Page 17 of Unintended You

Everyone had a different threshold for what exactly constituted “fuck you” money, but the number was always “a lot.” People always thought getting money was the hard part. It was also keeping it.

She smiled again. “She still hasn’t given up on trying to convince me to live like her. She said that it wouldn’t matter if I fell for him because love shouldn’t be involved with marriage. She said love just ruins it. You should marry a person you think you can stand for at least five years.”

Knowing Allegra, that wasn’t even close to one of the worst things I’d heard her say.

Not remotely close.

“You gonna take that advice?” I asked, wiping the oil and vinegar off my hands.

She snorted. “Fuck no. No one should take any advice she has to give. The only thing she’s successful at is convincing men that she’s everything they want her to be. She’s damn good at that.”

She had been. My dad had been completely snowed. I had no idea what she’d said during the courtship to put those stars in his eyes and make him turn into a completely different person, but she could probably teach some kind of course.

“Did she teach you what to do?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s all she’s been doing my whole life. I consider it cosmic irony that she got a lesbian daughter.”

Lesbian?

The word made all my other thoughts come to a screaming halt as it echoed in my brain like the clang of a bell.

Lesbian, lesbian, lesbian.

“You’re a lesbian?” I blurted out.

She raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t know?”

No, I didn’t know! How would I have known? She would never talk to me!

Instead of yelling at her in this sandwich shop, I clamped my lips shut and shook my head.

“You really didn’t?”

Seriously?

“No, I missed you parading around with your ‘I’m a lesbian’ T-shirt.” That made her snort.

“Guess I wasn’t obvious enough. Well. I am. Is that a problem?”

This would be the time to come out to her and say that I was also a lesbian.

I just shook my head again.

“Good. Anyway. That’s not an obstacle to marrying a man, apparently.”

She kept going on about other things Allegra had said, but I couldn’t think past the lesbian part.

Questions fired off in my head like the finale of the Fourth of July fireworks, all loud and all overlapping.

When had she known? Had she had a girlfriend before? How did she know? Which actress had been her lesbian awakening? What were her thoughts on Renee Rapp?

So. Many. Questions.

I did my best to pretend I was listening as we sat at the booth with our empty sandwich wrappers. There were other people who needed our seats, so we threw away the trash and left, my mind still obsessed with that one word.

“You okay?” she asked as we paused outside the shop.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Um, I have a ton of things to do today.” I needed to get away from her and process all of this in a place where she couldn’t see me.