“In a fine way,” Harper filled in. “A comfortable way.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re attracted to a woman.”
“Yes.”
“In a not-fine way.”
Miller almost smiled. “Definitely not fine.”
Harper shrugged. “Sounds bisexual to me, but you don’t have to call it anything if you don’t want to.”
Bisexual.
Miller turned the word over in her mind. She’d never tried it on before, never had a reason to. She’d always been straight. That was just who she was, as fundamental as her eye color or her left-handedness.
Except maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it had never been.
“Bisexual,” she said, testing the word out loud. It felt strange in her mouth, but it didn’t feel wrong. It was like a door she’d never noticed before that was suddenly visible. “I’m bisexual.”
“If that’s what fits,” Nadia said.
“I think it does.” Miller looked up at her mothers, these two women who had built a life together, who had raised her with love and openness, who had somehow known her better than she even knew herself. “I think it’s always been true. I just didn’t have the… I didn’t let myself see it,” she said finally.
“And now you do,” Harper said.
“Now I do.”
The kitchen was quiet, and Miller felt hollowed out and exhausted. But underneath the exhaustion, there was something else, something that felt like relief.
“I still don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “About her. About any of it. It’s still an impossible situation.”
“Maybe,” Nadia said. “Or maybe not. Things change.”
“And what about in the meantime?”
Nadia reached across the table and took her hand. “In the meantime, you learned something new about yourself. That’s everything, sweetheart.”
Miller thought about the week ahead: the case, the work, the inevitable moments when she’d have to see Astoria and pretend like she wasn’t falling apart on the inside, the yearning that wouldn’t go away just because she finally named it.
But she also thought about this moment, sitting in her mothers’ kitchen with tea warming her insides as a word settled into her chest that had been waiting her whole life to be spoken.
She wasn’t okay and the problem wasn’t solved, but something had shifted into place. For the first time in days, she felt more like herself again. A different self than she’d been a week ago, but still her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For being here. For not—” Miller’s voice caught. “For letting me figure it out without trying to fix me.”
“There’s nothing to fix,” Nadia said. “Just something new about yourself to discover.”
Harper stood and stretched. “Stay as long as you need tonight. There’s no rush.”
Miller nodded. She wasn’t ready to leave yet. She wasn’t ready to go back to her apartment and face the empty rooms and sleepless nights. But for now, she kept sitting here with the twopeople who’d loved her before she knew who she was and would continue to love her now that she was finally learning.
It was enough. For tonight, it was enough.
