Feeling her heart thudding in her chest, Sutton started recording on her phone, placing it on the coffee table adjacent to them. She glanced down at her notes, the comments and questions she’d left for their final topic, but she knew she didn’t need them.
She summoned her strength as she looked up to meet Charlotte’s gaze. “As you know, we’ve been moving through your life, topic by topic, and the only big topic left to discuss is…”
“My romantic life,” Charlotte finished, holding Sutton’s gaze steadily. “I’m ready.”
For just a moment, Sutton looked down at her notes even though she wasn’t really reading them.
It wasn’t as though they’d deliberately saved this topic for last. It had just worked out that way. Because, in a true-to-Charlotte fashion, there had been no tangents about her love life when she recounted anecdotes from her life. They’d discussed her grandmother, her parents, her brothers, her high school years, college years, the beginnings of her career, her move to spending most of her time in D.C. They’d discussed so, so much.
And, for most people, this conversation would have already branched into her love life.
Charlotte was just not most people.
In the most glorious, undeniable, magnetic, and, for Sutton, damning of ways.
She rolled her shoulders as she dove into it. “When was the first time you started questioning your sexuality?”
“Oh, I don’t think I everquestionedit,” Charlotte intoned, both thoughtfully and cheekily.
Sutton couldn’t help but smile even as she shook her head slightly. The answer was so very, very Charlotte.
“But, for the purpose of what you’re asking, I started looking at other girls and registering that I found them… enticing, by the time I was thirteen, I believe.” Charlotte’s tone took on this quality she got that Sutton had discovered in the last few months. Pensive, like she was truly sifting through her memories to give Sutton an answer to the best of her ability.
“When was the first time you had any romantic interaction with a woman?”
“Ah… not to name names, but there was a very lovely cheerleader I went to high school with.”
Sutton lifted her eyebrows with interest. “And what happened between you two? Did you initiate it?”
Charlotte smiled softly. “I did, yes. We were both on debate and were sharing a room during a travel competition when it started. I was nearly sixteen.” She nailed Sutton with a look. “And already captain of the debate team, I might add.”
Sutton, annoyingly charmed, shook her head. “Of course you were,” she murmured, before forcing herself back on topic. “Was this nameless cheerleader and debater a girlfriend? Did you haveanyhigh school girlfriends?”
Sometimes, over the last couple of months, it had been like this between them. Sometimes, she knew the answers, but she needed to ask anyway. To have everything clarified and on the record and official.
“Girlfriends? No,” Charlotte answered. “I had dalliances, for certain. Here and there. The nameless cheerleading debater, in specific, was two years older than I was, so we weren’t made to last after she graduated that year. Which was fine with me.”
“If it was fine with you, you didn’t have any feelings for her? At all?” Sutton asked, and she couldn’t control how much she truly did want to know.
Back when she and Charlotte had met, when they’d startedthis, she had known that Charlotte didn’t engage in relationships. She’d told Sutton that she never sought out a romantic connection, but what Sutton had never asked was if it hadeverhappened. Did high school sophomore debate captain Charlotte Thompson have at the very least acrushon the senior cheerleader she’d apparently hooked up with?
She could already see the answer reflected in Charlotte’s direct, honest expression. “No. I mean… I was attracted to her. I enjoyed whenever we ended up spending time together. But I never got those first-love butterflies or anything like that.”
“Not with her or the others after?” Suttonneededto clarify, and she hated how much she felt like she was hanging on Charlotte’s every word.
Yet that was nothing new.
Charlotte shook her head. “No. None of them.”
Pulling herself back from the edge, back from thinking anything about herself and Charlotte, about Charlotte having those feelings forher, she cleared her throat and asked, “Was that a conscious decision, you think?”
“How do you mean?” Charlotte clarified, eyes narrowing just a bit as she searched Sutton’s face.
She could feel her cheeks minutely heat even as she shrugged. “I mean… you clearly didn’t want to publicly come out until later in your life. And having a romance might have made that more difficult. Do you think it was as simple as, well, you just never truly fell for someone? Or was it a more conscious decision to hold yourself back?”
Sutton’s questions hung in the air between them. Her own heart pounded in her chest at the question—a question she hadn’t written down, but which was rather steamrolling its way through her current thoughts.
Because… she had her own supposition about this.
