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So far, it had never happened. But maybe next week?

Larison harassed me a little more about going out and I bullied her back about taking more time for herself and we ended with laughing about something silly from high school.

“Any other encounters with your nemesis?” Larison asked.

“She’s not my nemesis,” I said. “She’s just my sister’s ex and she happens to be my neighbor. That’s not nemesis material.” At least not in the real world. Maybe if this was a romance and our kingdoms were at war or something. Or one of us was an assassin sent to kill the other. That sounded stressful. I was glad that wasn’t the case. Fun to read about, though.

“Okay, sure,” Larison said. “She’s not your nemesis. But you blush whenever she comes up.”

I groaned and hid my face. “I do not.” I probably did. To be fair, I blushed a lot. It was just a thing with me.

“Mmmm, interesting,” Larison said with an evil laugh.

“Shut upppppp,” I said.

Juniper admonished me for saying that and I apologized to Larison. Called out by my own goddaughter.

“Listen, I need to feed this one, so I’m gonna let you go. But you should do something fun tonight. Promise me you’ll leave your apartment. Even if you just run to pick up pizza or something.”

I sighed, but I agreed. I could do that. I went out of my apartment all the time. It was officially summer, I was free from studying, and my brain wasn’t just exhausted soup sloshing around in my skull like during the school year. There wasn’t a better time to try and live it up.

Instead of just getting pizza and bringing it back to my apartment, I decided to be a little bolder. I brought my ereader with me just in case, but I found a trendy place that had wings and beer and forced myself to go in. Being alone might make me a target, but I was going to have to learn how to deal with going out eventually. This was good practice.

I found a spot at the end of the bar and parked myself. The female bartender smiled kindly while sliding a menu toward me.

“Meeting someone?” she asked.

“Nope. Just me.” I tried not to blush or cringe when I admitted I was by myself.

A few minutes later, I’d put in an order and the bartender had made me something delicious and peachy. I pulled out my ereader and started reading while conversation buzzed around me and various sports games flashed on the multiple televisions. Maybe I could have picked a different place, but this wasn’t so bad. As long as I didn’t get hit on, I’d be set. So far, so good. Apparently hunching over in the corner like a gremlin with my book was giving off enough of a “don’t talk to me vibe.”

My basket of wings, fried pickles, and fries arrived and I dug in.

“Reading anything good?” the bartender asked, nodding to my ereader as I set it down to eat.

“Oh, yes. It’s very good.” I’d gone back to finish up the sapphic vampire novel, but I didn’t know if she wanted to hear about that.

“What’s it about?” she asked, seemingly interested.

“Oh, uh, it’s about vampires,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows. “That sounds hot. What’s it called?”

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I pulled out the packet of reading tabs I used when I flagged my favorite parts in my physical books and wrote down the name and author for her.

“Thanks. I’m always looking for something new and you look like you have good taste,” she said, winking at me.

Please let it be too dark in here so she doesn’t see my blush.

In hindsight, my own queerness had always been there. Every time I’d been around a pretty girl, even from a young age, I’d become tongue-tied. I’d always told myself that it was because beautiful girls and women were intimidating, and I was just unsure around them because of my own feminine shortcomings. I wanted to be them.

Now I knew the truth, and it was so obvious.

“I don’t know about that, but it’s a good book,” I managed to say before she was called away. There, that was normal. See? I could be normal around attractive women. I wasn’t a total lost cause.

I didn’t know if I was ready to hurl myself into the sapphic dating scene, but I did want to date at some point. I’d never had those teen years of fumbling and figuring things out and testing the waters. Now I was an adult and everyone around me had been professionally dating for years and here I was, still trying to figure out what my type was.

My dates with guys didn’t count. My kisses with them didn’t count either. I’d never managed to shove down my own discomfort long enough to go further than a little groping, so I was still inexperienced when it came to sex. And sapphic sex? That was a whole other situation.