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  “I think you just gave that guy a heart attack. You’re so bad.” Stella shrugged.

  “If he’s scared by lesbians than I have some bad news for him. We’re everywhere.” I snorted.

  “So, what did you think about Tris and Polly? They’re really cute, right? I think we could be friends with them,” I said and Stella put down her menu.

  “Polly is adorable. I feel bad about Tris, though. I can understand why she was a little suspicious of us at first.” It was a reminder that not everyone was as accepting as our friends and families.

  “I think we could be friends with them. It would be nice to have gay friends.” I agreed.

  I told her about my mom’s little “talk” she’d had with me last night and she laughed.

  “My dad hasn’t said anything to me. I guess he figures that since I’m going to be in college he might as well not bother.” I wish my mom had felt that way.

  “Has she backed off about the practice essays?” she asked me after we ordered our food.

  “Not at all. Her new idea is to have me write about being gay. She thinks they’ll be more eager to accept me because of ‘diversity.’” I put the word “diversity” in air quotes.

  “She did not.”

  “Swear to God. And I might actually do it. I mean, I have a lot of things to say about and it’s better than writing something stupid that I don’t care about.” Our dip came and Stella dove for the first chip.

  “That’s a good point. Maybe I’ll take a leaf out of your book.” I snorted.

  “I’ll let you take a leaf out of my book anytime, baby.” Stella threw a chip at me.

  “That was a terrible innuendo.”

  “Made you think about me naked, though, didn’t it?” Her face went red.

  “Everything makes me think about you naked, Ky.”

  I finally agreed to go over to Kyle’s house for a dinner with her family on Sunday. I figured the sooner I got it over with, the better.

  Kyle opened the door and gave me a nervous smile.

  “Don’t freak out,” she whispered as she held the door open.

  “Stella, it’s so nice to officially meet you,” Kyle’s mom said. “You can call me Kate and this is my husband Cody.” I shook both of their hands and gave Kate the flowers I’d picked up at the grocery store on the way over. I figured it couldn’t hurt to suck up a little.

  “These are lovely, thank you,” Kate said as I followed Kyle into the living room. After Kate put the flowers in some water, we all sat in the living room and I prepared to be grilled.

  Kyle took my hand and squeezed it. I stole a glance at her parents, but they didn’t seem too upset.

  “So, Stella, Kyle says you’re a big reader,” Kate said.

  “Yeah, my father’s an English professor so it was kind of inevitable.” I laughed a little nervously and then Kate started asking me about my favorite books and that opened up a book discussion and I finally started to relax.

  Dinner was roast chicken with mashed potatoes and salad and it went off without a hitch. Kyle kept squeezing my hand under the table to reassure me that I was doing okay.

  “What are your college plans?” I’d been hoping I could get out of this dinner without talking about that, since it was a sore spot for me and Kyle.

  “I’m not sure yet. My dad doesn’t really care where I go as long as I study something I care about.” Kate and Cody shared a look. I knew that wasn’t their philosophy when it came to Kyle, but I wasn’t going to lie.

  There was a bit of an awkward silence until Kyle asked for her mom to pass the potatoes and then mentioned that I was a cheerleader, so they started asking me about that.

  “Mom?” Kyle said as we cleared up the dishes and took them to the sink. “We’re going to hang out in my room, okay?”

  “Keep the door open!” she called from the living room.

  I gave Kyle a look and she winked.

  “Are we ever gonna talk about college?” she said as we both sat on her bed, me at one end and her at the other. Just in case her mom decided to drop in with a plate of cookies or something.

  I looked up at her ceiling.

  “How about we not?”

  “Baby, why don’t you want to talk about it?” Wasn’t it obvious?

  “Because it makes me think about us being over.” She stared at me.

  “Why? Because we might go to different schools and then break up?” Obviously.

  “It’s just . . . it’s not realistic.” She rolled her eyes.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it. We’re not other people. We’re us. And we love each other.”

  “So?” I said.

  “So?! That’s the whole point!” Her mom walked by and poked her head in.

  “Everything okay in here?”

  “Yup, just fine,” Kyle said, her voice on edge. I gave her a smile and she left heading back to the living room.

  “You wouldn’t even consider going to the same school?” she asked, picking at one of her pillows.

  “That seems like a recipe for a breakup.”

  “Okay, so should we just break up now and save ourselves some time?” I groaned.

  “That isn’t what I meant.” She hugged the pillow to her chest.

  “Then what do you mean?”

  “I mean that I don’t want to talk or fight about this, which is why I’ve been avoiding it for so long.”

  Silence fell over us.

  “I’d want to go where you go,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah?”

  She looked up.

  “Of course. I figure one college is pretty much like the next and I don’t think wanting to go to the same place as the girl I love is a stupid reason to pick one school over another. People pick schools for a lot worse reasons.” She did have a point there.

  “But what if it doesn’t work out?” She stared at me and I was uncomfortable with the intensity in her eyes.

  “And what if it does?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that.

  Things were a little weird after that conversation, so I decided to head home sooner than I might have. I had a lot on my mind, but I still gave Kyle a kiss goodbye and told her I would text her later in that night.

  Dad was home and in the living room with a book, as usual. He looked up and must have seen the look on my face.

  “What’s wrong? Did the dinner not go well?” I sighed and crashed on the couch, leaning back and closing my eyes. It felt like this day had lasted forever. I was exhausted and it wasn’t even eight.

  “No, it did. Kyle and I had a little bit of a fight about college. She doesn’t see a problem with picking a college based on where I’m going and I think that’s a recipe for disaster.” He put a bookmark in his book (no dog-earing pages. Blasphemy!) and set it down.

  “Why do you think it’s a recipe for disaster?” Was he serious?

  “Because it’s not a good reason to pick a school.” He gazed at me.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not!” Why couldn’t anyone understand this? It was a known fact.

  “It seems to me that making a decision based on what matters most to you would be the best way to go. So perhaps making a list of the things that matter to you might be a valuable exercise.” I opened my mouth to argue, but then all I could think of was Kyle and I making the list of reasons that girls were better.

  “But what if it ends?” I said.

  “What if it does? You can always transfer, or, if you’re at a big enough school, it might not even be an issue. I’m not telling you to go one way or the other, but what I don’t want you to do is make a decision based on what you think you’re supposed to do instead of what you want to do.” I gaped at him.

  “I don’t want you to look back on your life and wish you’d been bolder with your decisions. Just think about it before you decide.” Huh. I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there for a few minutes and then told him I was going to take a shower.

 
I started making my list as the hot water poured down my back.

  What did I care about? Kyle, obviously. A good English program. I didn’t particularly care about the campus size, or if it was in a city or rural. I didn’t care about activities, although if they had a cheer program, that would be an upside. I guess I just wasn’t that picky. I’d already looked through brochures and online, but no place had really screamed at me. They all pretty much looked the same.

  So if they were all the same, how was I going to make a decision?

  I braced myself against the shower wall and thought until the hot water ran out. Shivering, I got out and wrapped myself up in a towel. Even though it was still early, I put on a pair of shorts and a tank top and got into bed. I texted Kyle that I loved her and goodnight and she sent me a kissy face.

  I scrolled through the pictures of her that I had on my phone. They made me smile and laugh and wish I was with her.

  Was I refusing to consider going to the same school just to be stubborn? Was I depriving myself of being happy for no reason?

  I thought about it all night.

  The morning didn’t bring clarity, but it had distracted me from remembering that it was the Monday after the barn party and everyone was probably going to know that Kyle and I were together. I texted her to meet me by my car, as we’d planned.

  “Hey, I was worried about you last night. Are you okay?” she asked when she got out of her car and hugged me.

  “Yeah, just thinking about a lot of stuff. You ready for this?” She kissed my cheek and took my hand swinging it with hers.

  “You bet, baby.”

  So we got a few yells, a few lewd comments, and a few gay slurs shot at us. Kyle just squeezed my hand and we kept walking together until we had to part to go to our separate homerooms.

  Kyle kissed the back of my hand and said she’d see me at lunch and I went off to class.

  I got more comments from people in class, but they were such poor attempts at insults that I just let them roll off my back.

  Kyle texted me asking how it was going and I sent back that it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Actually, those years of psychological torture had really prepared me for dealing with homophobia. Guess I should go back and thank the bullies for toughening me up.

  All in all, most people didn’t seem to care. Those that did had short attention spans and got distracted or ran out of insults when they saw I wasn’t bothered by them.

  Kyle and I met right outside the cafeteria with Midori and Grace. The two of them had struck up a friendship independent of us, which was great. No stress about them getting along.

  Instead of me sitting with the cheerleaders and Kyle sitting with her friends, we found and empty table and claimed it. Grace and Midori joined us, followed by several of Kyle’s friends (some of whom kept giving me wary looks) and surprisingly, Tris and Polly. A few of the cheer girls kept looking over as if they wanted to join, but they stayed where they were. I didn’t mind. As long as I had Kyle and Midori, I had who I needed.

  “You don’t seem like a lesbian,” Molly’s boyfriend Tommy, said. She admonished him.

  “What? She doesn’t.”

  “And what does a lesbian ‘seem’ like?” Tris asked, narrowing her eyes.

  He opened and closed his mouth a few times and then mumbled something.

  “That’s what I thought,” Tris said. “Anybody else have questions?” Everyone looked really uncomfortable.

  “Okay, if no one will ask, I will. How does scissoring work?” Grace asked. I burst out laughing and so did everyone else. Even Tris cracked a smile. The tension was broken and the rest of the time was much less hostile.

  “You’re welcome,” Grace said in my ear.

  “So that wasn’t so bad, right?” Kyle said as I met her by our cars in the parking lot. Cheer practice had been cancelled so we were going to hang out together.

  “Not really. I have to say, people aren’t very creative with their lesbian insults. I got the same ones over and over. They really need better material.” She snorted and put her arms around me. We rocked back and forth.

  “Oh, I love you, my sexy cheerleader.”

  “I love you, my cute nerd.”

  We hadn’t talked about the college thing today and I had the feeling Kyle was purposefully avoiding it. We were going to have to discuss it at some point, but not today.

  “You wanna go makeout in my car?” she asked and I jerked back from the hug to find her wiggling her eyebrows.

  “Hell, yeah.”

  Making out solved most problems.

  I was trying to give her some space on the college thing. I really thought that she was going to come around if I let her think it through. I didn’t really want to tell her that I was going to end up at an in-state school, or a private school that gave me the best financial aid package. She didn’t have as many restrictions. It would be totally different if she had a dream school she’d always wanted to go to and I would somehow keep her from that. She’d always talked about college in general terms and I knew she didn’t have a preference. So why not go together?

  We could even be roommates, which would just be awesome. Then we could make out in her bed or my bed, or even push them together. I was trying not to get ahead of myself, but I definitely couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  Now that we had tackled all the hurdles (so far) to be together, it seemed foolish to put more obstacles in our way that didn’t need to be there.

  But I was patient. I could wait for her to get there. And while I waited, we could just make out a lot.

  I also hadn’t stopped thinking about what we’d said the night of the barn party. About giving each other everything. It kept me up most nights, actually. I thought about all the different ways it could happen. In a hotel room, at one of our houses, in the backseat of one of our cars. I wanted it to be special (in a non-cheesy way), but there wasn’t really a way to do that. Unless I lied to my parents, which I really didn’t want to do.

  So I was out of ideas. I even looked shit up on Tumblr, but that was no help. If only one of us had an apartment.

  There were a few times over the next two weeks where we got very, very close. We’d gotten shirts off, but hadn’t gone further than that. Either one of us had put the brakes on, or we’d been interrupted for whatever reason.

  “What do you think my parents would say if I told them I was sleeping over at Stella’s?” I asked Grace when we were hanging out while Stella was at work.

  “They would probably say no. But maybe not? If you’re really mature about it, who knows?” That was true. She’d told me to be careful, but maybe . . .

  The potential of being with Stella for the night was enough for me to get up the courage to ask.

  “Mom?” She was in the midst of making dinner and Dad was still at work.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “What would you say if I asked to sleep over at Stella’s?” She froze with a carrot and a peeler in her hand.

  She inhaled through her nose and set both the carrot and the peeler down, bracing herself on the counter.

  “I’d say . . . I don’t know. I know you’re both eighteen and technically adults, but I’m not sure I’m ready to condone . . . that . . . either.” She finally looked at me.

  “I figured. But I wanted to do the mature thing and ask. I would never go behind your back.” She gave me a tight smile.

  “I’ll think about it. Okay? I promise to think about it.” That was good enough for me. It wasn’t a no.

  “Thanks, Mom.” I gave her a hug and asked if I could give her a hand.

  A few days later Stella and I were laying side-by-side on her bed just staring at each other. I never knew how good that could be. Just to lay and breathe next to another person.

  “I asked my mom if I could sleep over,” I said as she walked her fingers up and down my arm.

  “You did? Are you nuts?” I shrugged my shoulder.

  “I didn’t want to sneak around. Because
then if we got caught, I wouldn’t get to see you anymore. And that’s not worth risking. I’d rather have some time than no time. That would kill me.” She nodded.

  “Agreed. What did she say?”

  “The jury is still out. I haven’t brought it up again, but I think she might say yes.” Stella raised one eyebrow.

  “Oh, really? And what if she said yes? Would that mean what I think it would mean?” I grinned.

  “Yes, indeed.” She threw her leg over mine and moved a little closer.

  “So I should get some candles and some fancy sheets and maybe some lingerie?” I almost died at the thought of her in lacy lingerie.

  “As long as you don’t care about my non-sexy underwear.” I had never owned anything made of lace. My undies were utilitarian, not sexy.

  “Ky. It’s not the underwear I want to see. It’s what’s under the underwear.” I giggled.

  “I guess you have a point.”

  “So, you think you’re ready?” She pressed her forehead against mine.

  “Yeah. Are you?” She bit her bottom lip and said one word against my lips.

  “Yes.”

  Three days later, my parents sat me down and told me they would let me sleep over at Stella’s.

  “As long as you are careful, and you are responsible, and are where you are supposed to be when I call or text. I don’t want to find that you two have run off to Vegas or something.” I laughed at that, but she was serious.

  One of the reasons I even existed was that my mom’s parents had forbid her from seeing my dad, so they’d gone around their backs and “been irresponsible.” I mean, she didn’t put it that way, but it was the implication. Fortunately, Stella couldn’t get me pregnant, so that wasn’t one of their worries. And since neither of us had been with anyone sexually, we were pretty safe in that department too.