Except I do. Because when I think about spending those Friday nights watching movies with Jasmine, when I think about Jasmine’s hips beneath my fingertips when we dance, when I think about ice cream dates and road trips and planning for college and making out in the backseat of a car… she’s the person I wanna do all that with.
She’s my top-of-high-school-bucket-list prom date.
It’s that simple, even if it isn’t simple at all.
“Hey! I was just thinking about you.” He drops a kiss on my cheek and steps aside to let me in. “I had a great time last night.”
Well, that’s gonna make this harder. “I’m glad, but I really need to talk to you about something.”
“Oookay.” He closes the door behind me and leads me into his living room. “You want a drink?”
“No, thank you. Can—can we just sit?”
“This sounds serious.” He frowns. “This sounds breakup serious. Are you breaking up with me?”
I hesitate, because that’s really not how I wanted to start this conversation, and anger flashes in his eyes. “Did you seriously hook up with me to become Homecoming queen and then dump me? That’s really fucked-up.”
“No,” I assure him firmly. “God, no, Chase. It’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like?” he asks, his voice dipped in acid.
Deep breath. He’s hurt. He’s allowed to be hurt.“This isn’t about Homecoming. You of all peopleknowthat I liked you forever. It’s that… there was someone else, and I didn’t really realize it until last night.”
“Hold up. Youcheatedon me?”
“No!” God, I should’ve prepared this better. I scrub my face with my hands and groan. “I’m sorry; I am doing this really poorly. Let me start over.” Another deep breath. “There was someone before you, and I didn’t understand my feelings, and you came along, and—you’reChase. I have had a crush on you since I was in Little League with Kira and you were her string bean of a brother sitting on the sidelines. When you were interested in me, it kind of obliterated everything else. It helped me stop thinking about this thing I didn’t wanna think about. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
He scratches the back of his head. “Lara, I gotta be honest—I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Aaaand I’m officially out of ways to dance around this.Deep breath.“It’s a girl, Chase. I like a girl. I was with a girl this past summer.”
“Uh… whoa.” For the first time since he realizedthis was the end of our relationship, he doesn’t look mad. He looks stunned. As stunned as I feel that the words just came out of my mouth.
“That’s exactly how I felt. I was so confused, and then you were into me, and I have liked you forso long. I thought if I had you, I could put her behind me. Iwantedto put her behind me, to be with you. But it didn’t work.”
“I mean, this is the bisexual thing, right?” he says, and his voice does not sound kind. “Not being able to choose?”
I recoil as if Chase has slapped me, which it kind of feels like he has. “If by ‘thing’ you mean ‘stereotype,’ then yeah, it is. But this isn’t that. I wanted you, Chase. For fuckingyears, I wanted you. You know it. Everyone at Stratford knows it. You had years to see something in me. But you didn’t; someone else did. And I didn’t know I was—” I snap off. I don’t know how to say this without sounding stupid, without feeling stupid, without telling Chase too much.
“You didn’t know you were what?” he asks, and I don’t know how to read his voice anymore. It isn’t mad or tired or sad, but I feel all of it in those six words. “Bi?”
And because that’s not it—because that’s only a tiny piece, and because I haven’t been able to take the time to decide whether it’smypiece—I say what I have to say. “I didn’t know I was allowed to like her like that,” I finish quietly. “I didn’t know it was okay. I didn’t know it could be more than ‘girls just messing around’ or ‘girls having fun.’ I had liked you—reallyliked you—for so long, I knew I wasn’t gay. I knew I liked boys. And I knewshelikedboys. And sometimes when you like the gender you’re ‘supposed’ to like, it’s not so clear what’s happening with the others.”
He furrows his brow in confusion. “But it’s not like you don’t know what bisexuality is. You have bi friends.”
“Yeah, and the fact that it didn’t look the same for them made it even more confusing. Jamie? Has been out forever. Kenny Cho? Announced that Evan Sanders was his boyfriend when we were literally standing in a sandbox, and then a week later he said Julie Morrow was his girlfriend now. I never had feelings like that for any girls until this summer. And my best friends are pretty much the hottest girls in school, so, you know—I’d have known.”
That at least gets a tiny snort of a laugh from Chase, but then his face grows serious. “So, you really like her?”
“I really do.”
“But you liked me too.”
“I really did,” I say, putting a hand on his arm. I hope he can tell how much I mean it. “If I’d known what was going on between me and her wasn’t just a fling, I would’ve made different choices. I promise you that. I wasn’t trying to string you along, Chase. Dating you was all of my dreams coming true. But I hadn’t let myself realize that my dreams had changed.”
He huffs out a breath. “I really, really want to be mad at you.”
“You can be,” I assure him. “The fact that I was genuine doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like shit. And it’s not like I don’t feel shitty about it. I’d kill for no one to have gotten hurt in this scenario.”
