“No, no!” I shake my head. “Does mine?”
“Not at all,” he says.
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
We look at each other, and a giggle bubbles up inside me. He starts to smile, and then we’re both laughing, still looking at each other.
“I like you,” I say.
“I like you too,” he says, and I pull him back in.
We make out for what feels like hours, but when we come up for air, it’s been only ten minutes. At some point, we moved to the couch, and I’m sitting on top of him, his hands gripping my waist.
“I can’t believe I’m kissing you,” Forrest says, his eyes sparkling.
I touch my lips and grin at him like a circus clown. “Freshman year me is in shock right now.”
He laughs. “I know what you mean.”
I shift to the cushion beside him, one leg curled against his thigh, the other still thrown over his lap. “What was that about? You were so aggressively anti–Queer Alliance then, and now...”
“I was jealous,” he says, rubbing the back of his head. “You guys seemed so confident, and I was in the closet, and I just felt like Queer Alliance wasn’t for me, would never be for me. I thought I was never going to get to transition, that I didn’t deserve to, and even if I did, that it would be too hard. My parents fought all the time, even more than they do now because they were still trying to make it work, and everything sucked. I knew you thought I was an asshole, so I thought fuck it, I’ll just be an asshole.”
I grimace, my head shrinking back into my neck. “I really didn’t mean for you to hear me that one time.”
“But you did think that,” he says.
Slowly, I nod.
He shrugs. “When I finally admitted to myself that I was trans, that I was a boy and it wasn’t going away and that I had to transition or...” He trails off, but I know what he’s going to say, and I put a hand on his arm. He covers it with his. “I got over myself.”
“I’m glad you did,” I say quietly.
“And also. I’m sorry I was an asshole.”
“I mean, I kind of was too.”
“Only in response to me.”
“Oh my god, let me apologize.” I shove him lightly, and he grins.
“OK.” He leans over, and slides his hand across my cheek and around the back of my neck and pulls me toward him. A wave of energy whooshes through me, down my spine and up to the top of my head, and I climb on top of him again, kissing him back.
A moment later, my phone rings in my pocket, startling us apart. Shar’s photo is on the screen, her smiling on the sand at the edge of the ocean, from a trip we all took this summer.
“Hey!” I answer in as normal a voice as I can manage, resettling my glasses on my nose. I hold my finger up to my lips, and Forrest mimes zipping his shut.
“Hey kiddo, just letting you know I’m coming home early today.”
“Are you OK?” Worry spikes in my chest. Maybe Shar’s been in trouble this whole time we’ve been making out—
“Yeah, yeah, I’m good! We just finished early before the roofers come tomorrow. I was thinking I could grab some burritos for us.”
I exhale. “That sounds good.”
“Great.” Someone honks and she curses. “Sorry. Hey, I’m going to sign off, but I’ll probably be home in about thirty minutes, maybe shorter depending on how food pickup goes.”
