Page 144 of Flipping the Script

He just smiled serenely.

“You were,” he accused.

Quinn shrugged. “I’m neither confirming nor denying anything.”

“Were you in on it too?” I asked my dads.

They exchanged a look. “No,” Dad said.

“But,” Jonah cut in. “We’ve been waiting for this.”

“You have?” Bas and I asked at the same time.

Dad nodded. “For a while now.”

“Really?” I couldn’t help asking.

“I’ll get Bas a chair,” Quinn said, pushing his own chair back and standing.

“No need.” Bas slid into Adam’s empty seat and scooted it closer to mine.

“Where am I supposed to sit?” Adam asked.

“Keep your pants on. I’ll get you a chair.” Quinn patted his arm.

“Better tell them to keep their pants on.” Adam shot me another scandalized look.

“Your fault for snooping in my phone.”

“You expected me to not scroll when I saw you were texting Bas?” he asked incredulously. “The trauma is almost worth it to finally see this happen.” He waved at us. “Almost.”

“You’ve really been waiting for this?” Bas asked my dads.

Jonah nodded. “Do you remember when you startedhatingeach other?” He made little air quotes to emphasize the word.

“The day we met?” Bas glanced at me, a silly grin tilting his lips.

“Try ten minutes after we met.” I smiled back at him, my grin probably even sillier than his.

“Did you really hate each other when you were kids?” Dad asked.

“Yes,” we said in unison.

“I don’t think you did,” he said knowingly. “You’ve always argued and known exactly how to push each other’s buttons. But you only started really disliking each other when you were twelve.”

Was that true? A lot of my really early memories of Bas were of us arguing or trying to make each other mad, but now that I thought about it, there hadn’t been the same kind of animosity there.

I was jealous of him and disliked him for having what I wanted, but did I actually hate him? Or had a lot of my anger been because of everything that happened before we moved here, and not him?

I glanced at Bas, who looked just as pensive as I felt.

“I think that’s when you started realizing you might have feelings for each other. It made everything confusing because you were still figuring out your sexualities.”

We glanced at each other.

That was around the time I figured out I liked boys and not girls. Was it the same for him? Was that when he started realizing he liked both?

“And one thing a lot of people don’t realize is that love and hate are both expressions of passion. They’re two sides of the same coin,” Jonah added. “So it makes sense that you interpreted your feelings as hate because it was safer than admitting it could be something else.”

---