17. Romance
In two different ways.
Lydia
Saying this out loud was impossible. Even thinking it was almost too much. Luke was… not entirely wrong. Then again, telling me to talk to Alicia wasn’t brilliant advice. I needed to talk to Alicia, I already knew that. I was just scared.
Being a dumb basic bitch, I could read Chambers pretty easily and that night we sat in his car it was clear he wanted to say stuff to me but he didn’t. He just sat there with me, offering silent comfort I pretended not to need while depending on it.
That wasn’t really something I was used to. Luke’s parents were great but always had a ton of advice they would probably give even if not asked, but they took me in and treated me like one of their own so I did ask because I can be nice sometimes. And my own parents had their version of advice, which was to pray, to offer it up to the lord, to go to church. And that was totally useless. It worked for them but not for me.
Alicia and I were in my room. We were going to take down all the weird decorations we put up. I faced my desk while grabbing the creepy dolls, which we were probably going to burn. I turned towards my girlfriend because even if it was difficult I would rather say this to her than scary dolls that were going to be on fire soon.
“When it comes to sex and intimacy,” I said, only sounding a little distasteful when I said intimacy. “I don’t even really know what I want. I thought about it sometimes, I thought about us being together sometimes, but I tried not to.”
“That must have been difficult,” she told me softly. She sat on my bed. I moved to sit next to her. We weren’t directly looking at each other but were next to each other and our hands were joined loosely.
I shook my head. “Not thinking about it, thinking of this as something that was never going to happen, that was easier for me. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, didn’t have to be disappointed if it didn’t work out.”
“I was the opposite way. I kept hoping that I would become more comfortable. Tried to imagine all the things we could do that would fall under the category of sexual, and I wanted this to be possible, but I can’t.” her hand squeezed mine. “I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize for being yourself.” No one should have to apologize for that, let alone her.
“Yeah,” she agreed with a tired little laugh. “But part of me still feels like I should.”
“Alicia, I’m interested in sex but you’re not and that’s what matters to me.” I held onto her hand tightly. “I mean, there’s other ways to be intimate, right?” Not going to list them because that’s too cheesy, but it could be anything really, a moment between two people, eyes locking, holding hands, a caress.
Sex isn’t an object, it’s not a quantity. And it’s not like I can’t have it on my own. There’s a million ways to be intimate with someone and it’s not my fault other people aren’t creative. Intimacy, closeness, it’s a feeling. And there’s so many of those to be had. In so many ways.
“This isn’t some I’m crazy about you in spite of x, y, and z situation,” I told her next. “I’m crazy about you, full stop, x, y, and z included.”
“A actually,” Alicia remarked, almost smiling when I glanced at her.
“I love you,” I had to say.
“I told you that you don’t have to say it all the time. Ever even, if you don’t want to.”
“I wanted to say it that time.”
Alicia was the only person in the world I didn’t hate. Being with her was my favorite thing. There was always the possibility that will change, I just don’t think it’s very likely.
Once the novelty of liking her and enjoying someone else’s company wore off, I figured I would start hating Alicia at least a little. Some of the time. I couldn’t just hate her zero percent of the time. I wasn’t sure that was possible, but it was okay because whatever percent I did end up hating her would still be the lowest ever. But I don’t hate her.
Even when disagreed. Even when she was being stupid. Not that she was being stupid now. It’s just… I had my suspicions that there were more Kardashians she liked in addition to Kendall. Not even just Khloe. Kylie. Kourtney. Maybe even Kim. And I still didn’t hate her even a little bit.
Alicia makes me understand why people are happy.
* * *
Ryan
From my awesome revisionist standpoint, Luke and my romance went magically and perfectly, right from the get-go. It was a fairytale. Only those could get dark sometimes. I guess the real version wasn’t actually that bad. When it came to Luke and I, we freaked out and we got things wrong but that wasn’t the end. It was just the start. This went how things usually go with Luke: they only get better in time.
Our first time was at Joey Wilson‘s house and it was terrible. We laugh about it now. We say the time that matters was after that. Our first first time sucked and not in the right ways but our second first time was better.
He counts the weekend we met each other in some rundown motel. I don’t.
Yeah, technically, it probably does count. Clothes were off, and there were bodies touching and a good time was had by all. I don’t really care about the semantics or the date in time or whatever. I’m freaking counting the time that matters as in the barn because I want to dammit and who cares if it technically happened when I got back from Chicago and after we already did sexy time things twice.
