Dating Sarah Cooper (10 page)

“What are you gonna do?” she asked me, but there was a knock on my door before I could answer.

“Katie, we’d just like to talk,” came my mom’s voice.

I spoke quickly to Sarah, hissing, “I don’t know what I should do.”

“Maybe just let them do the talking first?” she suggested. A harder knock came on my door; this time I could tell it was my dad.

“Shit,” I whispered, and abruptly hung up on Sarah. I crossed to the door, grit my teeth and shook my head, and then unlocked it and yanked it open.

My parents stood together on the other side, and my mom sighed with relief. “Can we talk?” she asked, and I nodded nervously and stepped back to let them inside. Mom motioned for me to take a seat on my bed, and then sat down next to me as Dad placed himself in the desk chair across the room.

“That was very insensitive and tactless of me,” Mom told me, putting a hand over mine gently. “I wanted you to be able to tell me on your own time, but I thought… I guess I thought maybe you just needed to be sure that we were going to still love you.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, unsure of how to respond to that. She was talking like she’d been thinking about this for longer than just a few weeks, or even a few months.

“Your mother had the best of intentions, Katie,” Dad said next. “We’ve talked a lot about how my parents reacted to Kevin, and we wanted to make sure you weren’t afraid you were going to go through that.”

“How long have you been planning this?” I asked at last.

Mom gave a short laugh. “Oh, honey, we’ve had some idea since you were six. You were giving little girls flowers when we’d take you to the park. You picked so many of them we had to pay money to replace them.”

“You were quite the charmer,” Dad joked, and my mouth felt dry.

“I was?” I asked, feeling strangely empty.

“Yes. And it’s been very hard, as a parent, trying to prepare for that. I wanted to do everything perfectly, and so did your dad. We wanted to do everything for you that wasn’t done for Kevin. We even hoped he’d be around more to give you someone to look up to, but unfortunately that hasn’t been the case.” She sighed, and took my hand in hers. “Katie, we love you so,
so
much, and I couldn’t bear the idea of you struggling for all of these years and worrying that we wouldn’t still love you.”

“I never thought you wouldn’t love me,” I interrupted quickly. This was a lot to take in, but I was glad she’d finally said something I had a response for. “I knew you’d be fine with it.”

“Good,” Dad said. “Then we did our job correctly.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Mom added. “I’ve wanted to have this conversation with you for a very long time. I’d thought maybe you’d be ready for it soon, after the whole thing with Austin-”

“Wait,” I interrupted. What they were telling me was finally beginning to sink in. “You thought- I mean, you knew while I was with Austin that-”

“That you were gay? Oh, absolutely, honey. I could see you weren’t happy, and I could see the way you’d light up anytime you so much as mentioned Sarah’s name.”

“Huh.” I stared at my feet, unable to really think of anything to say to that. “That’s… huh.”

“We just wanted to make sure you know that we love you, and that no matter who you love, that won’t change,” Dad told me, folding his hands in his lap. “You can be gay, or bisexual, or even straight, and we’ll love you as long as you’re being who you are, okay?”

“Okay.” I paused, then looked up abruptly, glancing back and forth between the both of them. “Wait, you think I’m in love with Sarah?”

I could handle being mistaken for gay. Hell, I was pretty sure I could handle
being
gay, or even bisexual, if that was what I was. That wasn’t nearly as much as a concern to me as being in love with my straight best friend.

Mom looked confused. “Aren’t you? You two are inseparable.”

“Because we’ve always been best friends,” I insisted. “That’s how being best friends works.”

“Well…” Mom looked like she was struggling not to argue, “I guess if that’s how you feel, honey, then it’s not my place to say otherwise.”

“But you want to,” I accused. “You think I love her.” I looked to Dad, who wouldn’t quite look back at me. “You both do!”

“Well, you two
are
very close,” he admitted.

“Because we’re best friends!”

“Okay, sweetie.” Mom patted me on the arm and got to her feet, ignoring that I was gaping at the both of them now. I let out a forced laugh as Dad got to his feet, too.

“Do you guys even have real jobs or lives, or do you just sit around and gossip about my love life all day?” I asked them, appalled.

Dad raised his hands defensively, already backing his way out of the room. “I’m gonna let your mom handle this one.”

Mom bent over in front of me and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “Sarah’s a great girl. I think you two would be very cute together.”

“She’s straight,” I insisted, shooting her an incredulous look. She smiled back at me.

“I only have one biological child, but Sarah might as well be my second one. And a mother knows.” She tapped her temple with a nod, and then kissed me on the forehead again. “If you need to talk, I’m always here.”

“Oh my God,” I murmured to myself, shaking my head as my mom closed the door on her way out. “They are literally insane.”

I reached for my phone when it buzzed with a text from Sarah a moment later. “
R they still talking to u? Is everything ok?”

I typed out a response, and sent, “
Uh, they’ve always known I liked girls?”

My phone rang seconds after I’d sent the text, and I answered it to loud laughter and an incredulous, “What?!”

“You’re telling me,” I mumbled, shaking my head again. “I don’t even know anymore. Whatever.”

“Do they know we’re dating?” she asked, amusement still audible in her voice.

“Nope,” I said. “And we should probably keep it that way because I’m kind of afraid of what they’d say if they found out at this point.”

“I know, right?”

We spent a few minutes laughing about my parents and how off-the-wall and weird they could be sometimes, and I didn’t really give her the full story. I wasn’t sure of what to make of it myself, let alone what Sarah’d make of it. So I dismissed it all and eventually ended my call with her, and tried to nap for the next hour.

I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept thinking back to Austin, and the way we’d always felt more like friends forcing a relationship rather than a genuine couple with romantic feelings. But that didn’t necessarily mean I was gay… and neither did handing out flowers to random girls at age six. Maybe I’d just wanted a friend. Maybe my parents were mistaken. They certainly were about
Sarah
, that was for sure, and about my being in love with her.

But I couldn’t shake the tense feeling that grew in my chest the longer I mulled over what they’d said. Even if I didn’t have feelings for any other girl in particular, I’d liked kissing both Jessa and Sarah more than I’d liked kissing Austin. Maybe Austin just wasn’t the right guy for me… but what if that wasn’t it? What if my perfect boyfriend was actually a girlfriend? And how on earth was I supposed to know if that was the case? 

I chewed on my lip as I laid in bed, and, finally, I made a decision.

Tomorrow, I’d pay Owen and the LGBT resource center another visit.

Chapter Eight

L
unch the next day marked the third straight school day of Connor acting unnaturally subdued. Ever since the party, he’d sat silently for the majority of the period and repeatedly shot me furtive looks from his spot at our table. But honestly, I didn’t care enough about Connor to ask him why he was acting so strangely. In fact, I cared so little for him that I’d always wondered why he’d never bothered to sit anywhere else, especially given that it should’ve been clear to him by now that none of the girls at our table were ever going to give him the time of day.

But I wasn’t thinking about Connor at all that Wednesday. In fact, I went to Jake almost immediately once I entered the cafeteria, and pulled him aside to ask him for a ride to the LGBT resource center after school. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Sarah’d be willing to give me a ride, but given my reason for going, I decided it’d be best to just keep my trip from her altogether. If our positions were reversed and I knew my best friend and fake lesbian girlfriend was questioning her sexuality, I’d probably be understandably concerned. And I didn’t want Sarah to be concerned. I just wanted her to land her guy and then we could start our fake breakup. Or I was pretty sure that was what I wanted.

Jake agreed to give me a ride, and mentioned needing to talk to Owen about our upcoming plans for October 11
th
anyway, so with that set, I spent the next few hours waiting for the day to end.

At last, three o’clock came. My last class was forced to stay a little late; it was lab day and we hadn’t done a good enough job of cleaning up after ourselves, and we had one of those uptight teachers who insisted upon having everything spotless before anyone could leave the classroom.

I wound up fast-walking down a deserted hallway to my locker with the intention of meeting Jake by his car after I’d put my books away, but I paused right before I slammed my locker door shut, hearing familiar voices coming from within the boys’ bathroom just across the hall.

“When? Next week?” one of the voices said.

Then came the other one: “Yeah, next Monday night. We’ve got a test in our English class we’re gonna study for.”

My eyebrows furrowed. That second voice was Sam, and the first boy sounded like one of the ones from the party. I heard laughter as I stood stock-still, my hand gripping my locker door tighter by the second.

“Man, you know you two won’t be doing any studying, dyke girlfriend of hers or not.” There was more laughter, and a sink came on.

“Yeah, probably not.”

“Juggling two at once, though; that’s gotta be tough for you to pull off. Christine’ll be pissed if she finds out.”

“So she won’t. They don’t talk, anyway.”

“Ohhh… that’s right. Although, maybe you could talk her into letting you have both. You know Sarah’d be up for it.” As they laughed again, I was half-sure I’d squeezed a dent into the metal door between my fingers. My teeth were pressed together so tightly my mouth hurt.

“The perks of hooking up with a bi chick, dude.”

The sink stopped running and I slammed the locker door so loudly it echoed up and down the hallway. Fuming, I rushed to get away from the bathroom, in no hurry to be caught by Sam and his asshole friend. It was no surprise to me that he was such a jerk, and the things he’d said about Sarah and me were infuriating.

But worst of all was that I wasn’t sure Sarah would believe he’d said them.

I was quiet for most of the ride with Jake. The worst part about not being honest with anyone about Sarah and me was that when I
did
have a problem, I couldn’t ask anyone for advice. As much as I wanted Jake’s help, I couldn’t tell him that Sarah was considering going on a study date with a boy who was only interested in using her.

Could I?

“So I saw something today,” he said, toward the end of our drive. He seemed hesitant to share whatever it was with me, but eventually decided on continuing. “It might not even be a big deal, and I don’t want you to think I’m on Jessa’s side or anything with the whole confrontation between her and Sarah when you guys first joined LAMBDA… but I
did
see Sarah talking to Sam today.”

I swallowed hard, not sure what to say to that. “Oh?”

“I think they made plans to hang out or something. It sounded like maybe next week they had a test to study for. I mean, that could be all it is… and if it makes a difference, he was definitely the one who seemed to be pushing it and initiated the conversation and everything, so Sarah could’ve just been trying to be nice. But I just thought you should know.”

I was quiet for a moment. There were several ways to play this. I couldn’t tell him the
whole
truth, but maybe I could tell him Sarah and I were on the rocks and that I was worried she was genuinely interested in Sam. And
then
I could tell him about what I’d heard in the bathroom and get his advice.

But I wasn’t sure I was ready to toe the line like that yet. It was risky.

I swallowed hard, and said, at last, “Yeah, she told me about that, actually. It’s totally cool.”

“Oh, really? That’s great.” He looked a little embarrassed, and I felt my heart sink in my chest. “Sorry if I was being nosy or anything. I should’ve known she’d have already talked to you about it.” He laughed suddenly, and shook his head. “Of course you guys have talked it all out. You’re like the perfect couple.”

“We are?” I raised an eyebrow disbelievingly.

He smiled over at me. “You don’t think so? The rest of us envy the hell out of you. Two pretty, popular girls… we all dream of being part of something like that.”

“Well… we have our ups and downs just like everyone else,” I mumbled.

He just laughed again, and soon enough, we were at the resource center and walking into the lobby. Owen was there at the front desk, and he greeted us with a grin. “Hey, guys! Here to talk about Sunday? I was thinking we’d all meet here about noon, and then set up what we need to for Monday the 11
th
.”

“That sounds great,” Jake agreed, and turned to me abruptly. “That was what I was here to talk about. What were you doing here again, Katie?”

“Oh. Um…” I looked around quickly and spotted the bookshelf across the room. “I’ve been meaning to finish up the first season of
The L Word
, and I thought you guys might have the box set?”

“Of course. We have every season,” Owen told me. “Feel free to go check out the bookshelf and grab whatever you’d like.”

“Cool.”

I left Owen and Jake to talk, and made my way over to the shelves, scanning them uncomfortably. Every now and then, I glanced over my shoulder, wondering how on earth I was supposed to get Owen alone.

And then my eyes landed on a book on the bottom row of the shelf:
How Do I Know? The LGBT Guide for Questioning Teens.

I glanced over my shoulder again, and then hastily grabbed the book and opened it to the table of contents. There was a chapter on childhood signs, a chapter on coming out, a chapter on accepting yourself…

I snapped the book shut when I felt a tap on my shoulder, and spun around to see Owen standing there. He raised both eyebrows at me, reacting to how jumpy I was. Jake was now across the room, flipping through the same magazine Violet had been reading just yesterday.

“Hey, sorry about that,” Owen laughed out. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, fine.” I tried to hide the book title, but he caught a glimpse of it anyway.

“For questioning teens,” he echoed. “You seem a little bit past that, judging from what I saw of you yesterday.”

I glanced over at Jake again, surprised to feel my cheeks growing warm. “Um,” I finally mumbled, “is there somewhere we could talk alone?”

“Sure,” he agreed, nodding. “I’ve got an office just this way.” He pointed down a nearby hallway, and I caught Jake’s attention as Owen and I left the lobby, gesturing to him that I’d be right back. He looked curious, but nodded.

Owen closed the door behind us once we were alone in his office, and we took a seat in two chairs with a desk between us. “Is everything alright?” he asked me.

I realized pretty quickly that this conversation was going to be a tough one. His first question already felt loaded. “Things are… complicated,” I finally said.

“Well, that’s what we’re here for,” he told me. “Ask away, or say whatever you’d like. I’m an open book and I’m all ears.”

I swallowed hard, my gaze falling to the book still gripped in my hands. Finally, I asked him, “I guess I was wondering… How did you know you were gay?”

He didn’t answer at first, and I raised my eyes to him hastily.

“Wait, you
are
gay, right?”

He laughed at that. “Yes, I am.” He sat back in his chair and rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. “I believe I was… hmm. Right around your age, actually. Maybe a couple years younger, at most. And I knew because I fell in love with a boy at my school.”

“How’d you know you were in love?” I asked.

“Well, that’s a question I can’t answer,” he admitted. “When you feel it, you just know.”

“But does that mean that everyone who isn’t sure if they feel it isn’t in love?”

“Not necessarily. Feelings are confusing. There are thousands of books written about one feeling, and all of them say thousands of different and sometimes contradictory things.”

“So you’re saying you can’t help me,” I said.

He smiled at me. “Well, what is it you need help with?”

I chewed on my lower lip. I couldn’t tell
Jake
my whole story; he’d probably hate me. But Owen’s job was to not judge. Still, being honest was always risky.

At last, I took a deep breath, and admitted, “I kind of did something terrible.”

He looked curious, now. “What makes you say that?”

“Because it’s the truth.” I swallowed a lump in my throat, and continued, “My friend and I, Sarah… you met her yesterday. We’re best friends, and about a month ago, Jake mistook us for a couple. So ever since then, we’ve pretended to be one. We haven’t told anyone else the truth.”

I didn’t dare look at Owen, but I heard him shift in his seat. Finally, he asked me, “What made you want to pretend to be a couple?”

“I didn’t want to, but it wasn’t up to me. It happened really fast and Sarah just kind of said we were. She wanted attention from this dumb guy.”

“So she thought being into girls would make her more appealing,” Owen guessed. I nodded.

“I knew it was a bad idea, but I couldn’t go back on it once it’d been done, because everyone was really happy to have two new people they could relate to. I didn’t want to disappoint them. I didn’t want people to hate us. But now it’s been a month and things have gotten… weird. Not to mention this guy she likes is a complete asshole, and I know she’s just going to end up getting hurt but I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Well, have you tried talking to her?” he suggested.

“I don’t know what that’ll do. She probably wouldn’t even believe he said the things he did, anyway.”

“I don’t mean about the guy,” Owen corrected. “I mean about how you feel.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “No way. I don’t even know how I feel. Why else would I be here? Besides, I seriously doubt she’d give up on a guy she’s been crushing on for four years to be with a girl, even if that
was
what I wanted. Which it definitely isn’t, so.” I folded my arms across my chest defensively, watching him with a sharp gaze.

“What’s wrong with wanting that? Are you worried about being rejected?” he asked me.

I forced a laugh. “Uh, I’ve seen enough movies to know what happens when you fall for your straight best friend. I can like girls; that’s fine, but I don’t want to get my heart broken. I’d like to like someone who will like me back, you know?”

Owen tapped at his chin for another long moment. “So from my understanding, you started out faking being gay, and now you’re saying you don’t like your friend, but you’re still worried you might actually be gay for other, potentially related reasons,” he recapped. It felt strange to have it said aloud. Like he was talking about someone else I was watching from afar. Someone who wasn’t me.

“I don’t know,” I said at last. “I’m not sure I should even think about it. Maybe if I didn’t, I’d stop being so confused and all of this would just go away. Then things could eventually get back to normal.”

“Do your parents know what you’re going through?”

“They’re the ones putting me through it!” I told him, exasperated. “Everything was fine, or at least it was okay, but then they had to go and actually
believe
I was gay, and I didn’t have it in me to tell them the whole thing with Sarah was staged, so I had to just sit there and listen to them tell me about how they’d always known and how they just wanted me to be myself.”