Page 48 of Truly, Madly, Deeply

“I mean, I like girls, I like guys, I like people. But I’ve never dated a girl. I’ve never walked down the street holding another girl’s hand before. I was with Justin for two years before I had my big Aha! moment.” Which was less one moment and more many realizations that had occurred over the course of several months, culminating in her getting wine-drunk with Mom and telling her everything through snotty tears. Because even though her parents were the kindest, most open-minded people she knew, there was still this awful, insidious voice in the back of her mind that had whispered what if. What if everything was different when it was their daughter? “I don’t know if I’m saying any of this right. I guess it just feels like... you know when someone asks if you’ve been somewhere, and you’ve only ever been to the airport? So, geographically the answer is yes, technically, but you feel like a fraud for saying so because you haven’t really been there?”

That’s what it felt like whenever anyone asked her about being bisexual. Like she was Bi Lite.

She chanced another glance at Colin, praying her metaphor had made some modicum of sense, steeling herself for whatever expression she’d find.

Colin’s soft smile nearly bowled her over. “For what it’s worth, speaking as someone who spent a lot of time hanging out in the airport before ever actually exploring the, uh, surrounding scenery? It counts, Truly. And anyone who says it doesn’t?” His lips parted just enough for her to get a glimpse of his tongue tracing the edges of his front teeth. “They can go fuck themselves.”

Her brain glitched, a distant memory of an old computer making an ancient dial-up noise filling her head like static. There was something absurdly hot about Colin saying fuck with his whole chest, so hot she was pretty sure her system had just undergone a hard reboot because of it.

She cleared her throat. “So, you’re, um...”

The airport metaphor was vague and she didn’t want to assume.

“Bisexual?” He filled in the blank for her. “Yeah, I am.” For the first time since he’d sat down, Colin looked distinctly uncomfortable, eyes darting away. “Do you have a problem with that?”

She reared back so fast her chair legs scraped earsplittingly shrill against the tile floor. “I literally just told you I was bi. Why would I have a problem with you being queer if I’m queer?”

The math wasn’t mathing.

One side of Colin’s mouth quirked, but he still had yet to look her in the eye. “People have double standards about all sorts of shit.”

People were hypocrites, sure, but she wasn’t.

“People suck.” Perhaps it wasn’t the most eloquent, but it was honest.

Colin laughed and pressure she didn’t even realize she was holding inside her chest eased. “Yeah. Yeah, they really do.” He stole a glance at her from beneath his lashes. “My ex-girlfriend seemed really chill, you know? Put the A in ally, even had a rainbow bumper sticker on her Beemer. Until I say it’s bullshit queer men can’t donate blood unless they’ve abstained from sex with other men for three months and she shrugs and says well, statistically...” He scoffed. “Talk about a red flag. But I was stupid, and, you know, at that point living in the airport lounge, if we’re still working off that metaphor.”

Justin’s foot had practically lived in his mouth during their relationship, but he’d never said anything that offensive. Nothing that had ever gotten her blood boiling quite the way it was now.

“Your ex-girlfriend sounds like a cunt.” She slammed her computer shut and slid it to the side so she could rest her elbows on the table. “Good riddance.”

A flabbergasted laugh escaped his lips. “Yeah.” He nodded, pink-cheeked and grinning. “I guess she does, doesn’t she?”

Truly smiled around the straw of her coffee, inordinately pleased and buzzing because of it. “She totally does.”

Colin nudged his coffee cup farther to the side so he could mirror her, elbows on the table, leaning in, his gaze steady. “My point, before I got off on a personal tangent, was that there’s no such thing as being queer enough. Action and attraction are two different things. You could go the rest of your life never dating a woman and it wouldn’t change a thing. If anything, I think you’re the perfect person to talk about bi-erasure in media because you spent the last six years in a straight-presenting relationship that was queer because you’re queer. And the gender of your partner? Doesn’t change that.”

The heat inside her chest unfurled, settling into a syrupy warmth that made her swallow hard, like she wasn’t so much breathing oxygen but something thicker and sweeter.

“That’s—” Words were her bread and butter and yet she couldn’t find the right ones to do her appreciation justice. “Thank you.”

Colin did the unexpected, frowning.

She frowned back at him. “What’s with the face?”

“You’re thanking me? For what?”

For saying the right thing. For saying what she hadn’t realized she’d needed to hear until he’d said it. For seeing her.

“For, you know”—she waved her hand in the air—“saying what you said. It was... nice.”

“Nice,” Colin repeated, brow still furrowed. “Why do I feel like you meant to add a surprisingly in there?”

Her chest constricted. She’d bust his balls about plenty, but not this. This wasn’t a laughing matter.

“No. No qualifiers necessary.” She ignored the urge to cross her arms and curled her fingers around her coffee instead, grip so tight the cup crunched under her fingers, plastic lid nearly popping off. “You said what I needed to hear. So, this is me saying thank you.”

“Careful, St. James. That really sounded like a compliment.”

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