“Didn't you describe it as…mind blowing?” Aryan says, wiggling his eyebrows at me.
“I believe she said it was the best she ever had,” Victoria adds, laughing loudly.
Both her and Aryan are now giggling at my words, clearly having forgotten about whatever this debate was about.
I self-consciously look over to Miss Kim who is thankfully still at the back of the kitchen. So, she isn't hearing the teasing that I'm being subjected to right now.
“I'm never telling you guys anything again,” I grumble, glaring at them.
That's obviously a lie, I tell them everything. It's not like I can speak to anyone else about it, especially not Adam, as he's made it clear that he dislikes Juliette and her family. We haven't even spoken about Juliette again since he spoke to her that day.
I told my friends about what happened with Juliette as soon as I got home yesterday. They were shockingly ecstatic, although they are probably just happy that I am finally getting benefits from our situation.
Aryan shrugs, smiling. “I'm just glad it finally happened.”
It does shock me how quickly they've changed their tune though—both my friends went from despising her to being glad that she ate me out. Then again, they admitted that they thought this was a long time coming. I'm still annoyed about that little bet.
“Me too. Now I can stop feeling guilty about dating Kai,” Victoria adds.
I furrow my eyebrows at Victoria. “What do you mean?”
She sighs. “Well, I felt guilty because he's best friends with a known homophobe who made your life a living hell. It's one of the reasons I was so reluctant to date him in the first place.”
I guess she is right. Juliette is a known homophobe, but for some reason, Kai being friends with her never bothered me. I never even questioned why a good guy like him would be friends with a bitch like her, mostly because I didn't care about either of them, but also deep down, I just thought it made sense.
“Yeah, but Kai is a great guy,” I say, trying to alleviate her guilt and they both nod.
“You're as good as the people you associate yourself with,” she says seriously and then continues. “He always tried to convince me that she's a good person, which I still doubt, but I think I always knew deep down he had a good reason for being friends with her, like her being a closeted lesbian.”
Closeted lesbian. The phrase itself garners sympathy from me, but also an ounce of fury.
Aryan nods thoughtfully. “Yeah, it doesn't excuse her behaviour, but I can understand it. I think we all knew deep down.”
We? Who is we? Because it sure isn't me.
“Yeah, I'm still on the fence about asking Kai to be my boyfriend until I see that Juliette has become less of a bully though. I don't care how closeted she is.”
I for one had no idea that she was a lesbian or even liked girls in the slightest.
Clearly, my friends have been theorising for a lot longer than me and they don't even know about her father, yet they still put two and two together about her internalized homophobia. At this point, I can't even feel guilty for potentially outing Juliette to them because clearly, they already knew.
Was it that obvious?
Forget being obvious, is it considered normal that being gay automatically means you can bully other people and chalk it up to internalized homophobia?
I sure as hell have dealt with a lot of traumas myself, but I didn't take it out on other people, not once.
No. No. The rational part of me understands that her behaviour can be explained. The other part of me cannot explain it or doesn't want to.
Once I start doing that, it changes things. I need to believe that she still hates me regardless of whether it's homophobic or not. I can't let the lines blur, I can't.
All I need to do is tutor her and occasionally use her and let her use me when we're both horny. Then, as soon as we leave Richmond, I won't ever see Juliette again.
I shake my head of any thoughts and change the subject. “Let's go get ice cream.”
***
It's one of the most important basketball games for Victoria today; it's the first match of the season and scouts are gonna be attending.
