“You knew he liked Winter?” Larissa asked.
“Oh, everyone in school knew. My parents knew, too, which was why they thought she’d sneak over to his room. They thought Winter and Mike were secretly dating already. He had a big thing for her, and I knew I was into girls at this point – specifically, into one of them – so I was just hoping she wasn’t into him.”
“I wasn’t, really,” Winter said more to Maia than to Larissa or Harlow. “But I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to say no to the dance because I’d have to go alone.”
“You could have gone with me.”
“As a friend, sure. But not as a date.”
“So? We still could’ve had fun.”
“Yes, but we were both hiding parts of who we were then. Not sure how wise it would have been to basically put out to the world that we were falling in love with each other on a dance floor while your brother stared at us from the punch bowl.”
“I know. I just still hate that you two were a thing.”
“Can you tell us about that now?” Larissa asked.
“Mike and I dated for six months, but it wasn’t ever real for me. I knew he liked me, and I knew I liked her.” Winter pointed to her wife. “So, I guess he was my beard. He was a seventeen-year-old boy, though, so he expected certain things at times in our relationship. We kissed a lot, mostly.”
Larissa watched Maia cross her arms over her chest and thought about how this had taken place well over a decade ago, but Maia was clearly still hurt by the fact that Winter and her brother had been a couple for at least a little while. She wrote a few notes about that as Winter continued.
“One night, he wanted to go further. I’d been making him wait for the entirety of our relationship, so I let him get to that second base I mentioned before, but when he…”
“It’s okay; go ahead. I’m being mature,” Maia told her when Winter looked over at her.
“Let’s just say he wanted to do more, and I didn’t, so I told him as much. He got upset. We were at his house. He yelled at me about being a prude because we’d been together for six months and never had sex. I then told him I wanted to leave and broke up with him because I didn’t want someone who wouldpressure me into having sex when I wasn’t ready. When I left his room, Maia was in the hallway.”
“I heard him yell and knew she was in there.”
“You knew they were alone in his room?” Larissa asked. “Did you know…”
“I had an idea, yeah. I thought they’d already done that. Mom and Dad weren’t there, so I figured they were doing it again. I’d gone to the basement and put on headphones so I wouldn’t have to hear them, and I tried not to think about him touching her because I loved her, but I took them off just in time to hear him yell at her, and I thought something bad was happening. I thought–”
“He didn’t, babe.”
“I know,” Maia said. “I mean, it might seem silly now, but I was sixteen, and emotions are crazy when you’re sixteen. I was already so jealous and so hurt, so when I saw you fleeing and my idiot brother standing there like he’d fucked up, I wanted to kill him.”
“What happened next?” Harlow asked.
“She asked me what happened. I just told her that everything was fine and that I was going home,” Winter replied.
“Then, I asked if she wanted to go to my room while I talked to my brother, and she said yes. She went in there and slammed the door. I talked to my brother.”
“You actually talked to him?” Harlow asked.
“Yelled is more like it, but I asked him what happened. He tried to blame her, and I told him to shut the fuck up and kneed him in the nuts. I got in trouble for that one later when my parents got home, but I gothimin trouble for trying to have sex with his girlfriend, who didn’t want to. He wasn’t even supposed to have her over while they weren’t home. He was pissed. I was pissed. I went into my room and waited for him to leave the house, which he did in pain, by the way. Then, I asked Winterif she wanted to go and took her home. We started hanging out there instead of at my house after.”
“I should say that Mike and I are good now,” Winter added. “He’s apologized since, and he didn’t do anything to me physically after I told him that I didn’t want to. He got angry that I didn’t want to sleep with him after six months, but we talked later, once I was with Maia, and he got it. I’m not excusing his behavior, but we’re okay now. He’s married and has three kids, and the four of us are all good.”
“He was still an asshole, and I wanted to kill him,” Maia said. “It was like my protective instincts came out, and all I wanted to do was keep her safe. I didn’t want her coming to my house anymore. I didn’t think he’d actually do anything; he was embarrassed after he’d calmed down, and he apologized to both of us, but I wanted to keep her away from him.”
“Also because you didn’t want us to get back together,” Winter said with a little smirk.
“True,” Maia said. “We spent time together at her house, and because no one worries about two girls hanging out alone, we started doing that more and more. She’d stop by my part-time job during the summer, and I’d stop by hers. We’d take our breaks together. We would walk to and from classes together in school.”
“When did you start dating?” Harlow asked.
“My senior year. Her junior,” Winter answered. “It was October fifth.”
