Larissa then made a note of how Maia smiled to herself, likely because Winter still remembered an important event and date.
“It was Halloween season, and I asked if she wanted to check out a haunted house with me and my friends,” Maia revealed. “She said yes, and there were about eight of us. Iremember standing in line to buy tickets, and something just came over me.”
“What?” Larissa asked.
“A feeling like everything was about to change. I have no idea why it hit me then, but it did, and I decided to buy her ticket, too, to see how she would react. She smiled and thanked me, and that was it – I knew it was a date without asking. It probably sounds weird because we’d spent months and months hanging out alone, and we were surrounded by people there, when my brain thought this would be our first date without even askingherif that was what she wanted, but that was how it felt.”
“How didyoufeel?” Harlow asked Winter.
“The same. I stood in that line, and her friends had all kind of paired off, talking to one another, so it was just her and I standing there, and it was awkward, which was strange for us because things were never awkward after I dumped her brother. Suddenly, I had nothing to talk to her about, and it seemed she felt the same way. I remember wanting to hold her hand and having to shove mine in my pockets to keep from doing so.” Winter laughed a little. “When she bought my ticket and handed it to me, I knew the same thing she did: we were on a date. We let her friends go ahead and hung back a little.”
“And I took her hand,” Maia stated proudly.
“She pretended it was because she thought I would be scared.” Winter laughed. “Not because she suddenly got so brave.”
“Hey, there was some bravery there. Your hand was like a vice grip the whole time we walked through that thing. I thought I might not get my hand back.”
“You still haven’t,” Winter stated and took Maia’s hand, placing it in her lap and linking their fingers. “And you never will, either. It’s mine now.”
“All yours,” Maia replied with a shy smile.
“When did you two talk about it being more than just holding hands because you’re in a haunted house?” Larissa asked.
“That night. My friends wanted to get food, and I told them we would meet them there, but we didn’t. The haunted house was next to a baseball field, and people were kind of hanging out there, so we sat in the grass for a while. We were still there when it closed and the parking lot was empty. We didn’t even have a blanket or anything. It wasn’t planned.”
“I put my head on her shoulder once we were alone, and she felt me shiver because it was getting colder,” Winter shared with a smile aimed at her wife.
“I wrapped my arm around her, and we stayed like that for a few minutes.”
“Then, I felt her kiss the top of my head,” Winter explained. “And I knew we were finally about to do this thing we’d been dancing around, so I looked up and kissed her on the lips.”
“We’ve been together ever since,” Maia said.
“When did you tell her you loved her for the first time, Maia?” Larissa asked.
“About a month later. It slipped out when we were on the phone, hanging up. She said it back, though, and we said it in person the next day at school. We whispered it, and it became our thing to whisper it whenever we couldn’t say it out loud.”
“And when did you tell people that you were together?”
“Um… My parents and Mike knew around February. He wasnothappy and sulked a bunch at first, but then he said that it made sense that she didn’t want to be with him because she was gay. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that she was bi, so it was really justhimthat she didn’t want to be with.”
Winter laughed and said, “More like I was already in love with his sister, so I couldn’t be with him or anyone else.”
“Right. That.” Maia smirked.
“I came out around the same time to my parents, but we didn’t come out at school. I was graduating, and I didn’t want her to be there by herself dealing with it, so we decided to keep it to ourselves until we were out of high school, and we did.”
“Then, she went to college,” Maia said.
“How did that go, dating with one of you still in high school and the other one in college?” Harlow asked.
“Fine. I went to a state school and commuted from my parents’ house my freshman year to save money, so it was okay. I moved my bedroom into their basement for some privacy, which helped, and they treated me like an adult, so we didn’t have many issues with distance or anything.”
“And I went to the same school the following year.”
“How much did being with Winter inform that decision?” Larissa asked.
“It didn’t. I sucked at school, so it was the only place I was getting into,” Maia replied. “She was great in school but couldn’t afford anything more than a state school, so we both ended up there for different reasons. It worked out, though. I commuted my freshman year. She had an apartment at that point, so I mainly stayed there, and we moved in together officially before I started my sophomore year. We got engaged after I graduated and have been married for three years now.”
