“Why?” I asked again, even though I knew the answer.
I felt so terrified about what she was admitting. All these past weeks it wasn’t my imagination or what I’d dismissed as my usual paranoia. She really was pulling away. I wasn’t gay but reasoned that being with Edi, even if it was beyond just best friends, couldn’t be a bad thing.
She pulled away and held my face in her hands, looking deep in my eyes. “Because the worst thing a lesbian can do is get involved with a straight girl, especially her straight best friend who she’s been in love with for years. I’m just setting myself up for heartache.”
“I’d never hurt you,” I said quickly.
“I know you wouldn’t—not intentionally,” she whispered, kissing the corner of my lips softly. “But you have to be true to yourself. You may love me, Henri like you have since high school, but just because I tell you I’m gay, it doesn’t make you gay, too.”
“I like when you kiss me,” I offered in desperation.
“It’s not enough, babe,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s like those drunk girls at the parties. Just ’cause it’s fun to try something different—experiment—it doesn’t make them gay.” She smiled in that sweet beautiful way I’d always been in awe of. “No one will ever replace you, sweetie. But I have to stop kissing you,” she said even as she touched my face and her lips grazed mine softly. “I have to,” her whisper was strained.
My insides were a mess. I knew it was unfair because what she’d said was true. This wasn’t me. As much as I loved Edi and as much as the thought of making out with her right there on the sofa with both of us completely sober and of sound mind turned me on, she’d just confessed to being in love with me. Somehow I knew I could easily fall in love with her. I questioned if I wasn’t already. That girl crush I’d had on her for so long could’ve manifested into more over time.
I knew I should think it through—be rational—but at the moment, I gave into the fear of losing her. Gay or not, I’d always been attracted to her. She was by far still the most beautiful girl I’d ever met and albeit the only girl I’d ever been attracted to. I decided I did love her.
“I’d never consider you an experiment, Edi,” I whispered, touching her face.
She stared in my eyes and then buried her face in my neck as we fell back onto the sofa together. Lifting her face so she could look at me again, she wore an almost pained expression. “You have no idea how tempting it is to give into years of longing,” she lowered her voice. “Years of wondering what it would be like to be with you like that.”
My breathing accelerated just thinking about it, and I pulled her to me and kissed her. She kissed me long and tenderly, so unlike how we’d kissed at the party or even the night she’d pleasured me. She kept stopping to just stare at me. So far she hadn’t touched me anywhere else, but I was loving it. Loving how she looked at me so deeply with such adoring eyes. No one had ever admired me that way before—no one.
I loved feeling loved.
She stared at me for a moment, playing with my hair then tracing my lips with her finger. “I’ve been warned so much against doing this, Henri.”
I pinched my brows, feeling a little pissed and curious at the same time. “By who?”
She kissed me again softly. “By everyone who knows I’m in love with you.”
I sat up a little, staring at her in surprise. “You’ve told people?”
She nodded. “I had to. It was driving me nuts. Still is, but I was beginning to deal with it better once I knew for sure you weren’t gay.” Her expression fell a little. “I held out hope for the longest time, but deep inside, I knew you weren’t. That first day”—there was a pained look in her eyes suddenly— “the day after I told you I was gay and what I’d always known was confirmed, that you weren’t, I was a complete mess. I don’t even know how I got through practice.”
My eyes opened wide as my heart clenched. “The day you cried and said it was because your coach had been hard on you?”
Taking a deep breath, she nodded again. “If I do this, Henri”—she lowered her hand down my leg—“because, God, I want to so bad.” Her fingers touched me gently, and already I knew I wanted her to continue just as badly. “You have to promise me this will only happen one time. I’m already having a hard enough time dealing with the fact that you and I could never be.”
“We could try,” I said, wanting to lessen her disappointment.
She shook her head adamantly. “They said you’d say that.”
“Who is they?” I asked, feeling even more annoyed and pretty certain I knew who they were. At least one of them anyway.
“I have friends who’ve gone through similar situations.” She traced my lips with her tongue, and I felt the tingle all over. “It never ends well. As much as you’ll enjoy this”—she smiled a bit playfully—“and trust me you will, it doesn’t make you gay. I’m playing with fire here. If you were just any straight girl wanting to try, that would be one thing.” She regarded me with those adoring eyes again. “But I’m in love with you, Henri, so we have to make sure this never happens again.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure I completely agreed, but I understood why she’d be afraid for this to happen again. Before I had more time to think about it, she began kissing me with more passion. The emotion she was feeling was a palpable thing. As much as it was enjoyable, at the same time it was terrifying—terrifying because I did not want to hurt her.
Pushing away the thoughts that those tears she’d shed that day she seemed so broken up were because of me, I concentrated on just enjoying that moment with her. It was more than just an experience. It was our moment. Something I now knew was the very thing she’d been dreaming about for years. I should’ve been beyond flattered, and even through the amazing ecstasy of it all, it only masked the feelings of sheer terror, even as my body quivered, feeling her lips and tongue doing the unspeakable to me.
When it was over, I lay there, breathing heavily as my body continued to feel the effects of such an amazing experience. Edi crawled up onto me and kissed me. Was I supposed to do something in return? I had no idea, but it felt so amazing, so I brought my hand down to touch her and she stiffened.
“No way,” she said, stopping my hand.
“Why not?” I asked, confused. “This may be new to me, but I know enough that, just as in any relationship, this should go both ways. It’s give and take. Not just take. Both partners—”
She pressed her finger against my lips, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply as she had earlier. “That’s just it, Henri.” She opened her eyes and pouted at me. “We’re not partners. Doing the give-and-take thing will make it feel like we are. This,” she said, licking her lips then closing her eyes with a smile, “was just giving into my longtime fantasy of doing that to you. But it can’t happen again.” She pecked me one last time then smiled. “I do wanna thank you though. That was as amazing as I thought it would be.”
The disappointment weighed heavily, but I knew she was right. Giving into desire was one thing, but actually being in a lesbian relationship would be quite another. The last thing I’d wanted was to hurt her, and I just wasn’t sure if I was ready for the enormity of something so life-changing. I pulled her to me as she began to sit up and kissed her back. “Thank you. That was amazing.”
~~~
Edi and I hadn’t been intimate again since our promised one time. But things did change. In the privacy of our own apartment, Edi had begun acting sweeter. She was pecking my lips hello and goodbye now—as a girlfriend would versus my bestie—and I embraced it. But I knew how apprehensive she was about it, so I dared not ask what was happening. I just went with it.
Then came Christmas break. I couldn’t go back home to be with Gemma because, unlike Edi, I’d had to get a job. Her parents were paying for our rent, and it didn’t feel fair for me not to pay for anything or to continue to take the money Gemma sent me. It’d taken me forever to get the job I had, and there was no way I
could ask for that much time off so soon. So I’d stayed back while she flew home for the holidays.
That’s when the clusterfuck began.
I didn’t own a car, so I had my friend Cole, who Edi had known I’d gone on few movie dates with before, help me pick out my little Charlie Brown Christmas tree. He helped me get it upstairs and decorate the small apartment then hung out.
Feeling bad that I hadn’t been able to go home for the holidays, Gemma showed up unexpectedly to surprise me. She found Cole and me sipping on eggnog, listening to Christmas carols while decorating the tiny apartment, and came to her own conclusions. When she got back home and Edi asked her about the trip, she told her about interrupting my romantic holiday decorating evening with my “boyfriend.”
When Edi called, I’d been missing her so much I literally giggled when I jumped on the bed to take the call, ready to cozy up for a long night of talking.
“Hey,” I answered all giddy and so ready to hear her voice.
“Cole’s your boyfriend?” she asked, her words strained.
Instantly, I sat up. “What?”
“I was over at Gemma’s just now to ask her about her trip, and she told me everything.” She sounded angry but at the same time incredibly hurt. “He spent the night?” her voice suddenly gave. “Please tell me you didn’t fuck him in my bed.”
“Edi no,” I said, my heart sinking. “I didn’t—”
“You had a cozy decorating night in our apartment?”
“I asked him to take me to buy a tree, and he helped me get it upstairs.” I clenched my hand against my chest, my own voice beginning to break. “But we didn’t—”
“She said you called him your boyfriend.”
“I didn’t; she did.”
“But seriously,” her words broke. “You brought him back to our place?”
“I didn’t bring him—”
“Did you sleep with him?”
“No! And he didn’t spend the night!”
“Did you make out with him?” She was crying now, and my heart broke for her. “Be honest with me, Henri. I’ve been honest about everything with you. My feelings for you. My fears. Did you kiss him?”
My heart was hopelessly strangled, but she deserved the truth, even if my kiss with Cole was so insignificant. She was right. I needed to be as honest with her as she had with me. “He kissed me goodnight.”
The line clicked and I fell back onto her bed and cried.
Chapter 4
Edi wasn’t even speaking to me now. We hadn’t spoken since that awful night, and she wasn’t returning any of my texts. Of course I was a mess.
I’d since torn down all my decorations, and on New Year’s Eve, I was still moping around with my heart at my throat. The fear of losing my best friend was completely suffocating. All I wanted to do was lie around and cry.
That was the night I had my first real conversation with Aaron Lomelli. Unlike Edi, who just like in high school immediately had a ton of friends here, I’d only made two friends since moving to Michigan: Maggie, my Chemistry lab partner, and Eileen, another girl in my psych class who liked borrowing my meticulous notes. The three of us got pretty close, and during one of Edi’s away games a few weeks prior, while I was sitting around being a hermit doing my homework alone on a Saturday, I accepted their invitation to hang out. We’d gone out to the movies along with Eileen’s cousin Beatriz. That was actually the first time I met Beatriz’s brother, Aaron. I’d said no more than hello and thank you to him that first time. I’d barely made eye contact with the guy. My first impression of him could be summed up in five words: completely out of my league.
For starters, he was much older than we were. Well, older than any of the boys I’d ever dated. In fact, I wouldn’t even put him in the same category as any of the immature boys we’d ever gone out with because he wasn’t a boy.
He was a man in every sense of the word.
For one, he was a fireman built like a truck. He owned his own home, and he and his longtime high-school sweetheart had been together forever. From what Beatriz had mentioned, he’d even started up his own business and he drove an expensive sports car.
Cole didn’t even own a car. The night we’d gotten my Christmas tree and any time we had gone out before that, he’d borrowed his dad’s car. As much as I’d avoided making eye contact with Aaron that first time, Maggie and I had to practically wipe the drool off our faces when we had snuck in a few good looks. As nice and polite as he’d been, he had such a presence about him. Intimidating, but in a good way, would be the best word to describe him. Then there was his voice. Jesus Christ in heaven, it was so deep and resonant Maggie and I could listen to it all night.
He’d picked us all up and given us a ride back to Beatriz’s house from the movies. While we’d only been introduced and he disappeared quickly to Beatriz’s dad’s man cave out back, Maggie and I had fun ogling him as much as we could. One thing was as clear as anything would ever be. The man was as unattainable as he was intimidating. I couldn’t even imagine holding a conversation with someone like him for very long without making a complete ass of myself.
Before my heart-wrenching phone call with Edi about Cole, I’d already agreed to go to Beatriz’s house for New Year’s Eve. They were having a big family gathering. Of course, Eileen would be there, and they’d invited Maggie and me over. But since Edi’s phone call, I wasn’t feeling up to anything.
Then Eileen called, and if one word could describe her, it was unrelenting. “C’mon, Henri. What else are you gonna do all by yourself?” she asked with a huff. “Just come hang out. My aunt and uncle have a ton of food, and there’ll be fireworks to ring in the new year.”
Twenty minutes later she’d persuaded me to come. I really did need to get out. It beat sitting around at home alone, drowning in despair. I ended up showing up to Eileen’s family gathering after Maggie’s friend offered to give us a ride. Her cousin Beatriz said we could spend the night and the next day one of her relatives would give us a ride home. My heart was still aching about Edi. I wanted nothing more than to have her home so I could tell her how insignificant Cole was to me compared to her. She wasn’t just my best friend in the world—ever. She meant everything to me. I still wasn’t sure if I was ready to make that big change, but I’d since decided, if she asked me to, I would. I hated that she thought I’d brought someone to our place to be with. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I’d freak if she brought another girl back to our apartment with her.
Being with the girls and getting to ogle Aaron once again was the distraction I needed. Despite his girl at his side, I was able to shake off the angst I’d been feeling over not hearing from Edi momentarily. I went along with Maggie as we drooled over Aaron together, once again forgetting about Edi for at least a few hours. I almost felt guilty about how easily I’d been distracted watching Aaron. But I think I sort of forced myself. I needed the escape. It was pathetic actually. His girlfriend was exactly the type I expected a man like him to be with: beautiful, with a body to match. She was like a blond version of Edi—perfect hair, perfect clothes—and everyone seemed to love her.
Beatriz sidled up to me just as I’d been eyeing Aaron and his flawless girlfriend. “My older cousins, the ones who went to school with them all said it wouldn’t last, but here they are.” She smiled, glancing in their direction, pleased. “I love Mia. She’s like the sister I never had. The only reason they’re not married yet is because, at first, he worked so hard to get into the fire academy, and then once he became a fireman, since he only works ten days out of the month, he was determined to start up his business on the side. So that kept him busy too. Now that he has both things squared away, I’m pretty sure it’s just a matter of time before he proposes.”
I watched them, trying not to stare too much, wondering if maybe tonight he’d ask her. Like Edi, Mia was one of those pretty girls who didn’t seem full of herself. She laughed a lot, and it was obvious why the whole family liked her so much. S
he seemed very sweet and deserving of a guy like Aaron. I found myself hoping he asked her that night. I thought it’d be cool to witness something like that firsthand, but he never did. Still, I was thankful to have a distraction because, after not being able to get a hold of Edi for days, I felt so desperate I’d called Daphne, whom I knew Edi might hang out with. I’d done this before going over to Beatriz’s party. I wanted to know if Daphne would be hanging out with Edi on New Year’s Eve. She said she was. That made me even more grateful for Beatriz’s party. It would definitely help snuff the temptation to continually call Daphne for updates.
Later, after ringing in the New Year, I snuck back into the kitchen for another helping of menudo. I stopped and almost crept back out when I saw Aaron alone in there, fixing himself a bowl, but he turned and caught me before I could do an about-face. Admiring him from afar was one thing, but being alone with him this close was nerve-wracking. Not to mention breathtaking.
“Hey,” he smiled, making my insides mush. “Coming back for seconds?”
I nodded, a little embarrassed that he’d noticed this wasn’t my first trip to the giant menudo pot. “Yes, it’s delicious.”
He smiled even bigger. “I’m probably biased, but my mom’s menudo is the best.”
“Well, I’m not biased.” I said, smiling nervously. “And I have to agree with you. It’s one of the best I’ve had.”
“You’ve had it before?”
The expression he wore was a bit strange. But I was used to this. Like so many others, Aaron, too, was likely wondering if I were Hispanic.
“Yes, I have,” I explained. “Lots of times. I grew up in East Los Angeles, where Hispanic food is prevalent.”
He nodded with a knowing look. “But you’re not, right?” He reached for my bowl after putting his own bowl down, and I handed it to him. “Hispanic, I mean.”