Honestly, I was just as apprehensive as he was. I mean, what happened the last time I was alone together with a boy I hadn't known very well? With arms crossed, I took a miniature step backwards as he continued to make his way further into the room. Lucas seemed harmless enough to everyone, but so had Devin to some degree. Devin was the picture perfect student, a poster child of what every high school student should've been. Nobody would have thought that his reputation was a castle built on lies, that was just a ludicrous thought.
"Stop." I reached behind me, feeling for something I could use for defense in the worst case. "I'm going to scream."
If Lucas was the same type of person, what was stopping him right then? Nothing at all. Even if he was smaller, he still had more than enough strength to pin me down and cover my mouth. Maybe it was the lack of sleep altering my judgement, but my mind seemed to be convinced that he was lying about who he was, and that lead me to assuming the worst.
"Whoa. Hold on, hold on." he took a step back. "I just want to ask you about your girlfriend."
Just as suddenly as I had put it up, my guard dropped like a poisoned fly. I mean, it was pretty obvious Lucas wouldn't hurt someone. Neither his body language or attitude said it, yet I had jumped the gun and proclaimed him something that most men would never be, or would want to be. Taking a sharp breath, I made my way to my bed and fell onto it back first. Now staring at the roof, I was left waiting for him to speak up.
The weight of the mattress shifted as he sat next to me. "How did you know that you liked girls?
"I didn't at first. She came out of nowhere and told me that she was in love with me." I felt the tingling fall down my spine as her smile that night came to mind. "I never saw her the same after she kissed me that night, and before I could realize it myself, I was just head over heels for her."
The fact of the matter was that I didn't really know if I was a lesbian or bisexual, nor had I really cared all that much. If a time was to come where my orientation was going to be tested, then I would've dealt with it then, but it hadn't yet. Being in love with Grace was never about gender or orientation, she was so much more than that. She made me feel so much more than that. All the times I felt like I was living for nothing vanished when I saw her. I was given purpose.
"But I think it kinda works the same way as any crush, straight or not." I rolled onto my side and caught an unexpected smile in the full-length mirror that was embedded into the wall. "Why do you want to know?"
Lucas turned to his left, bringing his knee onto the bed as he ran his fingers through his curly brown hair. ". . .I think I'm gay."
I already had a vague idea, and he confirmed it. The question he started with honestly spelled it out, but I hadn't been totally sure. I wasn't about to say he was gay and be wrong. I mean, I wasn't a man, but I think that would be soul-crushing to a straight guy. Wouldn't it? Maybe it'd been my own inexperience with love or a lack of delicacy, but a small laugh had fallen out of my mouth and into his ears.
Pushing myself up, I came face to face with his vaguely reddened face and embarrassed expression. In no way did I mean to offend him, I just thought his nervousness was kind of cute. Lucas was trying to come out to me in so many ways, and I hadn't made it any easier on him. Just thinking of the night Grace told me her own feelings, I was able to remember how nervous she was herself.
Being open and showing feelings were hard enough, even to strangers. When it came to sexuality and preferences, it only became that much tougher. The hardest part comes when you have to tell someone that you see every day that you aren't normal. You aren't what they expected you to become, to grow into. You're different from the vision they had of you and for you. You've torn down their fantasy of your life being normal and perfect, they no longer know what to imagine or what to see.
Some parents are open enough to wrap their head around it, while other parents aren't. Grace's were a good example of being completely and utterly against it, but there was a grey area, too. Right in the middle of acceptance and dissension lied a middle ground, a happy medium. It was neither approval or disapproval, but more along the lines of settling. That was my dad. He acted like he accepted it, but it became obvious that he never understood it. My choices or my feelings
It was the fact that he would never see me in the way he idealized me again. I wasn't going to have his ideal life, his ideal husband, or even his ideal grandchildren - if I wanted to look that far ahead. I wasn't going to be what he wanted me to be, and that had ultimately been the root of it all. I was unable to paint the landscape he had in his head, and it caused a rift to come between us.A rift that only grew larger with every passing day.
He tried to accept me as I was, and I respected that, but it was clear that it wasn't the same as it used to be. The person I went to for everything, from homework to just talking, was suddenly gone all the time. He worked, and then worked some more. When he got home, he went straight for his bedroom without anything more than a wave and a smile. If I was lucky, I would get acknowledged with some small talk. The distance became more and more obvious, and then the string finally broke.
The man I looked up to for so long hadn't said a word to me, his own daughter, as I sat in the hospital, devastated beyond words. That was the end of us. He wasn't my father any longer.
"Can you throw away your happiness to see someone you like feel better?" I tried to explain in the best way I knew how, turning towards him. "If you actually are gay, then are you willing to say goodbye to your so-called friends for someone you like? Could you cut your ties with your parents for someone you like? Can you handle the world being your enemy, if that's what it takes?"
Maybe I was just pushing my own experiences onto him, but they all held some level of truth, opinionated or not. I had always been ready to throw away my happiness to see Grace smile, even if she would've hated to hear that. As soon as the rumors spread, my alleged friends all seemed to vanish without so much as a single letter. I loved Grace at the cost of losing my father, and I felt the worlds judgement along with his. I felt the stares, I heard the laughs, and I heard every last pejorative, disparaging comment thrown at me.
"That's the thing. I've never been with anyone." his eyes veered away. "I'm just. . ."
Again, maybe it was forcing my own experiences on him, but his own feelings had been similar to mine in some ways. I had always crushed on boys, but the thought of being with another girl was never a thought in my mind until Grace made it one. Even if I wasn't sure of my feelings for her, or other girls, I knew that she was definitely a thought in my mind. Not as a girl or friend, but as a woman, as something more than just a friend.
His eyes returned to my own, revealing a touch more nervousness than they'd shown before. "Would you let me kiss you?"
"Wha-. . .No." I jerked back slightly. "Why would I let you do that?"
"I want to see if kissing a girl'll change how I feel." he pulled himself closer, still looking. "You're the only one I can talk to about this. And besides, your girlfriend won't even know about this."
I mean, I couldn't, right? I made a promise to Grace that I would wait for her, and while I did more than I would have liked with some others, I was done with that. As bad as I felt for Lucas, I wasn't going to let him kiss me, in any fashion. While I might have come off as rude about it, that wasn't my intent. I was just not interested in kissing anyone, boy or girl. I wasn't going to kiss anyone unless she showed up right in front of me.
"She won't, but I wi-"
Before I could finish, a pair of lips that hadn't belonged to myself or Grace had unexpectedly been attached to mine, they connected with my own at full speed. Through moments of shock, I slowly came to realize that Lucas hadn't listened and decided to force his kiss onto me. Motionless, as still as death, I lied defenseless for the second time in my life as a boy took advantage me. There was just one difference this time: I could move.
Except, everything went black. Everything went black and all I could hear was myself screaming. . .
+++++
"Gorgeous." Grace shook her head as I passed through her door.
As I sauntered across her line of sight, I could feel those green eyes tear holes through me, just like they always did. She never tried to hide it, and it wasn't looking like she was going to stop. Besides, If I was being honest, I kind of enjoyed it. Maybe she knew it, and that was why she did it, but it still hadn't changed the fact that I really hadn't minded her eyes on me. It let me know that she was still watching, that she still had her eyes on me the same way I held mine on her.
Kicking the door closed, her long strides marched her forward as she seemed to rocket towards me with a ferocious closing speed. Grace pushed me into the wall and just like a Cobra, she striked as her lips planted themselves onto mine. In just those few seconds, an eternity passed, an eternity in which my blood felt like it was made up of gasoline and it was ready to catch fire at any second.
As the ends of her hair fell into the opening of my shirt, her teeth lightly scraped away from my bottom lip while her hands ventured to my waist. Bored of my lips, her mouth went from cheek to cheek, kissing and nuzzling anything her lips met. The warmth and the softness of her lips, her touch, it was always the same. The warmth she held and the warmth she gave to others was something that never faded, it was as though she was born to give others hope. People like me.
"I've been waiting all day to do that. . ." Grace pulled back, biting down on her lip with an added devilish smile that decorated every feature she adorned. She turned as she bounced towards the kitchen, nearly skipping. "Are you thirsty?"
"I'm not sure if I want to answer that." I fell onto her couch, watching as she came in with a pair of Brisk tea bottles.
"Oh? Why's that?"
"It's a double-edged sword. That's like me asking which celebrity you'd sleep with, or something." I took the tea from her. "You'd say none just to please me, but we both know that there's a celebrity we'd sleep with."
Grace took off the cap to the bottle and brought it to her lips, downing half of it in one go. Bringing the bottle down onto her knee, she took a deep breath and then suddenly burped out of nowhere before grinning like a possum eating a sweet potato. She looked accomplished, satisfied, as though that drink had been the refreshment she was looking for. Was that how Grace saw me? Because that was how I felt when I was around her. I felt satisfied. I felt accomplished.
I felt like I had the world in my hands.
"That's an easy one. Selena Gomez." Grace leaned back and locked her sights onto me. "That woman makes my ovaries explode."
Grace had managed to elicit a smile with that last comment as I took a drink of the tea myself. Immediately, the cheery coldness of the drink hit the bottom of my stomach and I knew exactly why Grace had looked the way she did. It hit the spot, so to speak, way more than I expected it to. Had it been that warm outside, or was it because I was with her? Had the woman sitting across from me given me a fever?
"I see how it is. You wait an entire summer to tell me that you're in love with me, but you're willing to give yourself up in seconds for her?" I teased her, just like had always done to me.
"Well, you know, it might have taken longer if wasn't for her." Grace set the bottle down as she tapped her leg with her index finger. "Watching her on TV kind of made me realize that I was different. She made me notice that I was looking at other girls around me more than the boys. When you grabbed my hand, I realized it was the same thing that you felt for boys. I had a crush, it just wasn't on a boy. It was on you."
Grace got onto all fours and began to crawl towards me with a pair of glistening eyes and a smile that spoke of her feelings in that moment of intensity. Meanwhile, I was glued to my seat like I was watching a riveting Oscar-winner come closer with every passing second. Honestly, that wasn't far off, either. The way she moved and the way she seemed to be special with everything she touched screamed Hollywood. She belonged on a red carpet and she belonged on the biggest stages the world had to offer. She was that special.
"Thanks to her, I noticed you. Thanks to her, I caught you. Thanks to her, I can call you mine. She opened my eyes and you were there to do the rest, babe. My life wouldn't be the same without you, and I don't know if I would be as happy as I am now. I guess I'm just trying to say that. . ." Grace's hand met my thigh, grasping as it made contact.
"I love you so. fucking. much."
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