“Yes.” Miller’s throat felt tight. “I’ve never— I don’t dream like that. Not about anyone, not ever. But now it’s every night, and I can’t stop thinking about?—”
“About them?” Nadia supplied.
Miller squeezed her eyes shut. “Her.”
The word hung in the air, small and terrifying but true. She heard Nadia set down the dish towel and felt her mother’s warm hand clasp her shoulder.
“Her,” Nadia repeated, and there was no surprise or judgment in her voice, just acknowledgement.
“I don’t—” Miller’s voice cracked. “I’ve never— I’m not?—”
She couldn’t finish any of the sentences. Every word she reached for dissolved before she could grasp it. She wasn’t gay. She’d dated men, slept with them, even. She’d built her whole life around the assumption that she was straight, that the story she’d told herself was true, and now…
“I don’t understand what’s going on with me,” she whispered.
Nadia’s hand moved to her back, rubbing in slow circles the way she had when Miller was small and couldn’t sleep. “Tell me about her.”
“I can’t. She’s…” Miller laughed, a broken sound with sharp edges. “She’s everything I’m not supposed to want—professionally, personally, literally every single way you can think of. It’s impossible.”
“But you want her anyway.”
“I can’t stop.” The confession scraped out of her. “I’ve tried. I’ve been trying for weeks, and it just keeps getting worse. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you.”
“Something is.” Miller spun around, and there were fresh tears on her face now, but she couldn’t remember when they’d started. “Somethinghasto be because I’ve had relationships with men all my life. I thought…”
She stopped and pressed her hands to her face.
“You thought what?” Nadia asked softly.
“I thought that’s just what it felt like.” Miller’s voice came out muffled against her palms. “I thought everyone was exaggerating about the butterflies, the spark, all of it. I thought it was just…marketing hype and stuff in movies and that real life was comfortable and you made it work.”
“And what about now?”
Miller dropped her hands and looked at her mother through tears that blurred her vision. “Now I know they weren’texaggerating because I feel it. I feel all of it. And it’s not comfortable or fine. It’s terrifying because if this is what it’ssupposedto feel like”—her breath caught in her throat and she cleared it—”then what the hell have I been doing for thirty-five years?”
Nadia’s expression shifted, something old and sad moving across her face. “Oh, sweetheart, you’ve been surviving.”
Miller stared at her. “What?”
“You did what you thought you were supposed to do and dated who you thought you were supposed to date. You followed the script because no one told you there was another option.” Nadia stepped closer, cupping Miller’s face in her hands. “It didn’t mean you failed. That’s just the way things were.”
“But you and Mom…I grew up with you. How could I not know?”
“Because you’re not us.” Nadia’s thumbs brushed the tears from Miller’s cheeks. “Because having gay parents doesn’t automatically make you question your own sexuality. Because you liked boys well enough and that was easier and nobody, including us, ever pushed you to look deeper.”
From the doorway, Harper cleared her throat. Miller turned to look at her.
“For what it’s worth,” Harper said, her voice rougher than usual, “we wondered sometimes, but it wasn’t our place to say.”
“Wondered what?”
Harper exchanged a look with Nadia, three decades of silent communication passing between them.
“You never brought anyone home,” Harper said finally. “Not once in all the years you were dating. You’d mention them, but you never wanted us to meet them. It didn’t seem like you cared if it worked out or not.”
“I cared.”
