Page 30

“Yes and no,” I tell her, trying to keep it together. I’m the one hurting her, so I should get my feelings under control.

“I…Lena, I kissed a guy,” I admit, blurting the words out. They sound so foreign coming from my mouth. My eyes squeeze closed, and tears gather behind my lids.

It’s silent for a moment, long enough that I feel like I need to say something else.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out.

Suddenly, I feel Lena’s hand on my face. Not a slap, like I deserve, but soft.

“Open your eyes,” she tells me.

I slowly obey.

“You aren’t mad at me?” I ask.

She chuckles weakly, tears dripping down her face as she takes her hand away and places it back on my arm.

“Of course I am…but I’m also not.” She sighs and sniffles. “You’re gay. That’s what you’re saying?”

My eyes widen and my face flushes. “No! I don’t…I…” I shake my head.

“Have you ever wanted to have sex with a woman?”

Tears finally break free from my eyes and run down my face. I quickly try to wipe them away and compose myself.

My hands are shaking.

“Ethan,” Lena says quietly, and grabs my hands. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I’m breaking your heart and y-you’re comforting me. That’s not how it should be.” My voice is harsher than I intended, broken up and thick.

“Look at you. You’re hurting, too. It’s not like you cheated on me and hid it from me,” she says, and then pauses. “Right?”

I shake my head. “No, no. I only kissed him once. A couple days ago. I needed time t-to figure out how to tell you, how to do this…how to…function. I haven’t even talked to Nathan about it.”

“Okay. I understand. I’m…fuck, Ethan, I can’t lie. This hurts,” she tells me, her breath hitching. “I hate losing you as a boyfriend. But…I can’t lie, I felt like this might happen.”

“You did?” I ask her, sniffling. I squeeze her hands.

“Yeah. I wanted to believe that maybe you were just asexual but could still love me romantically. We could still do all the things couples do. That I could be happy with that,” she tells me as she sucks in a breath. “I didn’t want to be that girl who perpetuates the idea that a guy who doesn’t want to have sex with me must be gay. I also didn’t want to lose you.”

“Lena…” I whisper, and scoot closer to her.

“Don’t. I need to say this.” She takes another breath and seems to compose herself more. “I didn’t want to even bring up the idea of you being gay because in the back of my mind, I was scared that was the truth, and it would mean losing you. But now that we’re here…now that I know…I also know I wouldn’t be happy even if you were asexual and simply didn’t want to have sex.”

I swallow the lump in my throat and nod slowly, letting her air her feelings.

“Because as much as this hurts, and it hurts like hell…I’m also relieved,” Lena says. “Sex is important to me, and honestly, I hated the fact that every time we got close, we were always tipsy. And that night when we weren’t…how scared you looked? Oh, baby, I felthorrible.”

I shake my head. “You don’t need to. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She lets go of one of my hands and waves hers a little.

“Doesn’t matter. I could tell something was wrong; we both knew something was wrong, and we ignored it. We tried to think of it as something else,” she mumbles.

“I still…I don’t know what it is,” I admit in a whisper.

“I think you do,” she replies. “You’re just scared to admit it.”