“Yes. I wanted to make that part clear: I never slept with your brother.”
“Thank God for that,” Maia stated on a sigh.
“So, is that how you met, you dating Mike?”
“No,” Winter replied. “We knew each other before that. I was a sophomore when she was a freshman, and we had the same PE class for a semester. We talked a little here and there, but I had no idea I was bisexual. She had no idea that she was gay, or at least, she was just starting to think it.”
“She was the main reason,” Maia added with a smile.
“Winter?” Larissa asked.
“Yes.”
“You figured it out because of her?” Harlow asked.
“Mostly,” Maia replied, nodding. “I just thought all girls felt how I felt. We never talk about it, you know? The things we go through as teenagers. We keep everything in and assume no one feels the same way. Then, we grow up and–”
“Still kind of do that?” Winter finished with a question.
Maia chuckled and said, “Yes. But as teenagers, it felt so much worse, so much more important and life-changing. I guess I knew I liked girls, but I didn’t fully understand at that point that it was different from other girls liking girls. When I met Winter for the first time, it was in the locker room. We had to change for gym class, and I remember trying to avert my eyes because she was so pretty, and I didn’t want her to think I was staring. I got dressed quickly and left the room. She was still in there when class started and got in trouble, so she had to run extra laps and was pissed.” Maia laughed. “Then, the teacher paired us up to do some stretches, and I blushed the whole time. I still didn’t put things together yet, and we only talked in PE when we had to for the class because her friends were thereand my friends were there, but the next year, she had a class with my brother. They became friends, so she would come over sometimes, and we started hanging out a little.”
“What did you feel when you got paired with her that first day?” Larissa asked. “If you can think back and tell us how it really felt.”
“That was a long time ago now. I was fourteen.” Maia sat back in her chair, and her eyes drifted to the ceiling in thought. “Well, I thought she was pretty, and she looked cute when she was angry. Then, I told myself she wasn’t cute.”
“Why did you do that?” Harlow asked, giving Larissa a chance to take a note.
“Because I was supposed to like boys, not think girls were cute. I remember feeling like everyone could see it on my face, like they couldseethe gay somehow. We had uniforms in school, so I dressed like everyone else and tried to act like everyone else, but I felt like any second, before I came out, someone was going to see it on me, and I’d be outed. When I met her for the first time, I didn’t know I was gay yet, but I knew there was something about myself that I didn’t want others to see.”
“Been there,” Harlow shared. “It’s hard, being a teenager and figuring this stuff out.”
“Tell me about it. I had to watch her date my brother.”
Maia hooked her thumb at Winter.
“Can you tell us about that?” Harlow asked Winter.
“Dating her brother?”
“He got to see her boobs. My brother has seen my wife’s boobs. I hate that.”
“They were barely even there back then, babe. I was a late bloomer. You’re still the only one who has seen myadultboobs.”
“Still…”
Larissa laughed silently to herself.
“When I was a junior, Mike and I got put in the same history class. We were friends for a month or two, but then he asked me to the homecoming dance,” Winter shared. “At that point, I had spent time with Maia, too, whenever Mike and I were hanging out. He didn’t like that his younger sister was with us, but I liked Maia and wanted to spend more time with her. I didn’t realize it back then, but part of the reason I kept going over to his house when we were friends was that I wanted to seeher. I ended up sleeping over once, but her parents weren’t thrilled with the idea because they thought I was only doing it to try to sneak into Mike’s room in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, he thought that, too, and was definitely disappointed,” Maia added.
Winter chuckled and continued, “I just wanted to spend more time with her, so I slept in Maia’s room, and we talked all night long. I remember wondering what I was doing with Mike because he was a nice guy, but I just wanted to hang out with his sister, not him. It scared me a little, so when he asked me to the dance later that weekend, I said yes.”
“Can you tell us what made you so scared?” Harlow asked.
“For one, she’s a girl. There’s that obvious issue that’s not really an issue now but was to me then. Two, she was a year younger than me, and when you’re in high school, that can make a big difference. Three, she was Mike’s sister, and I knew he liked me.”
“It was pretty obvious,” Maia added.
