Page 53 of If This Gets Out

“Yeah. I guess that’s why I’ve been keeping my distance, because I know we could talk about it, and it freaks me out.”

“Why?”

I’m hunched over, and suddenly I’m very distracted by my leather bracelet. “I know it’s not normal, but like, talking about this stuff scares the crap out of me.”

“What do you mean? Like, your feelings?”

“Yep.”

“What’s scaring you about it?”

“I have this fear, I guess. Of like, telling someone I care about something about me, and having them stare at me. Or they’ll point and laugh and not want to be friends anymore.”

“You think I’d point and laugh at you?”

“Well, no, but anxiety isn’t exactly rational, you know? I think a part of it is, I think people like me how I am. And if I change, people might stop liking me.”

“Right.” He leans back. “Well, that’s never gonna happen with me.”

“That’s not true. It already did.”

Ruben pauses, and there’s something questioning in his eyes.

“Listen,” he says. “I might’ve had thoughts about the way things went down, but I never stopped liking you. I can’t promise I’ll still like you if you turn into a serial killer, or, like, a neo-Nazi or something, but otherwise you’re pretty much good.”

“Okay.” I stop myself, then push through. “There’s something I want to tell you, like, about me, but it’s really hard to say.”

“You know, I’ve spent alotof time theorizing about whatmighthave been going on in your head over the last week. I can run some theories by you, and if one of them sounds accurate, you can nod or something? Would that make it easier?”

I shove my hands into my jacket pockets and nod.

“So,” he clears his throat. “You kissed me because you were drunk and you would’ve kissed anyone in the same room as you.”

I don’t move.

“You’ve had kissing a guy on your bucket list and you saw a chance to get it done but hated it and didn’t know how to tell me?”

I keep still again.

“You were so drunk you thought I was a girl and when you woke up in the morning you freaked out because you’d kissed a guy.”

“Keep trying,” I say. “This is helping.”

“Okay.” His eyebrows furrow. “You were feeling bad about not being on that stupid list, and I made you feel attractive, so in your drunken state you confused that feeling with actual attraction.”

“I mean, maybe that’s a little bit of it, but there’s more to it.”

There’s a long pause, and when he speaks, it’s basically a whisper. “What if you’ve figured out that you might like guys, but you’ve been scared to do anything about it, because then it would become real?”

I can’t lie.

Clearly, he gets it. I wonder if he went through a very similar thing, just when he was younger. I wonder if all queer people do.

So I nod.

“Okay, wow,” he says. “You think you might be queer?”

“Yeah.” I wince. “I think I might be bi.”

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