starve, at least as long as my nervous stomach didn’t advance to the puking stage. So far, my stomach was holding its own, though it did feel like something wanted to force its way back up. The last time I’d felt this way was when I’d had to give a presentation in junior year history. Public speaking had always terrified me. Kate Monroe also terrified me, but just in a different way.

And there she was again. Oh, hello, Kate Monroe. I went two seconds without thinking about you; glad you could take over my thoughts again so soon.

I wanted to melt off my stool, fall to the floor, and just curl up on the tiles for the rest of my life. Feeding time would be easy—just drop some food my way as they headed toward the kitchen table where we took most of our meals. For holidays, I could probably roll my way closer so that we’d all be eating together. There, a totally viable solution to all my problems.

Before I could take the plunge toward the floor, I felt my mom lean against my back, giving me a hug. She was warm, and that great smell from whatever she was cooking clung to her clothing, enveloping me in spices and herbs. I took a deep breath that immediately calmed me down.

My mom kissed the back of my head. “Do you want to talk about it?” she whispered close to my ear. It was her way of letting me know that she would get rid of my dad if I wanted to talk privately. But I wasn’t up for talking with either of them yet. My parents and I had always had a good relationship, and they had been really supportive when I came out, but this was different. Before, it was all theoretical. I liked girls, they knew I liked girls, but I felt it was still an abstract idea. This was probably why I was taking the entire “Kate Monroe might be flirting with me, but probably not, but what if she is” thing so hard. It was the first time I’d have to get away from the idea of girls to the reality of one girl. And I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.

While still in my mom’s hug, I heard the doorbell ring and then the door open and slam shut. It happened so fast that it could only be one person.

“Haley!” I heard my best friend bellow. She must have thought I was in my room upstairs, because I heard her feet stomping as she ran to the second floor. A muffled “Haley!” made its way down to the kitchen.

My mom stepped back and made her way around the other side of the table. She brought her head down level with mine and gave me a small grin. Her curly hair was a little wilder from the steam in the kitchen, with random gray hairs springing out here and there. She always teased me about having passed on her crazy curly hair genes to me. She attempted to smooth back my flyaways like she used to do when I was younger, and it calmed me like it always had in the past.

“Looks like this is more of a best friend thing. It's cool, I totally dig it,” she said with the small smile on her face. It looked a little sad, but I didn’t want to think too much about that. I already had enough rattling around in my brain.

I sat up straight on the stool. “Yeah, I texted her awhile ago. She had to drop off Bob at a friend’s house first.”

My dad, who by this time was done with the carrots and had moved on to the celery, spoke up. “She should have brought him. He makes a great flan.” He turned from his work and gave me a big grin.

There was a running joke that Bob was the son my dad never had, and they did stuff like cook and bird-watch together when Marie brought Bob over. Their own dad wasn’t in their lives anymore. He’d left a couple years after Bob was born, and they had almost no contact with him. All he did was send his monthly child support check and some gift cards at Christmas. Marie told me that he didn't have another family, and he hadn’t gotten married again. She guessed he’d figured out too late that he wasn’t the family-man type. I was happy that my dad took the time to talk and do activities with them both when they came over. He was awesome like that.

I turned to my dad after I got off the stool. “I’ll let Marie know to bring him over next time. Maybe he can help you with the vegetables, too. Last time, they were salty,” I told him as I walked out the kitchen.

“My veggies are always perfect!” he responded. I heard my mom’s sharp laughter, and their playful bickering followed me up the stairs.

At the top was Marie. Her body was almost vibrating with impatience. “What took you so long?” she asked as she reached for my hand to pull me up the stairs faster and into my room.

She practically threw me into the room and shut the door behind us, leaning against it as if I were going to make a run for it. Her red hair fanned against the door, giving her a bit of a Medusa look. I wasn’t sure if I should be worried or not. I had voluntarily called her over with possibly life-altering news, so I couldn't blame her for her excitement.

We stood there, just looking at each other. Marie was trying to suppress a grin, and I didn't know what to say.

She spoke first. “Tell me everything.” I opened my mouth, but before any sound came out she continued. “But first I have to sit down, because Kate talked to you, and that was huge. She talks to a lot of people, but that’s why it’s so big that she talked to you and asked you for notes, because she’s friends with pretty much everyone and could ask about eight different people for class notes, people I know for a fact are actually her friends and not a random classmate acquaintance like you are.”

She kept talking as she crawled to sit in the middle of my bed, kicking her shoes off as she went. “Not that I’m trying to make you feel bad, but let’s be honest here—you’ve hardly talked to Kate in all the years you two have gone to school together. And she’s not exactly chatting you up all the time either. That’s why I figured something out when I was driving over here.”

She paused, bringing her long legs up to her chest and folding the rest of her body around her knees. She smiled her big smile, her teeth clenched together as if she were holding back an avalanche with the strength of her jaw. But that was what was so great about her. Her enthusiasm showed how much she cared about me.

I practically collapsed in front of her onto the bed. “Please,” I begged her as I stared up at the ceiling, “give me something to go on here, because I’ve been thinking about this for hours. And I didn’t even tell you the most important part.”

I flipped onto my side so I was facing her. I could feel my face begin to burn, because it was embarrassing to say this out loud. I didn’t want her to think I was an idiot for reading too much into it, but I needed to talk this out.

I focused my eyes on the window behind Marie, the closed blinds keeping the sun’s glare from blinding me. “She smiled at me.” I paused for my own effect. “Twice.”

Marie rocked onto her back and then swung back up again in excitement. She grabbed my shoulders. “This just proves my theory is right,” she said with a bit of a maniacal gleam in her eyes.

I swallowed. I could feel my heart pounding, and there was no good reason for it to be. But what if…?

“What’s your theory?” I asked.

My best friend gave my shoulders enough of a shake to almost send me tumbling off the bed.

“You turned Kate Monroe into a lesbian and she wants to kiss your face.” She said it with so much confidence, as if that was the only outcome logically possible. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“That’s not quite how it works. I seriously doubt that I had any effect on Kate Monroe and who she wants to kiss.” Even if Kate Monroe was a lesbian (doubtful) and she wanted to kiss my face (doubly doubtful), I had nothing to do with that. I knew from firsthand experience that someone could not “turn” another person. That attraction to girls, boys, both, or anything in between was just there in a person’s life. For me, I had never been particularly interested in boys. I could appreciate a cute boy like a painting in a museum—I knew that what I was looking at was pleasing to the eye, but that was about as far as it went. I had as much desire to snuggle up to a boy as I did that painting.

But I figured other people were different. I liked the whole Kinsey scale, and sexuality being on a spectrum. It made so much more sense than just putting these labels on people—gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual—that could change depending on the person and their interactions. All I knew for sure was what I felt. That I liked girls exclusively. So I identified as a lesbian. But I wasn’t going to tell someone who identified as something else that they were wrong or confused. I didn’t know anything about what really went on inside a person’s head, just like no one knew what went on inside mine.

But Marie had brought up a terrifying point. What if Kate Monroe really was flirting with me?

“You never know,” Marie said. “She might have had this crush on you for ages, and when you came out, she saw her chance.”

My face must have given away my skepticism, because her voice got this eager tone to it when she continued. Like she was trying to convince me of something.

“What? It’s totally possible. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing if you’d found out that she was a lesbian? And you hadn’t come out yet? I bet you would go around the hallways giving her smiles and asking for her notes. And then you would ask her out and you two would go to prom and be the prom queens and go to the same college, and after graduation and living together for a few years, you’d get married. Would I be your maid of honor, or Eddy? I mean, she is your sister. Maybe I can be the best woman. I’m not entirely sure how these lesbian weddings work, but there’s got to be a guide on the Internet somewhere.”

I blinked at her for a few seconds, trying to process what to respond to first. I stuck out my hand. “Hi, I’m Haley Suarez. I don’t believe we’ve met before, since you seem to know nothing about me, because you think I would try and flirt with the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen even if I knew one hundred percent that she was a lesbian. It’s nice to meet you.”

Marie swatted my hand away. "You make a horrible sassy best friend."

"That's more of a gay than lesbian stereotype,” I responded. We grinned at each other.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Marie continued.

“You mean I don’t live in an alternate reality. You’ve just described me actively wooing Kate Monroe, which I never see happening.”

 Marie frowned. “Wooing? How old are you, eighty? Will you be courting her next? All I’m saying is that if you knew for sure that Kate was a lesbian, I think you would at least try to get her attention. High school will be over in less than two months, and then who knows what will happen. You may never see her again.”

Suddenly, Marie got this distressed look on her face, as if she had just realized that something bad would happen. “You may never see Kate again. Even if you’re not totally sure she’s into girls, you’ve still got to take this chance and go for it. Go for her.” She was almost pleading with me.

I sat in silence, unsure of how to respond.

Marie continued. “So let’s forget the hypothetical. We don’t know for sure if Kate is a lesbian. What we do know is that you are, and that all of a sudden she’s smiling at you and having a conversation with you after not saying more than a few words to you in years. That might not mean anything. Or it might mean she’s interested in you, and if she is, you cannot let this chance go by without doing anything.”

I thought about what Marie had just said. Sure, it was possible that Kate Monroe was flirting with me and wanted to date. But just as likely, and probably more accurate, was that it was all a big coincidence and I was blowing a passing conversation way out of proportion.

“There’s just one problem with that thought,” I said. “She isn’t into girls. I don’t want to make a fool out of myself by trying to talk to her or ask her out and get rejected and humiliated.” That was what the real issue was—the idea of putting myself out there for the first time and getting laughed at, or worse, getting punched in the face. Okay, Kate Monroe was not the type to punch people in the face, but as a worst-case scenario, it was possible.

Maybe if I had actually gone on a date before, with anybody, it would’ve been easier to think of asking Kate Monroe out. But I was eighteen and had never been to the movies or dinner or anywhere with anyone in even a mildly romantic manner. At least I had been kissed before. It hadn't been much, just some guy named Paul at a party during sophomore year that involved a spinning bottle. And, more importantly, my coworker last summer at the ice cream parlor, Sarah. She had been home from college and had cornered me on her last shift before she went back to school. She’d said that she had noticed me looking at her during our shared shifts and that a cute girl like me deserved a good-bye kiss.

I had heard her talk to her friends who came by to visit her at work about having an ex-girlfriend, and it had been like I was a researcher discovering a new species. I couldn’t help myself from studying her clothes and hair, how she walked and talked. I guess she’d mistaken that for checking her out. I had not been that attracted to her, just to her lesbianism, if that made any sense.

When she’d said she wanted to give me a good-bye kiss, I had frozen, and not just because we’d been standing in the walk-in freezer. It had been, as I’d later described it to Marie, a surreal experience. I’d seen Sarah coming toward me, her eyes closing as she tilted her head slightly to the side. When our lips met, all I could think about was how much softer her lips were than Paul's and that I was definitely a lesbian. I had been thinking about it for years, but that kiss had been the confirmation I had been subconsciously looking for. It had felt right kissing Sarah in the walk-in freezer in the back of the ice cream parlor.

“Don’t sell yourself so short,” Marie said. “You are the best, and any girl would be the luckiest to have you as a girlfriend. And Kate is not the type to be mean about it if she isn’t gay or interested in you. I've never actually had a conversation with her, so I can't say with certainty that she's a nice person, but freshman year she did give me a tampon when I got my period and was stranded in the bathroom. She didn't have to do that. And no one has ever said anything really bad about her, so why not at least talk to her? Maybe you'll get a new friend, if nothing else."

I lay on my back on the bed and spread my arms out wide. Marie was right. Kate Monroe wasn't a bad person, and would probably reject me in the classiest way possible. But that rejection was still there.

While looking at the ceiling, I said to her, "Why can't I just date you? We would be perfect together."

Not missing a beat, she replied, "Because I don't like girls, and even if I did, you're not my type. Too uptight."

She laughed in my face as I indignantly tried to come up with a response.