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They both hugged me. My dad said he’d briefly wondered about our relationship at the Hallwells. The way I’d watched Dillon eating her cassoulet had reminded him of how he felt when he’d first met my mother. But then, I’d been so suddenly recommitted to Carter, so seemingly in love, he’d brushed the thought aside.

My mother told me her only disappointment was in herself—that she regretted any part she may have played in making me feel like I couldn’t tell them. That it hurt her to think I had worried my relationship with Dillon could have changed her love for me in any way.

When I calmed down, when my mother produced a spare toothbrush and combed my hair at the kitchen island the way she had when I was a child, when I had drained two cups of coffee and was working on a third, life as I’d once known it resumed its practical course. My mom asked me to help her muck box stalls while offering advice on my IRA, and my dad dragged me to the garage to show off the remote-controlled model sailboat he planned on racing the following spring.

I left their home that afternoon feeling like a snake that had shed its skin. It wasn’t exactly a revolutionary coming-out parade, but simply unburdening myself to my parents had lifted a taxing yoke off my shoulders. For the first time in years, I bid my parents farewell, and genuinely meant it when I said I looked forward to seeing them again.

Intent on completing the mission of my trip to Palo Alto, I called Dani and asked if we could meet for dinner. Grab take-out, head to one of our favorite spots along the bay where we could be alone. I’d seen her a handful of times over the course of the year, and the strain in our friendship had begun to feel as if it had self-repaired.

Still, with her, I chose to be more delicate. To attempt to handle the situation with kid gloves. She wasn’t my parents. To Dani, image meant everything.

“I’m sorry?” she blinked through her eyelash extensions after I’d explained for the second time that my relationship with Carter was a sham. “What exactly are you trying to say?”

I kind of felt like:I haven’t been honest with you about my personal life; I’ve been using Carter as a beardwas pretty self-explanatory.

Apparently not.

I tried again. “Do you remember the woman I brought to Christmas Eve? She and I are dating.”

Dani’s mouth opened and closed once—twice—before any sound came out. “You—can’t seriously be trying to tell me you’re a lesbian?”

It was a fair assumption. That was generally what it meant when a woman was in love with another woman. But I hadn’t really labeled it. Was I bisexual? Pansexual? I didn’t actually know. I just knew I loved Dillon. But it wasn’t something I was about to analyze with Dani, so I said yes.

“That—thatgirl?” She uttered the word with such paramount disgust, she may as well have said dyke or fag or homo. “That runner? The blonde woman—with the hair?”

My sashimi lay untouched in its to-go container on the side of the bench where we sat—a place I imagined it would remain, given the direction the conversation was headed.

“Yes.” I held Dani’s stare without shrinking. “That’s the one.” After all, Dillon had hair. She was blonde. She was—had been—a runner. No disputing that.

“You’re telling me you’ve been—been—,” she waved her chopsticks in the air, directing an agitated symphony of exasperation, “sleepingwith her? Like…like…!”

Like sex was the only part of a relationship Dani could comprehend.

She couldn’t fathom the efforts we made to be together. The thousands of miles traveled with short clandestine hours our only reward. She had no understanding of being so in love with someone that their hurts and heartaches became paramount to your own.

But in an attempt to connect with her surface-level grasp of our relationship, I shrugged the affirmative: yes, I was having sex with Dillon.

Her microbladed eyebrows continued to climb up her forehead. “I—I don’t understand. You’re not gay. I mean, you got caught by my mom giving Carter a handjob in the jacuzzi.”

On second thought, maybe it was better to have friends who didn’t know you when you were sixteen.

Dani stabbed a chopstick into her unagi. “How, even? Why?”

I skipped thehow—I didn’t imagine she actually wanted to know—and focused on thewhy. Because Dillon made me laugh. Because the dimples in her smile made my legs weak. Because she was uniquely brilliant. Endlessly talented. Charming. Witty.

Because in two short years, with oceans dividing us in every direction, she’d taken the time to learn everything about me. She loved me for exactly who I was, with every fault and idiosyncrasy. And because when I was with her, my world felt complete.

Dani didn’t hear any of that.

“You’ve seen me naked,” she blurted instead, as if she’d stumbled across some deep epiphany. “Did you—have you ever—did you have the hots for me?”

“What?!” I jerked backward. Was she even fucking serious? That was her concern? That I’d been jonesing for her since we started changing in the PE locker rooms in 7thgrade? “No, Dani.” The words ground through my clamped teeth. “I certainly did not.”

She shook her head, still not hearing me. “I just don’t get it. How do you even have sex with a woman?”

Clearly, I’d been wrong. Thewhy?—not important. Thehow?—everything.

How did a woman have sex with a woman? I daydreamed about the answers I could give her. I could clear my throat, channel my inner Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Ahem,Let me count the ways: