Under the Lights

“I guess it’s time,” Bri says wryly, the corner of those lips that haunt my brain curling up just a little. She catches herself picking at the label and stops, lifting her eyes to meet mine. “I was a sophomore. I was dating a guy, and we were fooling around a lot, and I liked him okay. But the truth was that given the choice between hanging out with him and hanging out with my best friend, Candice, I chose Candice every time.

“At first I thought I was just being considerate, making sure not to choose a guy over my best friend or whatever. But then we’d be watching a movie, and all I could think about was how badly I wanted to slip my arm around her. When we were walking around, I’d just find myself staring at her hand, wishing I could take it, wanting us to be some sort of…unit or something. I just wanted more.”

I know those feelings. God, I know them. Even now, I look at all the empty space on the couch next to Bri and wish I were filling it, lying in her lap while she tells me this. To hear her talk about having these feelings for another girl burns me with jealousy, but I also know Bri’s never mentioned Candice, even casually, which suggests this story doesn’t have a happy ending.

Her fingers return to the label on her water bottle, absently picking. She obviously doesn’t like reliving this, but it seems important, so I try to help it along. “So you tried something?” I ask gently. “And she rejected you?”

Her responding laugh is filled with so much pain that I want to hunt Candice down and destroy her. “Nope,” she says with an edge to her voice that could shred that label into ribbons. “She did not reject me. She kissed me back that day, and the next day, and the next. And after every time, she would have some sort of crazy freakout about it—oh my God! What are we doing? I’m not gay! — and then it would just be more of the same. I’d promise myself that I’d stop hanging out alone with her, stop putting myself in these positions, but I couldn’t help it. She’d get drunk and leave me these voicemails begging me to come over, and I would. Every damn time.”

“All while you were dating that guy?”

“I broke up with him when I realized he was no longer the one I was constantly thinking about kissing. But as far as Candice goes, that was somehow the worst thing I could’ve done. She thought that was psycho-extreme, and that it meant I was a lesbian and obsessed with her. For some reason, everything was okay as long as I liked guys and she was my one random exception, but when she thought I didn’t like them at all anymore, somehow that changed everything.”

“But aren’t you bi? I mean, don’t you like guys?”

“I am, and I do, and the fact that she fucking erased that — that she acted like I’d been living some lie with exes I’d genuinely liked — didn’t exactly endear her to me, either. But she flat-out hated that I liked girls, and I didn’t want the fact that I also like guys to make it better. I wanted her to understand that I wanted her, but she was so hung up on what it all meant instead of how it all felt and…” She exhales deeply. “Anyway. We had a big blow-up and stopped talking. She told our friends that I was gay and had come on to her and…” She waves her hand. “I mean, you can imagine.”

“And you didn’t tell them the truth?”

She shrugs. “I guess I could have, but the shit that went down between me and her seemed so secondary to what I’d figured out about myself. And I do like girls. I didn’t want to take that back. I didn’t wanna be all confused and freaked out like she was. I wasn’t gonna pretend about anything like she did. And I haven’t.” She takes a deep breath.

“But I can’t be with pretenders, either. I can’t be with girls who are confused and freaked out. I get that you are and why you are, and I swear I’m not judging you. But I can’t step backward into that life. Not even for you.”

“I understand,” I say softly, and I really, really do. I don’t want to be that confused girl. I don’t wanna be freaked out. Hearing this only makes me crazier about Bri, for being out and proud about who she is. I want to be that girl, too, and I hate that this is a thing about me no one except Josh knows. “I haven’t told Ally,” I admit. “But I will. Whether I come out publicly or not, I’m going to tell her.”

Bri puts down the bottle and wraps her arms around herself, looking more fragile than I’ve ever seen her. “The thing is, Van, if you do, you’ll never be able to pretend this never happened. She’ll always know you’re faking it whenever you’re out with Zander or whoever. You can’t go back with an ‘oops, never mind.’ That’s how it is.”