Faith’s first girlfriend had just left her for a boy, and it was the talk of the college. The ex-girlfriend and the boy she’d ‘turned straight for’ made no secret of their relationship. They turned up to college not two days later, hand in hand as though the girlfriend’s foray into lesbianism had been exactly that – a quick adventure.
‘I don’t even mind,’ Faith had said, although the mascara tracks sort of undercut her point. ‘Like, we’re teenagers, we’re allowed to experiment. But did we actually need to go ahead and tell our families and shit?’ She stuffed another mini muffin into her mouth and spoke around the dough. ‘She came out, you know? I was slow and understanding and, like, I literally didn’t give a shit.’ She sighed. ‘She didn’t need to tell anyone she was with me. It could have been a secret.’
‘But, Faith—’ Betty stroked her hair ‘—would that have been better?’
I thought back to my own flicker of interest in Faith; how we agreed that no one needed to know – Rowan included. ‘A little,’ I answered, even though it wasn’t my place. ‘If no one knew that it had started then there wouldn’t be anyone to tell when it was over either.’
Faith let out a shudder-sigh again. ‘Exactly.’
There had been another girl – only one. She and I met while I was on holiday with my parents. We were in Devon, and she was the surfer stereotype who strolled out of the water with such grace that I would have fully believed anyone who told me she was born with a fin. She flicked her hair in one direction then the other and set droplets of sea flying around her; it looked like a special effect. It wasn’t until hours after I’d seen her like that that I saw her again in the restaurant we were eating in that evening; she seated us, and I spent the rest of the night looking for her. There had been another handful of times when I’d seen her over the trip. She started to say hello in passing and that was enough to turn my young heart into a maraca; loud and all shaken up. On the last day I upped the ante from a hello – ‘Be seeing you, then’ – and then I stashed her in the box of feelings that never happened, alongside Faith, my occasional doubts about Rowan, and how beautiful Mel C looked when she finally left The Spice Girls.
If no one knew, I recited as I rubbed the spot between Faith’s shoulder blades, then there was nothing to tell.
It was hours later when I was tucked up against Rowan in his parents’ living room. They were away again, and we were making the most of an empty house by pretending we were grown-up enough to own property. Rowan had sat on the kitchen counter while I’d cooked dinner; he’d set the places at the dining room table; I helped myself to half a glass of wine. We borrowed adulthood for evenings at a time.
‘I just can’t believe she’d be so brazen about it.’ I was still nursing ill feelings towards the girl from college: Ingrid. ‘Christ, even her name makes me angry.’
Rowan half-laughed. ‘Babe, don’t you think you’re getting a bit involved in this?’
‘What do you mean?’ I pushed away and balanced on my elbow to get a look at him. ‘If one of your friends had been dumped for another girl, do you think you and the lads would be okay with it? Let’s say June decides to chuck Hamish, which she absolutely should—’ he opened his mouth to disagree but I pressed on ‘—and then a day later she turns up with Faith and pretends Hamish never happened, like, she was never even with a boy. That’s okay, is it?’
He seemed to put some real thought into it, then said, ‘I’d die if you left me for a woman.’
‘You’re so dramatic.’ I leaned back against him. ‘You seemed to think it wasn’t a big deal a second ago.’
‘Well, now I’ve thought about it and it is.’ His voice was hard-edged and I nearly reminded him that I wasn’t actually leaving him for another woman – or anyone for that matter. ‘Besides, it’s different for men when stuff like that happens. Everyone is straight, so, someone turning gay is major. But not everyone is gay, so, turning straight is just going back to what everyone else is doing.’
I rolled my eyes so hard that I thought I caught sight of my own grey matter. When I didn’t answer for a few seconds, he gave me a little squeeze.
‘I take it you don’t agree?’
‘With what?’ I asked, because playing dumb usually helped with these things.
‘With what I just said about it being harder for men.’
‘Honestly, Rowan, I don’t think I agree with much of what you just said.’ I shifted away from him, then, and leaned back against the opposite end of the sofa, leaving my feet in his lap instead. ‘Maybe it’s best if we just leave it?’
‘No.’ He frowned. ‘No, I want to know what’s so wrong about what I just said.’
‘I mean, to start with, that’s absolutely not how sexuality works.’
‘Oh, Edi …’ He used that tone; the one that implied I was either being stupid, or on the cusp of it. But I was too deep into a psychology and sociology module to doubt myself over him. ‘I know you think you know stuff—’
‘And this is why I didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Hey.’ He started to rub my feet. ‘I just mean, you only know it from your side, like I only know it from a guy’s side.’
‘Okay, well, from a basic biology and brain chemistry side, sexuality isn’t socially conditioned. Our brains are attracted to lots of different things, including the same gender.’
‘Are you trying to tell me something? Is that what you’re driving at here?’ he asked. His tone was jovial but there was still a riptide in my stomach. ‘I know you and Faith are close and all—’ he dug his thumb into the heel of my left foot ‘—but are you that close?’ He winked at me. ‘Because if you are then I can get behind it for a while, you know, if—’
‘Don’t worry, babe.’ My voice was heavy with sarcasm. ‘I know you’d die if that happened.’
He laughed. ‘Point taken. Come on, though, imagine being left because you’ve turned someone?’
‘But wouldn’t you just want me to be happy?’
He made the same face as before, and I could see how much brain power the question required from him. But he soon shook his head. ‘No, Edi, I think I’d just want you to be straight.’