I take a deep, steadying breath. I need to tell her the truth. To just rip it off like a bandage. “I think I might have feelings. For you. I mean, IthoughtI did. And after we, you know, I got confused because it was my first time with a girl, and I was curious, and it was really good. Then in New York, I saw you happy with Trinity, and it hurt because I thought maybeyouwere regretting it because you moved on from it so fast. You moved on from me. From us.”
I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t.
“It hurt,” I continue, deciding to power through the rest, “that you were happy with someone else, like our night didn’t matter. I got jealous. But I’m starting to figure out that our night together was good because we already had a connection. I felt safe. And I think that I mistook that connection for something deeper, and I handled it poorly.
“You came out when you were fourteen, and I’m not saying that was easy. Or that your journey wasn’t full of mistakes or mistrials. But you just really seemed to know what you wanted. I’m still trying to figure that out. And I’m sorry. For pulling you into it all.”
Another long, painful stretch of silence. I press my thumb into the point of the archer pendant around my neck and wonder if we somehow got disconnected. The seconds tick by, each one carrying more weight than the next.
“Please, say something?”
Finally, a long, slow exhale comes from the other end of the line. “I’m just trying to process.” I press my thumb a little harder into the point while I wait. “Is that why you slept with Emily? To see if you liked it with someone else?”
I close my eyes. “Yeah.”
“Did you? Like it?”
It was different than with Alex. But it was also different than it was with Tyler and Luka. Different doesn’t equate to bad. “I did.” And that’s the truth. It was the afterward part that made me feel gross and remorseful. But that’s an entirely different set of questions and answers.
“Wow. That’s…” She chuckles, but I’m under no illusion that she actually finds any of this funny. “That’s good. That’s…good.”
I should tell her it was a mistake. Being with Emily. That if I pushed aside my hurt for one minute, it probably wouldn’t have happened. That this is what I get for being a vindictive asshole.
“So,” she says before I get a chance to say anything else. “What do we do now? Pretend like we never happened?”
We.
My heart starts to race, and I feel the sharp edge of panic creep its way in. “I don’t want to do that. I don’t regret it. You and me. I could never regret you. I just want to figure out a way to move forward.”
“Do you still need space? From me?” She sounds so small. So insecure. It makes me hate myself just a little bit more.
“No.” I shake my head, even though she can’t see it. “Space from you made me miserable. I don’t want space.”
She takes a deep breath, maybe of relief. “I don’t want space either.”
I sit on the edge of my bed and reach for my necklace again. “I’msorry I let this come between us. Especially after promising it wouldn’t change things.”
“This isn’t just on you, Jules. I pulled away, too. Figuring yourself out is…it can be a lot.”
“You’re not kidding.”
“Can I ask you something?” she asks after a beat. “Are you and Emily…”
“No,” I say quickly, wanting to put that to bed as quickly as possible. No pun intended. “We’re just friends.”
At least, I hope we are.
It isn’t lost on me that this could be viewed as a trend. Sleeping with friends while I figure my shit out. The only difference is, one of them meant something. The other didn’t. And there’s whole galaxies’ worth of space between the two.
“Hey, so, I’ve been thinking a lot about how you said I don’t tell you things.”
“Alex—”
“And you’re right,” she continues. “So here it goes. On New Year’s Day, after we left Chloe’s, I met up with Simone. We grabbed lunch, then hooked up in the back seat of her car.”
“Oh. That’s…” Not at all what I was expecting her to say.
“There was also this one girl in France, but it was really bad, and it was only the one time, and I didn’t tell you about her because it was kind of embarrassing.”
